FARMERS FOR HIRE
Urban farming services turn backyards into vegetable patches
Jeanne Nolan grew up in an affluent suburb of Chicago. When it came time to apply for colleges, she shocked her family by opting to skip college and become an organic farmer. Then she brought her farming skills back to the suburbs and city, installing and tending vegetable gardens at clients’ homes.
The Organic Gardener Ltd., the farmer-for-hire service she and her husband, Verd, started in the Chicago area in 2005, is one of many such services that have cropped up across the country. Some of these farmers have farming backgrounds, while others are landscapers who expanded their expertise, or entrepreneurs from a range of professional backgrounds who just love gardening and the outdoors.
“If you want serious exercise, you turn to a professional trainer to help you do it right. This is like hiring a gardening coach. Some people say, ‘Come over every other week for a year’ so they can learn and do it themselves. And I also have a hundred clients whose gardens I’ve been tending for years who are not even trying to do it on their own, but simply love having it done,” says Nolan, author of From the Ground Up: A Food Grower’s Education in Life, Love, and the Movement That’s Changing a Nation (Spiegel and Grau, 2013).
Urban farming services cater to both homes and businesses that want homegrown produce but not the work involved in growing it. Clients include apartment complexes, grocery stories, schools, shopping malls, even ballparks.
“It turns out that having homegrown produce is something a lot of people really want,” says Jessie Banhazl, founder and CEO of Green City Growers, in the Boston area. The company planted and tends vegetable gardens atop Fenway Field, where produce is served to fans at games and a portion is donated to charity.
Many of her clients are trying to get more engaged in the growing process, she says: “There’s something about seeing how food grows, at home, school or even at Fenway, and hopefully this influences dietary choices and has a positive environmental impact.”
Dan Allen, CEO of Farmscape, with locations in Los Angeles and the San Francisco area, says farmers for hire have a more intimate relationship with clients than landscapers do. “There’s something more personal about growing food,” he says.
Hiring a farmer for your backyard isn’t necessarily cheap, though. The farmers admit that if saving money is your goal, it’s probably cheaper to just shop organic at the grocery store. But they say the experience of growing your own produce, the learning opportunity for kids — and the bragging rights — make it worthwhile.
Another option: having a farm service visit every couple of weeks to teach growing techniques and offer tips.
“It’s surprising how much food you can grow in a very small space. As urban farmers, we grow things vertically and on roofs. We know how to plant crops densely. Even in just a 4-by-4-foot square planter, you can grow a lot of food,” Nolan says.
Her company grows “pretty much anything you can imagine,” she says. “Our most charismatic are tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. And our season runs from March through mid-December.”