Last weekend, over 30 community members gathered at
the Public Library to take part in an open forum organized by Iowa City non-profit
Backyard Abundance. Through collective inquiry and participatory design, the
process of planning and implementing a food forest in one of Iowa City's public
parks continued.
Having spent the majority of my month
wrist-to-elbow deep in lamb placenta at the farm, or at the back of Farm
Records 101, peering over a sea of camouflage Dupont baseball caps, or doing some
other equally glamorous but largely solitary task, I was giddy to be a part of this empowered assembly, and within that
context, to introduce SeedBroadcast’s upcoming project with Exuberant Politics:
SWAP.
Both SWAP, with its emphasis on celebrating local seed
wisdom and bottom-up food sovereignty action, and Backyard Abundance, in it’s resolve
to hear community voices at the expense, perhaps, of more efficient implementation
of design, hint at what the notion of a civic, or politically engaged agricultural
practice looks like in action.
The meeting drew community members from diverse backgrounds,
growing experience, politics, and proximity to Wetherby Park. Master Gardeners
and students, guys working on urban ag policy and girls interested in prairie
plants. Folks who use comfrey to make healing salves, and folks who think comfrey
is a too dangerous to be planted near children (don’t even mention rhubarb). While
the majority of attendees were curious and excited about diverse food-bearing
plants in public space, a multitude of concerns were brought up ranging from issues
of aesthetics (a forest gardens is not an English garden), to the question of necessity
(can’t you go to one of those other parks
to experience nature?), to the big question of how to control the uncontrollable
(What if one guy runs off with all the strawberries!?)
While I didn’t get to record any audio seed
stories, the Mobile SWAP Station did get a donation of Heirloom Lettuce seeds
from New Pioneer Co-Op’s Earth source Gardens, and :: HOLY POST-MEETING CONVO’S:: some
remarkable feedback from community members interested in delving deeper into
action by effecting ordinance-making bodies, pushing
for, and participating in new pilot
projects like free seed libraries and public gardens.
*Photos courtesy of Backyard Abundance
