Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Mobile Garden as Education: Clifford the Truck Farm”.
And i had a i had a basil sent to drive because there’s a lot of basil right by the cab, so it was very. It was very aroma therapeutic if that’s a word, my top speed’s, like 45 miles an hour. So i’m not i’m not doing 70 down down any kind of highway. I’M erica lykan, i’m part of growing hope, which is the group that we’re here with today today, we’re here with clifford the big red truck farm, we’re part of the kind of larger national truck farm movement. The way this particular project got started, a gentleman in new york uh had an extra truck and decided to plant within the truck and really kind of create it as a demonstration garden, and we at a similar time after he had started the program and was trying To encourage others to be involved got to the point where our old truck as you see back here, was going to be retired and we thought rather than scrap it or junk it or you know not have a go to good use. Why don’t we join this truck farm program? It’S about 40 square feet total it’s kind of the equivalent of a five foot by eight foot raised bed. It’S pretty raised off the ground here.
So it’s a very literal raised bed. We have some kale, some basil, eggplant, celery, lettuce, collards. Some tomatoes, as you can see, are completely drooping off of the off of the truck here and, in my opinion, the goal of the truck farm, especially for us as an organization.
It’S not necessarily to say, hey, everyone should get an extra truck and they should grow in it, because this is the most efficient way to grow we’re from ypsilanti, which is about 40 minutes west of detroit, and i think that uh we live in a community. You know there’s some folks that are lower income there and that’s a variety of income levels, but uh. What we try to do at growing hope, which is the nonprofit that you know clifford, is a part of is really turn our urban farm and everything we do into a demonstration. My own personal garden, for instance, is made with cinder blocks rather than wood, and so that’s you know it lasts a lot longer. It’S not going to deteriorate.
It’S also repurposed. I was able to buy those from someone who was not going to use them and i’m not like cutting down trees to make a bed. I you know i’m using what’s around, so i think, especially in the way that the economy is now that repurposing people are really interested in it, whether or not they have to uh. If you know economically, it’s, i think it’s interesting .