Building community and learning together to grow food where we live

Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farms

Ways to Get Involved

If you're new to UP -
...fill out the short sign up form here to let us know you're interested in learning more and receiving our bi-monthly email and events listings.

To see what days we're in the field or at events -
...check out the Calendar where you can sign up directly for an event.

Help coordinate a new farm in your area -
...by contacting us through the Instant Sign Up Form so that we can help you start a Community Conversation in your neighborhood.

Donate materials, sponsor a project, or help financially -
...by contacting our director at paige @ urbanpatchwork.org.

A PROBLEM WORTH SOLVING

By Kate Clabby, Daily Texan Columnist

[exerpt]..If we want to encourage urban farming, we should find a way to make it more feasible by offering farmers fair water prices that reflect the way that they actually use water…[end exerpt]

In the city of Austin, you pay for most of the water you use twice: once when it comes into your house and once when it goes out. Your water bill covers the costs of extracting water from Lake Austin or Town Lake, filtering it and treating until it is clean enough to drink and delivering it to your home. Your wastewater bill covers the costs of cleaning the water you’ve used and getting it up to EPA standards before it is released back into the Colorado River. Since wastewater is much dirtier than lake water, wastewater treatment costs the Austin Water Utility more than drinking water treatment. Consequently, most people find that their wastewater bills are higher than their water bills.

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Our “In the News” page is changing. In the future the most recent news will be featured here, and older news will be archived on the “In the News” page on the site.

30 November, 2010

COMMUNITY GARDENS IN PRIVATE BACKYARDS

Austin, TX

An Austin organization is taking a new approach to community farming.

Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farms is opening community gardens not in empty lots, but in people’s back yards. They’ve opened about ten since they got started in mid-2009.

KUT’s Nathan Bernier talked to Paige Hill with Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farms.

Listen to their conversation by clicking here.

— Nathan Bernier

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23 November, 2010

Community gardens sprouting up in yards

New organization brings farming to city

Updated: Tuesday, 23 Nov 2010, 5:33 AM CST
Published : Tuesday, 23 Nov 2010, 5:15 AM CST

Click here to read the story on the KXAN website

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01 September, 2010

july_sustainable3THUMB

Tribeza – Sustainable Styles

Photography by Kenny Braun

Paige Hill, Founder, Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farms

All my life I have had an innate connection with nature and an awareness of how impossible it is for humanity to dominate it or separate from it, no matter how hard we try. My hope is that we stop trying.

We envision all of Austin covered in a network of community-focused neighborhood farms that everyone considers as an abundant primary food source. In this future, the power of community and a collective dedication to everyone having access to healthy, safe, affordable food is the answer to our current failing food systems. read more…

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11 August, 2010

P4138084

Farmer’s Blog (Flog?): Keith McDorman with Urban Patchwork

Keith and I met at Johnson’s Backyard Garden when Travis and I started as interns. Keith was halfway through his internship. He had come back to the States after a stint in Jamaica with the Peace Corps. He was then and he remains one of the most dedicated, hardworking people I’ve met.

I grew up in the countless miles of suburbs that surround Los Angeles. In that place I learned that food comes from grocery stores. The cows down the street (Chino’s once lucrative dairy industry) simply gave our city its reputation – an olfactory impression that wafted to the wrinkled noses of our closest neighbors. It was a city of CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and I learned absolutely nothing about them, save for the fact that they smelled horrid and brought with them a pestilence of flies every summer….

Click here to read more at “Dissertation to Dirt”

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