Gardening for Foodsheds
At Appalachian Future, our focus on Gardening is about local food and foodsheds. Similar in vein to the Food Not Lawns program, we are hoping to create bioregional foodsheds based on networks of residential and commercial properties that can be converted to and managed as organic produce gardens and farms of various acreage.
We’re building a bioregional foodshed as a model for all watershed-based bioregions in the biosphere.
“A foodshed is the geographic region that produces the food for a particular population. The term is used to describe a region of food flows, from the area where it is produced, to the place where it is consumed, including: the land it grows on, the route it travels, the markets it passes through, and the tables it ends up on. “Foodshed” is described as a “socio-geographic space: human activity embedded in the natural integument of a particular place.” A foodshed is analogous to a watershed in that foodsheds outline the flow of food feeding a particular population, whereas watersheds outline the flow of water draining to a particular location. Through drawing from the conceptual ideas of the watershed, foodsheds are perceived as hybrid social and natural constructs.”
Wikipedia: Foodsheds
Gardening as a Service
The Appalachian Future gardening service program is focused on converting residential lawns to productive organic gardens. For property owners interested in participating in the program, we’ll provide a range of services from site planning, consultation, construction, and management, with produce/crop sharing options for negotiating costs and levels of gardening services. Various gardening techniques will be employed, including options for integrated composting systems and various types of greenhouses, as well as beehives.
To pilot the feasibility of this program, our initial focus area will be Alleghany and Ashe Counties in North Carolina, and Grayson County in Virginia. Our intention is to scale this program up to serve the entire Upper New River Sub-basin, USGS HUC 05050001.
We intend to implement four tiers of services within the gardening service program.
Tier A: Provide Plans
For the participant, we will publish a step-by-step design plan, materials list (including soil and refinements), and a basic budget for building any number of garden boxes or greenhouses.
Tier B: Garden Space Design Consult
For the participant, we will hold a consultation session for figuring out how to specifically design and build a garden to replace any size footprint on that participant’s property.
Tier C: Garden Space Construction
Tier C requires the completion of Tier B. Volunteers with our program will then arrive on the participant’s property to build the garden space, once the space has been designed.
Tier D: Garden System Management
Tier D requires completion of Tiers B and C. As relevant throughout the seasons, program volunteers will arrive on site at participant property to complete the tasks necessary to manage the garden space throughout the year, including prepping, planting, weeding, harvesting, etc.
Composting and beekeeping services can be added to the plan of any Appalachian Future program participant at any tier, for an additional cost-share negotiation.
Mobile Greenhouses
We’ve been conceptualizing a modular mobile greenhouse design that can be transported between garden locations in the network, or moved around a single location as the path of the sun shifts throughout the seasons. We’ve taken this rough sketch and generated a “quick and dirty” mockup illustration of what such a mobile greenhouse might look like.
We’ll continue refining the concept as we start building a prototype and driving it around.
Gardening as Bioregional Learning
Imagine an organic produce garden replacing the front lawn of Sparta Elementary school in downtown Sparta, North Carolina – or anywhere else within the Upper New bioregion.
Bioregional learning is just as important as bioregional building, as the two processes are constantly feeding each other. What if we could convert the parking lot between the community college and the Alleghany High School into a state of the art educational center?
Gardening as Stewardship
When a landowner decides to dedicate their tiny chunk of the surface of the planet to growing and harvesting produce (as opposed to having a manicured lawn because they think that’s the way things are supposed to be), they are shifting from a wasteful monoculture to a participatory node in foodshed stewardship – even if all they do is sign a contract with the gardening service to do everything else for them.
Tracking Progress to Permaculture
We’re building a cloud platform to manage data capture and feedback (weather, inputs, outputs, process, labor, mileage, etc.) to support practice learning as participants increase engagement in this bioregional community of practice. This includes consumers who are not part of any AF production network. The purpose of this data platform is to validate transitions to a circular economy with evidence of substantial shifts in costs, outcomes, and throughputs. The learning platform doubles as a recruitment tool, validating the model of the network of services, showing the path to modular, extensible scalability to any watershed bioregion on the continent.
Feeding the Bioregion
Our bioregion is approximately 1.8 million acres. The current human population of our bioregion is approximately 350,000 people.
Imagine if 10% of our bioregional acreage was converted to networked parcels of gardens constituting a bioregional produce farm.
That’s 180,000 acres of produce farms collectively generating local food to be consumed locally.
Can 180,000 acres produce enough of an annual yield to support a local foodshed serving 350,000 people?
