[Jon] Where does our food come from was a real question that we had in our office
12 years ago actually and it was a serious concern because we had people
very interested in how food was produced, where does it come from.
The Urban Farming Institute really is a platform for as many growing technologies and capabilities
as we can fit on this piece of land that the City of Oakland Park allows us to use. When we
first started this idea we thought it was going to be a lot of fun. It was going to be, gee whiz,
it was going to be barbecue and beer on a Saturday afternoon and everybody's going to show up and
you know it'll be just a big deal. Well, we found that that was not the case. The people that were
coming to us were: where does my food come from, how do I grow it, how do I grow it more effectively. I
have limitations. I have a balcony. My mobility is not quite what it needs to be. Can you help me out?
And that led us then to building 65 raised bed gardens and as well as elevated gardens for
people who have mobility issues and people then who have no issues at all and just want to learn
how to garden. And every Saturday, we do a talk at 10, which is a free, open-to-the-public class on
techniques of gardening, so today is Gardening by the Numbers. What is the economic advantage of
growing food in an urban setting and can you do it successfully?
We're really fortunate today to have Sally Smollar here from Plumosa School of the Arts. Say hello to Sally! [Applause]
[Sally] Urban farming Institute has helped me in many ways. So I'm the librarian at Plumosa School of
the Arts. I also have a Garden Club. In my garden club, we have nine raised beds and I teach the
children from seed to harvest how to grow and enjoy healthy nutritious produce. When I come
here, I know everything I'm learning is true tested. There's no guesswork involved and I know that the
products that I buy here are better than anything I can get in the big box stores so I buy my seeds
here, I buy my supplements here, I buy my soils here and I just know that everything is going
to work out just you know the way it should.
It's really an important sort of thing to realize that there are resources available locally, where high
quality nutritious food can be found below the cost of what you're going to find in your favorite shopping location and
why not reach out and take advantage and understand that this is something that for sure you can do. Our training here is free.
Today we'll have a student with us Vicky Abraham, who's finishing her graduate program, and we'll
have Chef Pat Quinn, who cooks for some of the NFL guys, and they will be here to demonstrate
how you can take very simple product and from your garden and produce really dynamic, beautiful,
highly nutritious product because you know that the product has been minutes away from the kitchen
as opposed to something that's been on a truck and in a distribution warehouse for, who knows, maybe
a week or more. So while we like the fun and frolic of growing, we understand that there is also
an academic requirement that comes along with being able to reinforce the fun. We reinforce it
with the opportunity of having our farmers, our growers, our community interact with professionals
in the world of high-level nutrition.
Hi, my name is Vicky Abraham. I'm a graduate student dietitian at the Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine,
Master of Science and Nutrition. Something that my program developed a relationship with UFI, Urban Farming Institute, is
they are hosting as a preceptor so last semester I was able to intern here and develop recipe cards,
work with the Community Supported Agriculture and do many more things here at the garden.
And one thing that I strongly believe in is that food is medicine and I see that strongly practiced
here at Urban Farming Institute so that's one of the reasons why I keep coming back.
I also am a master's student with NSU and we bring in other research students from NSU to
different environmental programs here. We're going to be starting up an orchid project
and then we're also doing an oyster project, which is part of my master's program with NSU.
Without UFI and the property and infrastructure we have available, it'd be difficult for research
students to start the process because it's very time-consuming to collect all the materials and
equipment and this allows for us to have a nice space to conduct that research
One of the important projects that we have here is the Kids' Garden and we realize that if we don't get
kids with an understanding at an early age, they're never going to get it. So we involve
not only the child but also the parent and so it's an 11-week program. It started with art,
Art in the Garden and you can see some of the art on the domes. Today is going to be the
activities, the Shapes of Nature and how they relate to what goes on in the garden.
I was so drawn to this place. I walked through the magic door so to speak as Jon would call it
and the Urban Farming Institute means so much to me as a mother. I'm really looking forward to
learning more about nutrition, especially for my children, and so that's one of the reasons why
I come here all the time because I want to learn how to grow nutritious food for my family.
[Elizabeth] Now as people come in here, they really learn about how to reduce their footprint
and that is so important these days because we know our climate is changing and it's really
important for people to learn how easy it is to make small changes in their everyday life,
from growing nutritious food from using the right things in their garden so it doesn't
harm our environment and our ocean. And in those small changes can have a really big
impact so we start locally with our community but we have wide-ranging impacts globally.
[Jon] We want to branch out. We want to be able to take what we do here and move it into
backyards so that people have, though they may never come here, they still have the resources
available to them that we practice and develop here at the Urban Farming Institute.