A: It sounds like you see the powerful impact that urban farming can have not only on you personally but also on the lives of others and building a community. If that is true, please consider joining our network of urban farmers. Your interest may be about the social aspects of this work or how to even fund a farm with a social mission. With the breadth of topics included in urban farming with a social mission, we have initiated a topic-based exchange platform. To give you an idea of what is being discussed in our “farm-ily”, Eden Streets’ Slack channel topics are listed here: Community Engagement Connecting with the city Employee Management Environmental Regeneration Farm Financials Farm Operations Fundraising General Inspiration Sharing Involving Volunteers Job Training Based on where you live and what your resource needs are, we hope to link you to those you can partner within your own community. Please become a member and send me your thoughts at Karl@EdenStreets.org.

Designing and executing an effective program for urban farm crew members or participants takes a community of partners from various organizations. For example, at the Green Phoenix Farm, we partner with Yogis in the Salt Lake area to get a 20-minute professional yoga practice at the start of the day. In exchange, we share the farm’s produce and flowers each time they come. The Yogis love the peace and beauty of the farm. They may contract to hold yoga sessions at the farm for their clients. Each organization sees this arrangement as a win-win for all involved.

“Urban farming” or “Urban agriculture” is becoming increasingly recognized as a multi-dimensional win for cities, citizens and the wildlife and green plants that make a city a desirable place to live. The following podcasts are a start to the ones most nearly aligned with Eden Streets’ mission. The Urban Farm Podcast Greg Peterson Farm Small, Farm Smart Diego Footer Regenerative Agriculture Podcast John Kempf

Farmers are extremely busy people. Urban Farmers are even more stretched to add city government officials and community social services to their list of stakeholders. We at Eden Streets appreciate that stretch. That’s why we suggest an on-site, on-the-job training approach as the most efficient way to transfer information. Rapid, significant benefits are derived simply by visiting each other’s farms. Farm Visits That’s why our first objective is to get urban farmers with social missions together at each others’ urban farms. Our concept is to have the host farm invite 5 to 10 other urban farmers to work side by side and experience the farm and its program. While we work, we can share. Lasting relationships can be built even over an extended weekend active workshop. Panel Discussions From there, we hope to host topic-based panel discussions that seem to be of primary importance to most of our urban farmer friends. These can be accessed in real-time or replayed at a time convenient to you. We want to make the information easy to find so that you can focus on the question you really need an answer for. Chatting For those that enjoy smaller, simpler exchanges, the Slack channels are designed to reach an audience with a specific interest and be aware of what the latest information shared has been.

A: For a smaller community, Slack(R) is useful for building informal relationships through normal, day-to-day questions. As topics of common interest begin to surface, we will consider other options like "Stack Exchange" application which is a Q & A forum where both the question and the answer are rated by the community members. The more points each gets, the higher it appears on the list of dialogue. It is also easier to search for historical content. In the interim, we hope to tag information-rich posts by either pinning them or adding a title, description, and subjects. We welcome user feedback as we use the chat.