Strathcona 1890 Truck Farm

From Robson Street and Farmers Markets to the PNE and Strathcona Harvest Festival, you never know where it will show up. The Truck Farm is a mobile demonstration of small space gardening. It promotes Strathcona 1890 Seed Collections which in turn fund the Urban Seed Project. The Strathcona 1890 Truck Farm was created to give people a small taste of what urban farming is all about. Basically we dri

ve it to different locations, park and wait for people to notice. It takes between 3-5 minutes to start gathering a crowd. Every one who is engaged with us also gets a sample pack of Strathcona 1890 Truck Farm Seeds to try their hand at growing food. Apart from cruising the streets, the Truck Farm visits schools, daycares, and community centres where we teach kids about growing food from seeds and help create and upkeep gardens. The Brooklyn Connection

When Ian Cheney moved to New York City after making King Corn, a film about growing an acre of America’s most subsidized commodity crop, he wanted to grow something a little different. After all, he’d seen firsthand the problems associated with growing a crop like yellow dent #2 corn — the raw material for high fructose corn syrup, countless processed foods, and confined animal feeding operations. With America reeling from epidemics of obesity and diabetes, it was high time to try planting a garden of one’s own. He didn’t own any land, all the community gardens were full, and the asphalt seemed to stretch on forever. Taking a good long look at the 1986 Dodge his grandfather had given him upon college graduation, Ian decided to give truck farming a whirl. Within days of planting his first seeds he had seedings bursting from the soil. He took the rolling farm to numerous schools and events, filming it as he went along. Efforts like these prove that there is a group of people out there that are truly concerned with where their food comes from and honoring the connection to what they eat. Above that, they’re willing to think creatively about what it’s going to take to encourage entire communities to move in that direction. Cheney and Ellis remind us that the demand is there; that in urban spaces, restaurants want locally grown goods, be it from a rooftop farm or the back of a truck. And if the demand is there, we need to start thinking about increasing the supply, from window gardens to planters of herbs. I wanted to bring the concept to Vancouver, in the back of my 1993 Mazda which had been "relaxing" in the back alley for six years. I came up with a way to lighten the load while increasing the soil depth so I could also incorporate carrots (which I love) and other root vegetables. Most truck farms have a shallow soil depth and only grow shallow rooting vegetables (lettuce is great for this.) I hope you will follow the Truck Farm's travels. It is sure to be an interesting journey.