Ten Reasons to Own a Backyard Farm

1. Locally Grown Food Tastes Better - You can taste the difference. Fresh food simply tastes better. As Julia Child put it, “You don’t have cook fancy or complicated masterpieces-just good food from fresh ingredients.”

2. Local Produce is Better for You - The fresher the produce, the more nutrients it retains. Food picked right from the ground and eaten will be healthier for you than food that has traveled thousands of miles just to sit at the market. Supermarket produce can spend up to fourteen days in transit.

3. Backyard Farms can Cost Less than the Supermarket - On average, a 4-person family spends around $60 a week on organic produce at the market. A backyard farm costs around 20% less for even fresher, chemical-free vegetables that haven’t been packaged and shipped from all over the world. Your farm will cost about the same as buying chemically-treated produce from the supermarket, except with exponentially greater benefits for the environment, community, and your health.

4.You Know Where your Food is Coming From - We use ethical, chemical-free techniques to keep your backyard flourishing. An average piece of food will touch at least 6 set of hands before reaching your table. Food from your yard is solely a relationship between you, your farmer, and the earth. With all the current health and food safety issues, the less hands touching your food the better.

5. Backyard Farms make a Lighter Carbon Footprint - On average, food travels 1,500 miles from the farm to your dinner table. Every calorie of food eaten requires ten times the fossil fuel to produce, distribute, travel, and refrigerate. Eating from your yard not only bypasses this energy waste but also reduces harmful emissions from the chemicals and pesticides used to accelerate plant growth and extend shelf life.

6. Local Foods have more Variety- In the modern industrial agricultural system, produce varieties are selected for their tough skin in order to survive packaging and shipping, and preserve longer. This limits the genetic diversity of plants being grown and sold at the market, eliminating our access to original flavors and overall freshness. Food from your yard isn’t limited by genetic selection, and allows for a wide variety of heirloom, micro, and a-typical vegetable varieties that taste distinctly different and fresher than what you can typically find at the supermarket.

7. Guaranteed Natural- Bio-engineered food can lose some of the natural antioxidants and nutrition that organic or naturally created produce will always contain. Industrially grown produce is often treated using chemicals that we then ingest. Your seeds will never be genetically modified, or produce treated with chemicals, as nature intended.

8. Support your Local Farmer! Shake his hand. Your relationship with your farmer is as direct as it gets. Open your back door and say hello…or help them harvest fresh food from your farm. Supporting Green City Growers will help create local jobs and allow us the means to give back to the community.

9. Backyard Farms Build a Stronger Community. Recipe exchanges, food drives, and a variety of community-based relationships will develop from owning a backyard farm. Donate excess veggies or create a produce exchange with your neighbors.

10. A Backyard Farm is an Investment in Your Future. Controlling your food source, learning from it, and teaching your children and neighbors how to be more self-sustainable is good for everyone involved. With a little work, sun, and water, your backyard farm will always produce food, a basic necessity, regardless of the economy.