Steelview Farms, Part 1: Stealing Back Stolen Land for Farming

I found a gem today, in an old phone memory card of mine, or rather many gems. The photos featured in this article and the one to follow in this series are all I have left from my first attempt at an urban permaculture farm in Cleveland.  We called it Steelview Farms, due to close proximity to Steel Mills as Cleveland is a huge steel producer.   The other reasoning was that we were farming stolen land.

This land was stolen from the people of Cleveland in many ways, usually from fines too high to pay.  Houses are bought, bulldozed and the lots are left empty all over the city, unused.

You can apply for permission to use them, but you have to jump through an amazing amount of bullshit just to be able to farm land that's already stolen and currently unused.  So we took these lots, covered them in hay bales and planted them and went nuts.

What happened was amazing and astounds me to this day.  Finding these pictures has made my heart smile, for lack of a better term.  The photo above are of potato plants I grew there, when that was still so easy.

I grew everything I could get my hands on, some of it well, like these Tigers Eye sunflowers, some of it not so well. 

I've mentioned these before, here are the legendary lemon cucumbers I grew back in Cleveland.  

This is one of the first kohlrabi I ever grew, although I can't say that I've grown that many. This one made me a believer. 

I call this the fuck you pepper and it earned it's title.  It was kicked repeatedly, on accident as a seedling. I'm pretty sure my dog at the time knocked it down repeatedly. For whatever reason it gave no cares.  I babied it and it produced more weight than any of the other peppers despite the abuse. 

One thing I grew a lot of was marigolds, and it's something I intend to start growing here very soon.  They're prolific and easy to grow, not to mention the fact that there is a wild variety here in Acapulco.

In my recent 3 sisters article, I shared that I had great success with the garden and now here's my proof.  We placed tires in a row, filled them with good dirt and planted plants.  Kept em watered and they looked like this by the end of it. 

(cayenne)

I grew so much that it's worth spreading this out over a few posts.  I'm currently in vacation in Puerto Escondido, so once I get home I'll write a lot more in detail.  For this post, I'll wrap it up as I feel it's a great introduction to the adventure that was Steelview Farms.

Thanks for reading and supporting, until next time!