Summer Lettuce Project at JGTF
Cultivate KC’s UAIP Project is Nearing Completion
As the season winds down, we’re celebrating the end of Cultivate KC’s Urban Agriculture Innovation Project (UAIP) – Building Urban Agriculture Community and Capacity in Kansas City’s Urban Core. We were unable to complete the project at the Westport Commons Farm as planned, but we’re proud of the innovative ways our team worked to complete the work through collaboration with other locations around the city.
This season, Cultivate KC staff teamed up with Longfellow Farm, a volunteer-run farm led by the Longfellow neighborhood, to provide production support to the farm, host monthly hands-on workshops for the community, and complete infrastructure projects.
Highlights from this collaboration included building a chicken coop and washstand for Longfellow Farm and hosting four educational workshops for urban growers and community members. Over the course of the season, Cultivate KC staff hosted workshops on how to build a chicken coop focused on basic construction skills and tool use, an introduction to chicken care, using low tunnels for season extension and pest management, and how to plant fall strawberries and tend them for maximum yield in the spring. In total, 36 growers and neighbors participated in this workshop series, learning key skills to improve and expand their farms and gardens.
Most of Longfellow Farm’s thousands of pounds of produce is shared for free with neighbors who participate in community workdays, and this collaboration helped spread the bounty even further. With extra production support from Cultivate KC staff and volunteers, Longfellow Farm was also able to donate an estimated 525 pounds of vegetables to Food Not Bombs KC, a local chapter of a global volunteer movement that recovers food that would otherwise be discarded, and prepares it into free vegan meals to share with the hungry.
In addition to the Longfellow Farm collaboration, other parts of the UAIP project were adapted to carry on the work. Cultivate KC’s Urban Agriculture Tool Library moved to the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council and has operated quite successfully this year. The Tool Library currently has 178 members and has made 228 loans over the course of this year- loans have nearly doubled since last year.
The cold storage planned in the original project was moved to Cultivate KC’s Stowe Gardens site in northeast Kansas City, Kansas. Starting this past summer, Cultivate KC staff made progress towards the completion of the site. After staff and volunteers helped empty out the two forty-foot shipping containers that had housed all the supplies for the construction of the Diana Eisman Community Greenhouse, staff were able to build potting benches for the greenhouse. Shade cloth was also installed on the greenhouse with help from volunteers from Next Steps Ministries. With support from Alex Thill of Kansas State University, drainage pipe was was installed at the new Stowe washstand.
As fall approached, work continued converting the storage containers into cold storage by cutting holes to house AC units and framing and insulating the cooler walls. Staff were then able to insulate the floors and install the metal siding for the interior walls. It was a great team effort and guaranteed everyone had fun!
Before the end of the year, the electrical work for the washstand and coolers will be complete and installation of the waterlines for the washstand will begin. Plans also include creating a drainage ditch for the Diana Eisman Community Greenhouse and adding evaporative cooling to the greenhouse for the benefit of next summer’s transplants.
Stowe Gardens has been a long-running project, and with the finish line in site, we’re thrilled it will all be put to good use next growing season by New Roots and community farmers!
