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meet the tenacious gardeners putting down roots in "america's most desperate town"
Meet the Tenacious Gardeners Putting Down Roots in "America's Most Desperate Town"
They're not always optimistic about the future of Camden, N.J. But they're committed to it anyway, and they've created one of the nation's fastest growing networks of urban farms.
These are Pedro Rodriguez’s chickens, in alphabetical order: Bella, Blanche, Dominique, Flo, Flossie, Lucy, Pauline, Una, and Victoria. Their coop occupies one corner of a vacant-lot-turned-garden in Camden, New Jersey. It’s an oasis of abundance and order in a city of abandoned buildings, street trash, and drug deals that few attempt to hide. Since 2010, the number of community gardens has more than doubled to roughly 130.
Rodriguez, 50, grew up down the street. Near the chickens, he has planted neat raised beds of corn, tomatoes, cabbage, kale, asparagus, eggplant, onion, 20 varieties of hot peppers, and broccoli. Fruit trees (cherry, apple, peach, and pear) line the perimeter of the lot, as well as two beehives. He’s considering getting a goat.
To say that Camden has a bad reputation would be an understatement. Indeed, Camden, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, has about the worst of any city in America. It’s been ranked at various times as both the poorest and the most dangerous. In 2012, it ranked as the number-one most dangerous city in the country.
Not surprisingly, Camden also gets a ton of bad press. In 2010 The Nation called it a “City of Ruins” where “those discarded as human refuse are dumped.” Last year, Rolling Stone ran a devastating article by Matt Taibbi under the headline “Apocalypse, New Jersey: A Dispatch from America’s Most Desperate Town,” calling it “a city run by armed teenagers,” “an un-Fantasy Island of extreme poverty and violence.”
It’s also one of the worst urban food deserts in the country. In September of 2013, the last centrally located grocery store closed its doors, leaving the city to feed itself on Crown Chicken and junk from the corner bodegas. One supermarket remains, at the very edge of Camden's city limits—but most residents would have to cross a river and travel along a major highway to get there—a difficulty in a city where many can't afford a car. Like in many other low-income areas, obesity is an epidemic.
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http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/meet-the-tenacious-gardeners-putting-down-roots-in-america-s-most-desperate-town?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20140613
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More great pics at OP's link.
Our lil town actually allows chickens..and ducks and geese, in city limits.
We have chickens.
they give us delicious large eggs.
and I cannot get anyone to take them!
Damn things are selling for 8.00 a doz. in SF, I am out here giving them away, no one wants them.
too much trouble to come over and get them, I guess.
