Seattle urban farmers find room to grow in sprawling city

NATHAN WHALEN
Editor

A group in Seattle spends their days hop-scotching around town tending raising organic vegetables for the public. They have three locations scattered throughout a city that has construction that seems to be filling every space in the city.

Three employees and a throng of volunteers are planting in front of a community center, a former farm remnant and on a vacant piece of land.

City Grown Seattle comprises a small group of farmers who are busy working to transform their business into a full-time, year-around job.   “It would be great to have a full acre, but with city development, you never know,” said Ashley Wilson, a farmers for City Grown Seattle.

It’s spring time, so the farmers and volunteers are busy planting greens, radishes, bok choi and more.

Over the past several years, they’ve managed to expand the land where they grow, increase the amount of vegetables they grow, rally more volunteers willing to get their hands dirty, and the number of employees.
Discovering available land comes as more and more people are moving into the city. In 2010, Seattle had a population of 608,000 people. Estimates by the federal Census bureau estimates Seattle’s population as of July 2014 to be 668,000 people, which is a 10-percent increase in four years.

During City Grown Seattle’s first year, employees grew on 3,000 square feet on four plots of land. Farmers in 2015 grew on 16,400 square feet with five farmers and had developed a subscription base for their CSA, according to its website.

Three people comprise the backbone of City Grown Seattle. In addition to Wilson, Arielly Antosca and Ellen Scheffer also partner to make the farm grow.  All of them also work other jobs as their urban farm buds.

Arielle said she hopes to figure out a way to grow on more land to sell more produce in hopes to become self-supporting in around two years.

Although similar to a community garden or a P-Patch, she pointed out a difference with City Grown Seattle.

“We’re market gardeners. We grow food to sell,” Antosca said.

City Grown Seattle currently operates three farm stands in Seattle that are open one day a week. It has a stand open Wednesday afternoons in the Crown Hill area; another open in Wallingford Saturday afternoons; and a third open in Georgetown Sunday afternoons.

The farmers like finding property of homeowners who may not want to deal with the upkeep of maintaining a backyard, Ashley said.

In fact they recently, transformed a homeowner’s backyard into a garden to supply their roving produce stand.

The principals of City Grown Seattle all have an agriculture background. Wilson started with City Grown Seattle in 2014. Before that she volunteered with Seattle Tilth and previously worked for a farm in Carnation.

“It mixes the farming and urban lifestyle,” Wilson said of her career choice.

Antosca previously grew crops on organic farms in New Zealand and on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands. Scheffer is a Montana native who’s farmed for five years.

“My dream is to have my own full-size farm at some point,” Scheffer said.

In the meantime, farmers at City Grown Seattle continue to grow on their fields scattered throughout the city. They have a Community Supported Agriculture program up and running and they continue to sell their produce from their stands scattered throughout the city.

For more information about City Grown Seattle, go to www.citygrownseattle.com.