The Jew and the Carrot » Blog Archive » Too Busy to Grow Veggies? Hire Someone To do it for You.

Join Hazon's Mailing List

What We're Reading

Books in Our Kitchen
Feeds
- Entries (RSS)
- Comments (RSS)
Meta
- Log in

Too Busy to Grow Veggies? Hire Someone To do it for You.

by Alix Wall · June 23rd, 2008

Community Agriculture, Farming, Gardening, Notable Press, On The Web, Organic, Sustainability, Vegetables

I don’t mean join a CSA. I actually mean, hire someone to do it for you. In San Francisco, that someone is a business called MyFarm, whose employees will come over, design a garden in your backyard, and then do maintainence for it on weekly visits. You can read about it here.

I have to admit I am torn by this idea. By growing a garden in your own yard, of course you are much more connected to your food. But by paying others to maintain it for you, you introduce yet another middle-person.

One thing I do like about this idea is that some of us simply do not know much about gardening (I include myself in this group). I could see hiring this outfit and then working alongside them to see how it’s done. And after some time, discontinuing the weekly maintenance visits to do it myself. I’m sure that won’t happen, but it’s a nice idea.

Print This Post

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Too Busy to Grow Veggies? Hire Someone To do it for You.”

Hilla Says:
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:44 pm
One of the neat things about MyFarm is that it encourages gardening on otherwise unused land. Plus, people who have extra land–big backyards for example–can have extra crops planted that will go into a CSA pool for other people. The way I see it, it’s the ultimate in local food production.
Kerr Says:
June 24th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I like the idea. I bet people will work alongside the team, or at least fill in during the week between visits, and eventually they’ll be able to do it all themselves. Some people never will, but those people would never have planted a garden without this service, so it will still introduce healthy food into the city where it wouldn’t have grown before. And agreeing to grow more food than you can use to donate to the CSA gets you a discount, so hopefully many people will do that as well.

I think microfarming is absolutely necessary as many ordinary people are just being priced out of the market for food. If MyFarm makes microfarming palatable, even trendy, for people who can afford it, while similar strategies like guerilla gardening are accessible to people who don’t have the money for MyFarm, that means more people will have food to eat, keeping local prices from skyrocketing even higher from competition. It’s just part of the movement, but it’s part of the movement.
joshua Says:
June 24th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I think its a great idea. I have good friend here in the North of the Israel. He is definitely not the farmer type. He asked the gardener to add a few beds of Veggies a few years back. The gardener maintains the beds year after year. But that does not mean they are any less excited by what their little plot produces. They stop smell, touch, pick and enjoy their fresh produce.. An experience they probably would never have achieved on their own.. This year they even had to consider Shmita issues something I am not sure they would have felt so personally about previously..