Urban Farming and Miniature Meet Cute

by Web Intern

These days it seems like everything is miniature: cupcakes, ipods, cars–hell, you can’t even get a hamburger without eating 4 teeny little doll-sized sliders.

Well, mini has come to the urban local food movement, and friends, it is good. The first project growing in the fecund soil of adorableness and efficiency is Window Farms, founded by Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray to create ‘vertical, hyrdroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield’ gardens–in their apartment windows! The two intrepid locals have been experimenting and implementing several different designs, and, according to their website, one very successful model is a drip system made from recycled water bottles, in which beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, arugula, basil, lettuce and kale, are thriving. Hightail it to Eyebeam at 540 W, 21st St where several installations of the farms are on view.

Next up, you don’t want to miss the latest offering from Wicked Delicate Films. The boys who brought you King Corn are once again taking cute, smart, and funny to a whole new green level with this summer’s Truck Farm–a film and food project that takes the same truck that brought them to their acre of corn in Iowa and transforms it into a source for fresh local food in Brooklyn. That’s right, a farm in a truck. With music from The Fishermen Three and solar-powered time-lapse photography, catch a new film installment each month! (Full disclosure, Curt is my brother-in-law!)

Subscribe to receive an unknowable amount of fresh produce, an invitation to a sweet picnic, and best of all, a DVD of the short film Truck Farm. More after the jump, sweet reader.

For even more from Curt and Ian, catch the Greening of Southie, a documentary aboout the first residential green building in South Boston–from2009-05-27-3569069004_22b0cf95cc.jpg the construction workers’ often hilarious point of view. Get yourself to the Symphony Space theater on July 5, 12, and 19, for a screening of the film. You can order tickets in groups of ten to get a 35% discount, so bring a smart, funny, green date, or nine.

Last but not least is the slightly larger but no less awesome Rooftop Farms , brainchild of Brooklynites Annie Novak and Ben Flanner. They’ve been featured in the NYT , New York Magazine , and The Huffington Post for their innovative warehouse rooftop farm–they are growing surprisingly large amounts of local food for sale to community restaurants and hoping to spread local growing to other city rooftops.

The moral of the story: fresh local food is squeezing into city spaces everywhere in the most charming ways. Get at the sites linked above for emails galore to be a part of it all. -Devan photos courtesy Window Farms, Wicked Delicate.

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Founded in 1993, BUST is the inclusive feminist lifestyle trailblazer offering a unique mix of humor, female-focused entertainment, uncensored personal stories, and candid reporting that tells the truth about women’s lives.

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