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Urban Taxi Farmers 2014

Five years ago we began profiling an intrepid group of urban farmers, all of whom have the day job of taxi driver. They’ve “borrowed” pieces of unused open land in various corners of New York City and turned it into bread and butter – or rather into corn, beans, tomatoes, grapes, herbs and whatever else they can…

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new york city’s taxi farmers

As today’s guest blogger, David Saltman tells of his discovery of some inadvertent guerilla gardeners. He did some on-the-spot investigative reporting for ‘the improvised life’ and photographed the story with his i-Phone. Thanks, David! “I was walking down the street in New York City recently when I ran smack into a cornfield. It was no hallucination —…

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windowfarms for apartment farmers: opensource brilliance

(Video link here.)  This inspiring TED Talk by Britta Riley recently introduced us to the world of Windowfarms. These vertical hydroponic gardens allow city-dwellers to grow vegetables, herbs and fruits in the windows of their otherwise cramped apartments, all year long. Think ‘strawberries’! But what’s most intriguing about Windowfarms is the community behind them, constantly refining the…

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bumper crop on the nyc taxi farm

Two summers ago we profiled an intrepid group of New York City car service drivers who planted three little farms on abandoned pieces of land right in the heart of the Bronx. They harvested abundantly and each of their wives took turns cooking weekly feasts for the assembled breadwinners (and cornwinners and beanwinners). We followed…

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life shift: tips for frugal living from an urban homesteader

Cara de Silva sent us a compelling and very timely story she spotted in the New York Times. “Back to the Land, Reluctantly” by Susan Gregory Thomas is about how the 42 year-old Brooklyn mother of three, having found herself divorced, flat-broke, with a dwindling livelihood, figured out how to “live off the land” from her urban garden…

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makeshift street seating (harlem)

  Since we’ve been hanging out with our friend Ana, helping her fix up her place in Harlem (more on that soon), we’ve noticed that people in the neighborhood love to hang out on the street. We see men sitting on folding chairs at card tables playing poker, and families on stoops, and there’s alway…

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