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Basement Bunnies and Grow-box Gardening:

Challenges of Urban Homesteading

 by Barbara Bamberger Scott

 

          Tammy Curry greeted me with fresh homemade bread, slathered with butter, and a glass of cool sweet tea.  It was in the high nineties outside at 4 pm, and I was grateful to postpone our garden walk for a while.  I sat on one end of the couch in her small living-room, and she lounged at the other end with 20-month-old Morgan curled around her. Occasionally her husband Jay would try to wheedle "Monster Man" Morgan away so we women could talk, but Morgan was having none of it, and to his credit, stayed quiet throughout our conversation.

          Occasionally too, seven-year-old Claire would breeze in, displaying her stick-on fingernails or offering to put the dog out.  "She's kind of full of herself today," Tammy told me. "Her picture's in the paper."  Claire's color photo, outstretched arms in front of her 4-H garden plot, was just a sidebar that day, but the following day it would be the out-sized feature photo, highlighting an article about Tammy's homestead in the Mt. Airy News.

          Mt. Airy News is not exactly the big time, and Mt. Airy itself is strictly small time and proud of it - it makes a living off being the fictional Andy Griffith/Taylor home of "Mayberry".  But one senses that Tammy Curry, organic gardener, is going places.  Soon she may literally be going, as she and Jay hope to purchase a large farm near Pinnacle, about 15 miles down Highway 52.  It was a working farm up until a few years ago, Tammy tells me, and includes an 80-year-old farmhouse.  Tammy can envision life there already, commenting, "A certain dog will have more room to run."  Claire, who rejected home-schooling this year, will stay in her current elementary school after the move, with Tammy, who is a stay-at-home mother, providing transportation out of district. Jay, who used to be a computer technician, will keep working when and where he can to provide basic income.  Right now he puts in shifts at the local candle factory.  He's no longer committed to a career, and the family looks forward to becoming fulltime organic farmers.

          As she said in the News article, "We do pretty well with the limited space we have and the Community Shared Agriculture and farmer's market."  To me Tammy acknowledges that her CSA income is a key factor.  With several customers paying $300 per year, she can rely
on "seed money" - literally.  Tammy told the News interviewer, "CSA is a relatively new idea in the United States.  The idea is that the producer and the customers share the risks and expenses of food production.  It began in the 1960s in Japan, Germany and Switzerland.  The idea is to reduce financial risks and food losses for farmers."  The CSA movement and one of its more famous American proponents are depicted in
colorful detail in "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," a documentary film which  was recently aired on PBS, and in an article about the film at Homestead.org.

          Tammy is a sturdy woman with a clear gaze, a ready smile and a well-developed vision for her family.  Daughter of a Marine father and a hippie mother, who put Tammy to baking bread as soon as she could reach up to the table, Tammy is a domestic powerhouse who manages
the homesteading side of the family income.

          But how does she balance all this - two kids, meat 'n' pet bunnies, chickens for eggs and baked bread and veggies for customers whose boxes must be restocked weekly - on a postage stamp of rented land?

          Answer: very well.

          Urban homesteading carries its blessings and its challenges. An academic treatise, Agropolis (The Social, Political and Environmental Dimensions of Urban Agriculture) (Earthscan, 2005), is a collection worth reading. It's full of research papers on how small-scale city gardeners cope throughout the world.  In England, for example, the allotment system has been a part of urban culture for "donkey's years," a curious expression meaning a long, long time. I heard it only in England, sometimes shortened to "yonks."  People who live in a certain area or on a certain "estate" (what we would call a housing development or an apartment complex) have the right to rent, if available, a small plot  forming part of a large garden space.  There they may garden at will - orchards, greenhouses, apiaries, topiaries, whatever strikes the fancy of the lessee.  Most allotment gardeners are retired, though younger folks occasionally take up the activity, often seeing it as a Cause.  Some use their plots to grow vegetables and fruits for home consumption and some make small money off selling their produce at farmer's markets.  The plots are generally within a few blocks of home and provide, among other benefits, recreation and exercise.  Very often, the allotment "quilt" provides a green swath in the midst of urban blight and therefore serves the purpose of natural beautification.  It is rare to see an unused allotment plot or a neglected one.  If you get one, you tend to hold on to it for yonks.

          In Cuba, another hot grow-spot included in Agropolis, urban gardening has taken on guerilla status.  Cubans, like their Iberian forebears, have always been inclined to grow flowers on their patios and hang cages with canaries and budgerigars in their cool window casements.  A full-scale nutrition gardening movement burst forth in reaction to food shortages in 1989.  Despite government  embarrassment, the home-growers of Havana would not be suppressed.  They put containers of veggies and boxes of rabbits and chickens on their roofs and patios.  "They creatively used objects like tires as planters for vegetables, and constructed small, manageable warrens for raising animals for food.  They struggled with issues such as obtaining animal feed and official objections...the authors imply that because Cuba once again considers itself food self-sufficient, there will be a more stringent attitude on the part of authorities toward this urban guerilla effort to keep families fed and operate micro-business."   (Counterpoise Magazine, Volume 10, Winter/Spring 2006, review by Barbara Bamberger Scott).

          These examples dovetail with Tammy's assertion that "anybody can be an urban gardener, even if they don't call themselves that."   Maybe you have a few containers of tomatoes on the deck or an avocado plant growing in the kitchen window.  You would be, by Tammy's definition, an urban gardener.  Tammy is an idealist.

          One of the Curry family's recent challenges occurred when they had to go out of town for two weeks.  When they got back the garden was a jungle.  Following fast on the heels of this emergency (recalling that weekly orders had to be filled for CSA consumers) was an attack by a roving dog or perhaps a wild animal (foxes abound in the peri-urban southland), which wiped out numerous bunnies and hens.  This resulted in a move indoors.  The bunnies now reside in cages as before, but their mobile homes have been transported to the house's climate controlled basement.  Luckily, many critters are content in cooler conditions and this uprooting has not ruffled any feathers or stirred anyfur.  The day I visited, I "captured" the bunnies quite contentedly living the basement life, and caught a snap of two hens and two adolescent guineas almost, as it were, frozen in place next to the HVAC generator, soaking up  some serious breeze.

          Tammy's mobile life began in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, an area once rural and now taken over by urban DC sprawl to the point where, to Tammy, it's become unrecognizable.  From there she edged on down to Blacksburg, Va, to attend Virginia Tech.  After she'd been there for a while she was followed by her parents when her father "just happened" to get a job in the Roanoke area.  "We're a close family," Tammy smiles.

          Tammy and Jay then migrated to Floyd, Virginia where she began to exchange emails and then real-life visits with Dori Fritzinger whom she "met" on an organic farming website.  Dori, who farms near Mt. Airy, is the subject of another article at Homestead.org - How Does a House Become a Homestead.  Floyd, for those who've never been there, and that will be most of you, is located in a county with only one "redlight," as the locals call it. It's an indigenous farming locale that's been invaded by hipsters of various stripes and is noted for its enclave of excellent old time musicians, making it a stop on Virginia's "Crooked Road Heritage Music Trail."

          But that was not a sufficient draw for Tammy.  After Jay was laid off from work, more than once the victim of downsizing or corporate sang froid, she realized she'd been spending nearly every weekend visiting Dori.  "So I decided, why drive 45 minutes each way when I can move down there and see her whenever I like?"  That's how she ended up in Mt. Airy.

         

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