Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates
homesteading on the suburban lawn

September 26, 2005

Start with one suburban home in Middle America (images of Salina Kansas Edible Estate © Fritz Haeg, used entirely with permission)

Situated on what was once a massive sugar beet plantation, the iconic housing development of Lakewood is an embodiment of an American Dream in which each single-family dwelling is presented on an ornamental carpet of manicured green. In the 1950’s, the Lakewood Park Company introduced assembly line housing developments to California constructing 17.500 homes on 3.500 acres in little over a year at a rate of about 1000 homes per month. In the last 3 months of 1950, families moved to Lakewood at a rate of 25 a day. Lakewood is now home to the Edible Estates regional prototype garden.

(image © Fritz Haeg, used entirely with permission)

In 2005, Edible Estates began transforming suburban lawns into spaces for food production, starting with the lawn of the Cox family in Salina, Kansas. The Edible Estate in Lakewood California is the home of the Foti Family who in 2006, de-lawned in favour of bio-diverse edible landscaping on Memorial Day weekend. The installation date couldn’t have been more apt, and images of WWII Victory Gardens spring to mind. But Edible Estate gardens are not simply rows of corn, beans and zucchini. In fact the gardens are highly designed, aesthetic spaces that have been planted to produce the food of the region.

Transforming a lawn into a garden with edible plants
(image © Fritz Haeg, used entirely with permission)

Michael Foti kept a diary of the first year of their Edible Estate food production on his weblog. The blog was filled with sound gardening advice, useful for any homesteader and is larded with funny stories about his grub-eating chickens and the garden ‘that ate his marriage’.

A lush productive landscape in suburbia (image © Fritz Haeg, used entirely with permission)

• Fritz Haeg Edible Estates
• Weblog from the Foti Famil Farm
• NYTimes aaarticle on Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates

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How to feel a food mile

September 19, 2005

If it takes me eleven days to really feel at home, just imagine how a piece of fruit must feel after travelling under much worse conditions and for a far greater distance! No wonder one must go to great lengths in the urban environment to find tasty fresh food. My head finally adjusted to being here this morning, which makes me think that I would have adjusted faster if I didn’t have one.

The photos above are of the things that I am missing the most since I’ve returned to the North. Although the sun does occasionally shine, I’ve been forced to hide my pedicure de campagne under woolen socks and fabulous boots. Life is one big give and take.
(Please read more… )

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French disaster relief local food challenge

September 10, 2005

I should have cancelled heading up north last Wednesday morning when by 6 a.m. I had already made my way across two rivers, almost ruining the treasured Martin Margiëla heels! The bus ride down to Montpellier was spectacular, spectacular meaning that there’s something in the scene that can kill you. And although it was in no way on the order of the weather going on across the pond, my return to the Low Country was defined by big Occitanian weather. Curtains of lightening illumniated the pre-dawn Pic St. Loup valley into liver coloured snapshots of wild boar narrowly escaping death by our bus.

It didn’t occur to me that this weather would have any affect on me until we arrived at the transferium Occitanie in Montpellier where the gushing, thundering and lightening took on new proportions. Stuck in a hoard people seeking unavailable shelter, I was quickly soaked down to the innermost microfibres of my culotte and suffered the onset of hypothermia for an hour until summoning the courage to change into my dryest clothes au plein publique. Montpellier was one meter under water and all transportation had been halted until… no one knew.
(Please read more… )

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