POTATO PATCH PINGREE

[Jonesie]

DETROIT, MI. 1893:

A successful manufacturer of footwear, Pingree was urged by a committee of leading citizens to run for mayor against the corrupt political machine which dominated City Hall .

His first reply was: "I'm too busy making shoes."

But he did run, and the sketch showed a turning point of the campaign. That came in the Larned Street auditorium, where a mass meeting was packed by cohorts of the opposition. Pingree stood before a hostile mob for 90 minutes, refusing to be shouted down, and the machine's strong-arm tactics roused the city into a turnout at the polls that became a landslide victory for Pingree.

For many readers that day, the most poignant drawing of all was labeled "In Memoriam." It recalled the hard times of the l890's, when thousands in the city would have gone hungry except for the "Pingree potato patches" that provided food for the needy.

The winter of l893-94 was difficult. Because of the money panic of 1893, some of Detroit's biggest industries were forced to shut down. The railroad car shops and the stove factories were among them.

It was estimated that 25,000 workers were unemployed, in a city whose population was less than 250,000.

Pingree was the first American mayor to hit upon public works as a means of reducing unemployment. His projects helped, but when the hoped-for revival of business failed to come with the spring of 1894 and the city's poor funds were exhausted, something else was needed.

Pingree noted that, as a result of real estate speculation in the previous boom, plots of land held for a rise in value were standing idle all over town. He made a public appeal to the owners to permit the use of their properties for vegetable gardens.

Applications from the unemployed for garden plots poured in. To raise money to provide seeds and garden tools, Pingree asked for special collections in the churches. He put up his thoroughbred Kentucky saddle horse at auction and turned the proceeds over to the potato-patch fund.

After this start, owners of small parcels and single lots all over town came in by the hundreds. At a cost of a few thousand dollars for seeds and implements, food shortages were reduced to a minimum.

Mayor Pingree and Capt. Cornelius Gardener tour the famed Pingree potato patches which the mayor had planted in vacant lots all over the city during the panic of 1893, when 25,000 Detroit men were jobless.


The plan was widely heralded, and other cities took it up. "Potato Patch Pingree" became nationally known as a champion of the needy.

The garden plots were continued through 1895 and 1896, until the effects of the 1893 panic were over. Even then, the plan was not forgotten. Similar projects were developed in various countries during periods of unemployment.

TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE, GO TO:
"The Shoemaker Who Looked Like a King"

http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=175&category=people

There is no reason why "Potato Patches" or "Victory Gardens" cannot be started in cities during and after a Pandemic to help alleviate food shortages.
Has anyone seen any organized movement in this area? I haven't.
Detroit is once again loaded with empty parcels of land, as are many other large cities where urban decay is rampant. With a little boost from local garden clubs, city gardens can once again be developed on vacant lots.
Where are the Potato Patch Pingrees when we need them?

 

[LMonty]

Re: POTATO PATCH PINGREE

that was an interesting bit of history I never knew, thanks for sharing! and its one more proof of concept: community can be the answer to the main challenges that face us in pandemic or other crises. The recent predections Ive heard is that food costs are going to rise significantly in the near future, perhaps the day of the Victory Garden is about to return.

Got seeds?
.

 

[tropical]

Re: POTATO PATCH PINGREE

Got seeds?

Seeds seems o.k., but:
... until the effects of the 1893 panic were over.

it is not only panic, but infection to deal with, how many will be able to work the land under the infected air - try it with a mask...

 

[JJackson]

Re: POTATO PATCH PINGREE

In the UK prior to the enclosure act (187?) the poor could plant a few fruit and veg on any bit of common land. As this right was removed, to maintain the health of the work force, a system of low rent small patches of land was gradually introduced. These allotments became a lifeline to the poorly paid workers of the industrial revolution (worker housing was typified by rows of small terraced houses with a small yard but no garden). The system was eventually formalised and in 1918 about 1.5 million households (population at the time was ~36 million if average household was 3 people then over 10% had access to an allotments, plus those with a private garden). In WW II the number of allotments had fallen to about 1.25 million.
In more recent times, as wealth has improved and with access to fresh fruit and veg year round, the interest had fallen. Historical allotment sites have ended up inside urban areas as cites have sprawled, and the land which by statute is required to be charged based on what people could afford rather than commercial return, has become a tempting source of income for city councils as it often has very high value if sold with planning permission. Interest is now growing and there are often long waiting lists for allotments as people's concern in what has been done to commercially produced foods increased; allotments are now trendy and people are fighting attempts to sell off the land. There are now about 250,000 allotments with about 25 million households or about 1% of those households with access to an allotment.

http://www.allotment.org.uk/
The link is to an allotment site giving a host of useful information and photos

 

[deadandalive]

Re: POTATO PATCH PINGREE

Got seeds?
.[/QUOTE] yes gave up my allotment a couple of years ago but sure to return to growing soon, 20 years of organic gardening makes you an addict im feeling withdrals now on the theme of potatoes Desiree(pink skinned) is a favourite in the uk, firm cooker,a good frier and potato salad variety it also keeps well and gives large crops in the cold dark soils of the north:tiphat: oh fogot to mention it also has blight resistant foliage so is only half as likely to be infected as king edwards

 

[Jonesie]

Re: POTATO PATCH PINGREE

I searched, and Detroit again has urban farming programs. These organizations, in many cities nationwide, should be notified of the need to increase their plantings and encourage more people to begin planting vegetables and fruit trees. They also need pandemic preparation brochures to pass out to their members and neighbors.

Can Farming Take Root In Detroit?
By: Lisa M. Collins

August 2, 2005

In a sparsely populated area near a new single-family home development off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Westside Detroit, there is a cacophony of braying and neighing, quacking, smacking and buzzing.

In the midst of the low-income houses overlooking the freeway there sits a farm. At the farm grazes two horses, a pony, a host of fat and shiny hens and roosters, an aggressive sheep, fuzzy angora rabbits, some ducks and milk-producing goats. There’s a fruit orchard with a chicken run and bee hives near which roosters sit for shade. On the farm’s red barn sits a windmill installed by a Nobel Peace Center artist to provide energy. The farm produces honey, veggies, fruits, herbs, milk, eggs and the occasional science classes’ bloody dissection project.

It’s the farm of the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a public school for pregnant teens. And while it’s an unusual find in Detroit, it is not out of place.

Fields of purple wildflowers in wide-open tracts, pheasants flying over mounds of green shrubs, fish fries in outdoor lots, acres of urban lawns and gardens with corn, tomatoes, okra, cabbage, eggplant and squash, and quaint white houses with porches surrounded by fields — it all sounds like rural Alabama. But drive through sections of South and North, East and West Detroit and a lush urban prairie is what you will see.

Reliable statistics are hard to come by, but there are an estimated 40,000 vacant lots in Detroit, leftover land from the city’s mass exodus. With such open space, the question is immediate – what to do with it all? The sparsely-populated expanses can be viewed as land of endless opportunity or a great burden, expensive for the city to service and part of the reason the city is frighteningly low on cash. Enterprising Detroiters such as science teacher Paul Weertz at the Catherine Ferguson Farm have taken matters into their own hands, using open land as a farming resource. Brother Rick Samyn at the eastside Capuchin Soup Kitchen has created a working garden that provides education to neighborhood children and fresh fruits and vegetables at food stamp centers and soup kitchens. Why not?

Others benefit from buying houses surrounded by green space for a taste of country in the city. You can live 10 minutes from downtown in Detroit and grow pumpkins on your double lot, too.

Meanwhile, some in city government and elsewhere have floated ideas of relocating residents from sparse areas to denser ones in order to save Detroit on the tremendous cost of providing police, fire, water, sewer and the like in areas with few residents. Such a move would allow the city to beef up service to more densely populated areas, but would require politically-volatile condemnation programs. Public condemnations take place commonly for the construction of highways and manufacturing plants — former Mayor Dennis Archer threatened to condemn property for casinos that were never built on the riverfront. Nevertheless, re-organizing the city population using condemnation programs would become a political hot potato.

“We still think of ourselves as a city of a million-and-a-half people, and we haven’t made tough policy decisions about how to shrink the city and shrink services,” says city developer Colin Hubbell, who worked for Coleman Young and Dennis Archer before branching out on his own. Hubbell proposes to give some of Detroit’s land “back to God,” meaning a return to nature.

“When this area was settled it was wild and forested, and then there were farms, and I think there’s a great opportunity to give some of the land back to God, give some to urban farming and take some tracks off line. You don’t do it randomly, you could do some reforesting of native plants and let God take over. The periphery you maintain, you could do bike paths, create wetlands, green areas. It’s a huge issue. It’s a daunting issue. The reason no politician has wanted to tackle it to date, well every side has winners and losers. You’ll have the 80-year-old woman who’s been in her house forever and the plan to relocate her will, well, you can see the headlines. ‘The mayor wants to kick an 80-year-old woman into the streets.’ There has been talk in high-ranking places. But at the same time there’s a thought on when to make it public.​

“Sometime in the near future, people at the city, county and state level need to get their arms around it and figure out a strategy. The population is shrinking but the geography isn’t,” Hubbell says. “I’d rather be a great city of 700,000 people than a struggling city of 900,000. If we had 700,000 we’d still have more people than Atlanta and a lot of other cool cities that people travel to.”​

Other, less radical ideas have been floated. Detroit think tanks such as the Grace Lee Boggs Center and the University of Detroit-Mercy School of Architecture have talked about creating mass urban agricultural communes on stretches of unused land.

The Adamah project was born out of UD-Mercy. The idea is to create a cooperative and productive urban farm on sparsely-populated land on the eastside of Detroit, from the Detroit River to Interstate 94 near E. Grand Boulevard. Adamah envisions a working farm with co-op living and working arrangement to help tend greenhouses for veggies, fruits and flowers; a forest and lumber mill; cattle, grazing land and a dairy; a shrimp farm and other projects.

Even without such grand schemes, already in Detroit activists and community groups have developed a vibrant community gardening network as part of a worldwide trend. Urban activists across the globe have seen a great need for city gardens as a method of providing fresh, healthy food where it is otherwise too expensive or altogether unavailable.

Berlin and Vancouver boast vast urban gardening programs as attractions to their city. In greater Bangkok, 70 percent of urban families raise food, mostly part-time. In Moscow, the percentage of families raising food more than tripled between 1972 and 1992, from 20 percent to 65 percent.

In Detroit, the food options for inner city residents are to date, deplorable. Corner stores throughout the city offer not much more than canned, packaged, hydrogenated and processed foods and sugar drinks ¬– disease and obesity waiting to happen.

Unless you live in Southwest Detroit, where Latino markets offer abundant selections of fresh fruit, meat and vegetables, you might be out of luck for fresh foods in Detroit if you don’t have access to a car ¬– unless you have a community garden.

Some 80 community gardens are part of the Detroit Garden Resource Program, run by four groups: The Greening of Detroit, the Detroit Agricultural Network, Michigan State Extension, and Earthworks Gardens at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen.

To participate, families with individual gardens pay $10 a year and community groups pay $20. In return, they receive hundreds of dollars worth of vegetable plants and seeds, flowers, compost and other supplies. The garden program provides training and classes in urban gardening. Schools and churches and neighborhood groups have stepped up to participate.

Take the Rosary Community Garden run by Sister Joan Baustian just off Woodward Avenue. The nun operates the garden with the help of a group of neighborhood kids and provides enough fresh vegetables to feed six neighborhood families.

“It feeds quite a lot of people,” Baustian says.

The garden is a tremendous resource for Terri Reese, a 50-year-old woman who works the garden every day. Reese carries a worn puppy stuffed animal with her wherever she goes, and talks to it while she gardens.

“I’m from Nashville, Tenn., a big family. That’s how we ate. I can’t just see a weed. I have to pull it,” Reese says.

With no grocery store in walking distance, the garden provides eggplant, mustard greens, tomatoes and a host of other veggies.

Then there’s the community garden at John R and Alger Street. The bucolic garden-scape sits on what used to be an abandoned lot and dumping site, says Ashley Atkinson, program director for The Greening of Detroit. When prostitutes started using the lot to turn tricks, the community decided to put a stop to it. They called the Garden Resource Program and now the lot is a garden replete with a stone pathway and benches, flowers and shrubs in a tidy landscape pattern. Neighbors maintain the garden and a community.

On a recent sunny day the neighborhood cat wandered among the flowers chasing a butterfly and four neighborhood teens came to talk about the garden.

“We be here sometimes chillin’ with our lady friends,” says Rodrick Grant, 19. “We play our part in keeping it up.”

Atkinson and Lindsay Turpin, the Garden Resource Program coordinator, say the benefits of urban gardening are vast. Not only does it provide fresh, healthy food, but it beautifies communities and raises property values, as well as provides opportunity for inter-generational contact. Older people from down South take immediately to community gardens, as do younger kids, Turpin says. And it’s a quality of life issue.

“Look at the lot at Alger,” Atkinson says. “You can either have a lot that takes your property values down the wrong road, a dumping site, or you can spend $10,000 on it over 10 years and increase your values significantly.”

“It’s a key element to building community, having a place where people can interact and meet their neighbors,” Turpin says.

The garden resource program not only provides gardeners in its program with everything they need to start a productive garden, but offers training and volunteer opportunities. The program gives out hundreds of dollars of supplies in return for $10 to $20 to join and attending one session annually.

“Getting people to come to the potlucks and work days and to volunteer in the gardens, that’s very important,” Turpin says. “Making the gardens successful and sustainable, you can’t do that by giving out seed packets.”

aatkinso@umich.edu.

For more info visit Greening of Detroit at www.greeningofdetroit.com

Visit the Boggs Center at www.boggscenter.org

You Can Contact The Greening of Detroit in Three Easy Ways!

1) The old fashioned way - come see us:

The Greening of Detroit
1418 Michigan Avenue
Detroit, MI 48216

The Greening of Detroit is located in dowtown Detroit on the north side of Michigan Avenue, just one block east of the old Tiger Stadium.

Greening of Detroit Business Hours: Monday to Friday 8:30-5:00 EST

2) Call, Fax, or eMail us:

Phone: 313.237.8733
Fax: 313.237.8737
Email: info@greeningofdetroit.com


TO SEE THE COMPLETE ARTICLE, WITH PHOTOS, GO TO:

http://www.modeldmedia.com/features/urbanag.aspx