Backyard Gardens Become Income Generators in Lean Times
Of course, the Dervaes family is the center of gravity for urban farming in Los Angeles. If you’re wondering about what’s possible along those lines, you won’t find a more astonishing and encouraging example than Path to Freedom-Urban Homestead.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Locking up his station wagon, the one with the scratched paint and unpaid bills covering the floor mats, Cam Slocum crossed the parking lot and stepped into the kitchen of the swanky French restaurant Mélissein Santa Monica.
A cook set down his knife and walked over to greet the stranger. Slocum held out a Ziploc bag filled with lettuce.
“Hi,” said Slocum, 50, his deep voice straining to be heard. “I grow Italian mache in my backyard. It’s really good, only $8 a pound. Would you like to buy some?”
A few feet away, chef de cuisine Ken Takayama glanced curiously at the lanky stranger in jeans and a worn plaid shirt. He’s heard this sort of pitch before.
“Every day, every week, it’s something new,” Takayama said. “You name it, they have it.”
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In the South, hunters are selling venison and wild boar meat. In the Midwest, people are combing the forests for morel mushrooms, which can fetch $10 to $40 a pound.
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In Los Angeles, it’s unclear whether such entrepreneurship is legal: A 1946 zoning ordinance allowed “truck gardening” but didn’t define what that meant or identify what could be grown for sale in residential areas. Because of the ambiguity, the city has shut down some backyard enterprises, but not others.
An outcry by urban farming advocates last summer prompted Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti to introduce a motion dubbed the Food and Flowers Freedom Act, which would allow people to grow “berries, flowers, fruits, greens, herbs, ornamental plants, mushrooms, nuts, seedlings or vegetables for use on-site or sale or distribution off-site.”
The city’s building and safety department has stopped enforcing the old ordinance for now. The City Council is expected to vote on the proposed ordinance Friday.
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