From the Market

FOOD

Summer trips to local farms.

By Mara Zepeda

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Jul. 9, 2008

SHARE alike: Green growers who exchange local food in a co-op tend plots together at Spring Gardens in Fairmount. (photo by michael persico)

If wandering farmers markets has become tiresome and you're looking to reinvigorate your commitment to buying local, there's no better way to do it than visiting area farms.

The upcoming Urban Farm Bike Tour offers the perfect opportunity to escape the white tents and get a glimpse of the very ground in which the goodies grow. Organized by board member Chris Hill, the tour begins at Weavers Way co-op and farm, where visitors glimpse the inner workings of a large, professional farm featuring a wide variety of crops.

The next stop on the tour is the plot tended by Martin Luther King High School students. Once a vacant lot, this flourishing garden overseen by farm educator David Siller boasts more than 50 different crops. "Some of these kids have started their own gardens at home," says Siller. "The other day a kid tasted a cucumber from the garden. 'It definitely tastes better than the one in the store,' he said. I was like, 'Hell yeah.'"

Urban Farm Bike Tour

Sat., July 19, 8:30am.
$10.
Weavers Way Co-op,
559 Carpenter Ln.
215.843.2350.
www.weaversway.coop

Bikers cruise over to Mill Creek Farm where founding farmers Jade Walker and Johanna Rosen give an overview of sustainable practices, from raising bees to installing a green roof to the inner workings of a composting toilet. "When people come to the farm they don't want to leave because it's so magical and it's on a scale you can grasp immediately," says Weavers Way's Hill.

Next up is Spring Gardens in Fairmount, an expansive community garden tended to by more than 140 families that participate in the Self-Help and Resource Exchange (SHARE) program, which collects food donations from local growers.

The final stop is Kensington's Greensgrow Farms. Recently featured in The New York Times, it's a farm darling if there ever was one. With their hydroponic vegetables, biodiesel program and honey harvesting, "it's a stunningly creative and imaginative place," says Hill.

The tour wraps up with pizza and beer at Philadelphia Brewing Company followed by a screening of a work-in-progress documentary about a three-month bike tour of Northeast urban farms and gardens by three committed women.

For farm enthusiasts wanting to get out of town and explore more rural environs sans bicycle, there are a number of nearby daytrips.

Siller recommends venturing out to Sankanac farm in Phoenixville (www.camphillkimberton.org/landuse.asp). Or pick your own blackberries, vegetables, herbs and flowers at Collegeville's Willow Creek Orchards (www.willow creekorchards.com). Finally, for aspiring rural urbanites the ever-experimenting Rodale Institute Farm (www.rodaleinstitute.org/on_our_farm) in Kutztown offers gardening workshops on designing backyard organic gardens for groups of five or more. With bike or shovel in hand, this summer will prove especially fruitful to those who venture outside chain markets.