Urban Farms & Gardens Tour
Sunday, June 28, 10am-5pm
Pre-Tour Events, June 18-June 27

http://urbanfarmstourkc.com/

Come meet the local urban growers and see what they are doing to provide food for our area. Admission includes 30 sites on the self-directed tour with different events at each site.

For a list of farms see this link

Pre-tour events this week:

Monday, June 22 - 12:00-1:00pm:
A How-To Introduction to Community Gardens and Schoolyard Gardens – at KC Community Gardens

Tuesday, June 23

  • * 10AM My Blooming Garden @ KCMO Library Southeast Branch-children
  • * 2PM Cocoa Butter Ice Cream Bath Fizzie Making @ Plaza-children
  • * 7PM Mad City Chickens documentary @ All Souls UU Church

Wednesday, June 24

  • * 10:30AM – Grains, Grinding, and Granola – Trails West Branch-children
  • * 6-7:30PM Teens Growing Greens…and Other Stuff – KCMO Central Library

  • * Eat Out Local Night – eat out at local restaurants that serve local food – including Eden Alley, Renee Kelly and Bluebird Bistro
  • * Building Edible Cities: Urban Agriculture for Planning and Design Professionals. A lecture & panel discussion. 5:30 PM Reception, 6:00 PM Program. For details email daniel@kccua.org or call 816-235-6053.

Thursday, June 25

  • * 10AM My Blooming Garden @ KCMO Central Library-children
  • * 2PM – Worms Eat Our Trash @ KCMO Library Waldo Branch-children
  • * 6-8PM - Generation G: Growing Youth Gardeners – Urban Youth Center, 2740 Troost
  • * 7PM - Summer Harvest Dinner, Bread of Life Outreach Ministries, 2510 Nebraska, Kansas City, KS – Warren Kittler

Friday, June 26

  • “Funky Friday Night” Urban Homesteading Class @ Bad Seed, 19th & McGee

Saturday, June 27

  • * Mini Market Tours @ Farmers’ Markets – coordinated by Dave Lawrence
  • * Z’s Fall Garden - Offered by Communiversity, Convener: Zoe Lagrece -
    1:00 PM - 3:00 PM; 1029 S. 47th Terr., KCKS

Descriptions of Food from the City….For the City Pre-Tour Events

  • How to Eat Local in KC - Hosted by Season Burnett, Director of the Kansas City CSA Coalition, and Emily Akins, member of the Kansas City Food Circle Coordinating Committee
  • Trails West Branch of the KCMO Library - Sunday, June 21 (noon or 2PM) - no cost
    How can you reach out to your community while at the same time finding local, sustainable methods for buying, making, and growing your own food? Come learn and share information about the exploding number of Kansas City’s local and organic farmers’ markets, CSAs, community and school gardening, preserving, and other local-food efforts promoted by some fantastic organizations actively involved in our local “foodshed.” As you grow more inspired, you can find out how to help your friends and neighbors “go local”!

  • Urban Farms… Feed the People – Starting an Urban Farm
    Sunday, June 21, 3:00-4:30pm - Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture
    4223 Gibbs Road, Kansas City, KS 66106
    Most people who go into urban farming are folks whose gardening habits got out of control. Their garden overtook their lawn, the empty lot next door, and part of the neighbor’s back yard, and all of a sudden they need more land, some farming infrastructure, and a new set of skills on how to grow at a bigger scale and how to manage a new farm business. This workshop will introduce you to the basics of starting an urban farm- a business of growing and selling vegetables- whether you are already starting, thinking about starting, or are a few years into the process and realize you need to stand back and look at what you’ve grown and where it needs to go next.

  • Community Gardens… Grow the Neighborhood
    Educational & Charitable Gardens… Sow the Seeds
    Monday, June 22, 12:00-1:00pm: A How-To Introduction to Community Gardens and Schoolyard Gardens, Kansas City Community Gardens - 6917 Kensington - KCMO
    Ben Sharda, Executive Director, and Andrea Mathew, Schoolyard Gardens Coordinator, will offer an introduction to starting community gardens and “edible” schoolyards. They’ll address the site needs for gardens (soil, water, fencing, etc) as well as the organizational issues (participation in the garden, curriculum development in a school-based program, and more). They’ve got a wealth of knowledge on how to make gardens work for the benefit of the community, you’ll walk away ready to get something growing in your own community.

  • My Blooming Garden - KCMO Library Staff
    Tuesday, June 23 – 10AM @ Southeast Branch of KCMO Public Library - no cost
    Come hear some fun stories about growing things and learn a bit about easy ways you can grow your own stories, food, and/or flowers. The Beanstalk Garden will provide information about gardening for kids and will help each participant plant their own seed to take home and nurture.

  • Cocoa Butter Ice Cream Bath Fizzie Making (K-5) – Nancy, Noel & Natasha Gordon, of Pearly Gates Organic Soapery, Inc. and Gardens
    Tuesday, June 23 - 2PM @ Plaza Library Branch of KCMO Public Library – no cost
    Make Moisturizing Bath Fizzies shaped like scoops of vanilla ice cream and have fizzy bath time fun. Each one contains skin softening cocoa butter, smoothing bicarbonate of soda, corn starch, citric acid and lavender essential oil. Each child and accompanying adult will make a fizzie to take home, pop in bath water and watch it fizz away and release the goodness inside. A recipe will also be provided to be able to make some more at home.

  • Mad City Chickens Film– Hosted by All Souls UU Documentary Series
    Tuesday, June 23 – 7PM @ All Souls UU Church, 4501 Walnut – donations only
    79 minute documentary about the raising chickens in the city movement. The film is a sometimes wacky, sometimes serious look at the people who keep urban chickens in their backyards. From experts and authors to a rescued landfill chicken or an inexperienced family that takes the poultry plunge—even a mad scientist and giant hen get into the act—it’s a humorous and heartfelt trip through the world of backyard chickendom.

  • Grain, Grinding and Granola – Kathy Crowther, Bread of Life Organic Bakery, Stewartsville, Missouri
    Wednesday, June 24-10:30AM @ Trails West Library Branch of KCMO Library–no cost
    Children 5 and up can get an up-close look and feel of grains such as oats and flax and learn about the value of eating whole grains. Grinding of the grain by hand turning a wheel comes next, to see how it can become flour. Then each child will put together a small take-home bag of granola. All of this with the guidance of Kathy Crowther, of Bread of Life Organic Bakery, Stewartsville, Missouri.

  • Teens Growing Greens…and Other Stuff – Harvesters, KC Urban Youth Center, Troostwood Youth Garden
    Wednesday, June 24 – 6-7:30PM - Central Library
    There’s teens like you growing food in the city….and eating and cooking what they grow. omg! Can you believe it? Are you a teen? Do you want to know some stuff about growing food and why teens growing food are glad they are? If you do, come to this session and listen to what these teens are doing and why they are doing it. They will tell you. If you want you can bring your parent, aunt, uncle, granny or gramp along – or any grownup who wants to come. If you don’t want to bring one of them, just come on yourself. There’ll be some fun.

  • Eat Out Local Night – Metro Area Restaurants that serve locally grown food
    Wednesday, June 24– restaurants will be added as they sign on
    Eden Alley
    Renee Kelly
    Bluebird Café
    Chipotle on 39th Street

  • Building Edible Cities: Urban Agriculture for Planning and Design Professionals
    Wednesday, June 24 – reception at 5:30PM, program at 6PM
    Epperson House, 5200 Cherry St. — UMKC Dept. of Architecture, Urban Planning and Design
    Urban planners, landscape architects, architects and engineers are asking how urban agriculture can benefit communities and how it can become part of urban design. Explore these questions with a panel of distinguished Kansas City professionals.
    Co-sponsored by the KC Center for Urban Agriculture and the UMKC Department of Architecture, Urban Planning and Design.
    Registration is requested for this free event. Please email Daniel Dermitzel (daniel AT kccua.org) or Jacob Wagner (wagnerjaco AT umkc.edu) for more information.

  • My Blooming Garden - KCMO Library Staff
    Thursday, June 25 – 10AM @ Central Library – KCMO Public Library – no cost
    Come hear some fun stories about growing things and learn a bit about easy ways you can grow your own stories, food, and/or flowers. The Beanstalk Garden will provide information about gardening for kids and will help each participant plant their own seed to take home and nurture.

  • Worms Eat Our Trash – Eric Williams & Sarah McCoy-Harms of the green worm
    Thurs. June 25 at 2pm @ Waldo Branch Library – KCMO Public Library – no cost
    Eric & Sarah, the green worm friends, will guide children through the process of “farming” worms. Participants will learn introductory information about composting; how worms turn our trash into healthy soil in which happy, beautiful, good-tasting plants grow and bloom. There is a demonstration of how composting with a worm bin works! (Pre-K to 5th Grade)

  • Generation G: Growing Youth Gardeners –
    Thursday, June 25, 6:00-8:00pm
    Urban Youth Center, 2740 Troost, Kansas City, MO
    All over the city, new youth gardening programs are being planted. Churches, social service agencies, neighborhood associations and all kinds of groups are putting in gardens and working with youth from the littlest ones up to the teens and young twenties. We invite you to come and listen to some of their stories, and then participate in group discussions and information sharing. Whether you’ve already started a program or are thinking of starting one, this first ever get-together of youth gardening programs will get you growing.

  • Summer Harvest Dinner, Bread of Life Outreach Ministries,
    Thursday, June 25 - 7PM - 2510 Nebraska, Kansas City, KS
    A meal featuring locally-grown produce from Greeley Gardens, the church’s youth market garden in Quindaro. Tickets are $10 each, deadline for RSVP is June 18. Call Warren Kittler at 913.217.5950 or email warren.kittler AT gmail.com for more information and tickets.

  • Home Gardens & Urban Homesteads… Feed the Family
    Friday, June 26, 4:30-9:00pm: Urban Homesteading and Farmers’ Market, Bad Seed Farmers’ Market – no cost
    In honor of Kansas City’s Urban Farms & Gardens Tour, the BADSEED Farmers Market will be hosting a special Market for all you “urban homesteaders” and wannabes!! Along with the regular gang of urban growers and producers of “other worldly delights”, special guests will include KC’s FOOD NOT LAWNS, an emerging national movement which promotes turning our lawns into gardens! “By growing food not lawns we can increase local food security, become more self-reliant, improve our diets, reduce energy use and pollution, and build stronger local communities.” Canning and Preserving Demos will take place in the BADSEED Kitchen from 6-7:30 PM. Demos will include Blanching and Freezing Greens, Pickling, Jams and Jellies, and Fermentation.

  • Mini Market Tours @ Farmers Markets – Dave Lawrence – Saturday, June 27
  • Z’s Fall Garden - Offered by Communiversity, Convener: Zoe Lagrece
    Saturday, June 27; 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM; 1029 S. 47th Terr., KCKS, From I-635, exit on Metropolitan, go west on Metropolitan, right at Leo Alvey Park (approx. 49th St. ), turns into 47th Terr.; LIMIT: 20 - CLASS FEE: $9- #2215 A
    WHOOPS!!! Missed that spring garden window of opportunity? Prepare to take action! There’s still lots of growing season for a bountiful fall harvest and numerous frost tolerant plant choices like broccoli, beets, carrots, parsley and more. Proper timing combined with good preparation and sound plant choices will help you succeed in your gardening venture. Please bring $3 for handout to class and your gloves and shovel if you want to dig in!! (913-722-2628) email: zoelagrece AT yahoo.com