Carl Skalak owns Blue Pike Farm, an acre of income-generating vegetables and flowers in downtown Cleveland named after and extinct Great Lakes fish.  Skalak has been growing onions, sugar snap peas, heirloom tomatoes and much more on E. 72nd St. north of St.

    In five vacant lots across the city of Cleveland, things are growing.  Not just fruits and vegetables, although there are plenty of those, but also the knowledge and experience of the high school students who tend the gardens.  Employed by the Cleveland Botanical Garden’s Green Corps program, these students plant, weed, water and harvest in the gardens while learning about agriculture.

    You could call Kwodwo Ababio a lot of things: friendly, a great cook, active in the local food movement, passionate about the future of Linden.  Just don’t call him a community activist.  “I’m not a community activist, I’m just active in my community,” Ababio stressed during a meeting at New Harvest Café.  “I’m an artist, and the community is my canvas.”

    This season, the city of Akron is getting involved in the urban agriculture movement with a new program called Akron Grows.  Eight city-owned vacant lots have been turned into community gardens, and community members can acquire plots in which to grow food for a small fee of $20-$30.  “We recognize, especially in today’s economy, the need for people to put affordable, fresh food on the dinner table; the city itself also has a need to put vacant lots to productive use.  I’m excited to watch Akron Grows spur community involvement a

    One particularly interesting facet of the local food movement is the diversity of backgrounds from which people approach it.  High school teachers, professors, gardeners and government workers are just a few of the groups that see the value of eating local.  A meeting that took place last week at the New Harvest Community Arts Center and Café in Columbus was a microcosm of the diverse world of local food.  Then following are the people who attended the meeting, in the order that they introduced themselves around the table:

    As one of approximately 70 OARDC Research Internship Program (ORIP) interns, I have been traveling to nearby cities and interviewing people involved in the local food movement, then writing their stories for this website.  One of the most exciting things about my internship is the ability to see progress in the local food movement occurring right in front of my eyes.  My most recent opportunity to see progress in action was during a trip to Columbus last week.  Two of my fellow interns and I went to lunch at the New Harvest Community Center and Café

    Seleshi Asfaw came to the United States from Ethiopia in 1997 to escape an oppressive regime.  Once he arrived in Columbus, he saw the difficulties that Ethiopians and other East African immigrants faced: language barriers, loss of cultural knowledge among children, and the nutritional difficulties that come with access to a completely new set of foods.  In reaction to these problems, Asfaw formed Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services, which offers English classes, after-school programs, parenting classes, and instruction in Amharic, a major Ethiopian language.&nbs

Braddock Farms, one of the largest projects run by the non-profit Grow Pittsburgh, is a farm run on a stretch of vacant lots on one of the main streets of the suburb of Braddock.  It sits in the shadow of the last steel mill in Braddock, a town that has lost 90% of its income and population. The area is dotted with overgrown vacant lots, and the mayor, an enthusiastic supporter of the local food movement, hopes to turn them into useful growing spaces.  The existing farm is now in its second full growing season.

On
an average-looking street next to a park in the West End of Pittsburgh,
a red door stands.  This would not ordinarily be a source of interest,
but this door is not surrounded by walls, nor does it lead into a house. 
It is merely a frame and a front door standing alone, and it leads not
into a comfortable living room, but into a small member-owner farm.