Week Two: Visiting the Farm

On Wednesday, our group visited the EPRA urban farm located in Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia.  We were shown around the garden by its main caretaker, Nicole Sugerman.  Afterwards we sat and discussed plans for the garden's irrigation system.

"Established in 2003 by neighborhood residents Haile Johnston and Tatiana Garcia Granados, the East Park Revitalization Alliance (EPRA), is a community-based nonprofit that aims to empower residents to revitalize the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood through the arts, environment and education" (East).  Nicole Sugerman works with EPRA caring for three volunteer-run gardens while encouraging community engagement.

In the lot we visited, there are more than seventeen beds, a compost area, a children's play-set, and an unfinished shed.  In addition the old fashion bullet trailer silently chilling in the background.  Across the street from the garden there is a great mural of a western scene blending into the neighborhood homes.  Children like to come to the lot to use its open grass space to play.  Some of the beds are maintained by the local residence of the neighborhood.  What Nicole collects from the garden is sold at a food stand.  One of the main goal of the garden is to bring healthier foods to the neighborhood for the grocery stores nearby tend to sell second-best foods.

Photo by Dr. Alexander J. Moseson

Currently Nicole waters her plants using the water from the lot's kind neighbors.  One of the neighbors is right next to the lot, but the other is across the street and a hose must be run from there.  This hose gets run over often causing there to be a need for it to be replaced a lot.  Also by using the water of the neighbors, their water pressure decreases.  The sprinklers that Nicole has used in the past wastes a lot of water (sprinklers tend to be very inefficient...more on that in a later post) and the water is not directly applied to the plants or their surrounding soil.

This is the reason why we are working there.  Our assignment from the East Park Revitalization Alliance: "We lack reliable and easy water access (currently borrowing from kind neighbors) and also do not have an easy or time efficient way to water our beds. We are hoping to combine both of these needs this season into a rainwater-harvesting storage facility that will be able to water our beds in an easy and water-conserving manner. Rain water would be captured from shed and stored in a barrel. Drip irrigation for the individual raised beds would be preferred, with the irrigation parts easily dismantled for movement around the beds or lawnmower use."

The shed, that one of the most common rain water collection methods would require, is unfinished.  There is no roof.  No roof = no place to collect the rain water from.  Because of this the cost of the roof will need to be built into the budget of the system or another method will be found.  A concern about collecting the rain off of the roof is to make sure that whatever the tiling it is made of needs to be safe for water collection.

Photo by Dr. Alexander J. Moseson

"East Park Revitalization Alliance." East Park Revitalization Alliance. N.p., 2013. Web. 9 Apr.
     2013. <http://www.epralliance.org/>.