City Farm, June

I did already post once about City Farm but, being a farm, it does change throughout the year. Because it has such a small footprint, the farmers have to be very efficient and the rows are turned around very quickly after a harvest. This time of year on the farm they are growing carrots, radishes, turnips, beets, asparagus, and head and leaf lettuce. Leaf lettuces like arugula can be harvested multiple times but the more it is harvested, the more bitter it gets. Citty farm will generally harvest arugula about four times before clearing it (which is what I did when I was there). Because they were just going to compost it, I tried some and it was really good. It had a buttery, nutty flavor with a radishy finish. Having tried much of their produce, I can understand why some of the fine dining restaurants in the area buy from City Farm. It's nice also that I can buy their produce at the local farmer's market but in addition to all of this, it's fun to play in the dirt.

City Farm

This is where it begins. I like talking about food and restaurants and a lot of them get their vegetables from City Farm. City Farm is a branch of the Resource Center, a non-profit that was started with a focus on recycling and reuse. The site that City Farm uses is a 1 acre plot in the area where one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects was located. The city donates the land and the farm can actually be moved if the city decides that they want the land back. The soil is created from a combination of the compost created from the weeds on the site, food waste from the restaurants that are customers, and manure from the city's horse barns. The farm operates using organic practices (if not certified organic). It operates year round although obviously they can't produce nearly as much in the winter as they can in spring, summer, and fall. They produce, beets, lettuce, carrots, several different types of lettuce, herbs, and more than 30 different types of tomatoes. This year they also received a few chickens from Gunthorp Farms that they will use to work over a farm bed after harvest and before clearing and possibly receive a few eggs in the process. If the experiment is succesful, they may expand the roost and add a few more chickens so they can supply eggs to local restaurants. Some of there customers include Frontera Grill & Topolobampo, Vie, Lula Cafe and Nightwood, Sepia, and North Pond. In addition, they run a CSA, a farm stand, and operate in two farmers markets. In the green seasons, they also have volunteer opportunities every Saturday which is how I found out about them. I volunteer about once a month mostly doing a lot of weeding although occasionally when clearing a bed we are able to harvest some stuff that was missed which is how I got these radishes.