Welcome To The Urban Jungle

Here's the skinny.

We're living in the middle of a global economic depression, which, depending on which newspaper you read, is either going to be the hardest thing you've ever gone through (at the good end) or worse than the Great Depression (at the bad end).

Now that's enough to have the bravest of us reaching for the Prozac.

And, it seems that increasing numbers of us are already doing that, not to mention our therapy sessions and spiritual retreat weekends; and they'll dry up once our redundancy payments go South. A Stanford Daily article from 2005 claimed that half of all Americans were taking anti-depressants.

We live in scary, stressful times.

The rural population is decreasing as more people move to cities to find that elusive job. According to author Dr. Kjell Nordstrom:

"Current estimates indicate that 90% of people will live in urban areas by 2040."

A lot of people have never even been to the countryside or seen a farm, let alone worked on it. We're out of the loop. Up high in our apartments, our lives are fast-paced - production and performance is King. We don't know where our food came from. We don't know what the seasons mean.

A hundred years ago, people died from infectious diseases; cholera, malaria, tuberculosis. Now, we succumb to obesity and stress-related illnesses; heart disease, diabetes, cancer. We're told to eat our "five-a-day" - five Government recommended portions of fruit and vegetables (and organic too) to become healthier, fitter, leaner. But bread and convenience foods are cheaper and bigger and so we gorge ourselves on those and get fatter and unhealthier.

And, if bad weather hits us, as it's doing here now in the UK where unprecedented snow storms have brought the entire nation to a grinding halt, we look in our empty cupboards and wonder where the next meal is coming from.

But here's the good news. It doesn't have to be like that. You don't have to live like this. Even in the middle of an urban jungle, even suspended several stories in mid-air with only a balcony or a window ledge, you can get back in the loop. You can be the loop.

And this is how my journey began.

My little corner of the world

I want to feel the soil between my fingers and watch Nature work her magic. I want to plant and plough and harvest and fill my pantry with jams and herbs and vegetables. Over the coming weeks from my five-story-up apartment in Brighton, I'll share my journey with you; the ups and downs, the learning curve, as I make my way towards filling my own balcony and windowsills with food. Good, wholesome, real food. You can do it in the city - it is possible. You can feed your family and yourself and feed your soul - and I'll be showing you how.

You can be free.

Comments

[Richard]

Fantastic insight, I can't wait to see where this goes :)

[Paulie Soulboy]

Nice to see a UK based posting - and I completely agree with Gregorygirl's attitude.

I've been working as a volunteer in a educational herb garden for two years in Deptford SE London, and I want to do pretty much the same thing too. I think the important thing is engagement with real things, involvement with life and nature.

So much of technology separates us from the nature of nature...I look forward to seeing the next post.

[rock+creek]

I've been working on this too :) If you need a small apartment compost rig, here's one that worked for me:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rock_creek/811490216/

I've been able to make good quality compost in my 540 sq. foot place in the middle of D.C.

[Sonja Dressel]

Its already happening in my community: home-owners turning their front lawns into vegetable gardens. And its about time.

[GeorgyGirl]

Thanks Richard! :)
I'm hoping to learn as I go. :)

[GeorgyGirl]

Paulie Soulboy - an educational herb garden sounds wonderful! Do you have a link to that? I'd love to hear more about it. :) I've noticed lots of similar projects springing up and I think it's not only encouraging, but vital.

Rock+Creek - your compost rig is incredible! I've been fretting about the whole compost issue vs. space for a while, but this has definitely given me food for thought. How often do you turn the contents?

Sonja - hugs as always, sweetie. :) I was recently reading "Edible Estates" and I love the movement of turning lawns into produce farms. I'll be talking more about this in an upcoming blog post! :)

[Rock+Creek]

GeorgyGirl: With this set up, you don't need to turn the compost - just alternate thin layers of vegetable scraps w/thin layers of dirt (I tried to keep it to less than 3" per layer of scraps).

As long as you keep the ratio of moist scraps to dry ones in balance and the mix doesn't get too damp, everything will decay w/out turning. I sometimes added a little dryer lint to the scraps to absorb water when using water-heavy scraps (e.g. chopped up squash remains mixed with coffee grounds ;)