One of the great things when you are starting a business is researching the market. Endless hours spent surfing the web is wonderful when you are looking at small farms, youth led food movements and of course, urban farming. That how we discovered Alleycat Acres. There is no better way to describe what Alleycat Acres is about than to use their own words.
Alleycat Acres exists to (re)connect people, place + produce through transforming underutilized urban space and creating a network of neighborhood run farms. In other words, we make farms happen.
According to their website, Sean, Scott and Kate started AA (Alleycat Acres) around 2009 in the Seattle, WA area. They have some other great folks with them now. Alleycat refers to a bike race and we all know where acres comes from. Needless to say, it’s a great name for an urban farm run in the cooperative way. They like to think of themselves as community driven, socially charged and bike driven.
I’m particularly impressed with this clump of dirt from their website.
- Harvests are split between anyone who works on the farm and community partners. Volunteers opt to take some home with them, donate their share, or both. It’s all up to the individual and their immediate needs.
- We don’t require minimum service hours to get a share of food. Nor, for that matter, do we decide what a share consists of. That is all decided by anyone present the day of harvesting.
From where we stand, it seems like a totally cool group of people doing themselves, others and the world a bit of good.