Garbage Hill Farm

 When asked what makes a good dancer, the master replied:

First to be a good dancer one must know the music as well as the dance. And what else?
To be a better dancer, one must understand the stories and be able to interpret the characters being portrayed.
Is there more?
The best dancer is the one who has all those things I have told you about and is also a farmer.

Javanese Proverb

Garbage Hill Farm is a small scale backyard artist-run urban farm on a post-industrial corridor serving Chicago’s McKinley Park neighborhood. The project models what is possible on a residential lot in an urban center.

Garbage Hill Farm is committed to food justice and sovereignty through increasing local food access with a focus on community sustained agriculture, redistribution of food to neighbors, and donating fresh produce to local food pantries. The farm cultivates a culture of community foraging and self-production through hosting a publicly accessible micro-orchard with fruit and nut trees, a public berry patch, free seed library, and self-harvest mutual aid garden.

Part of the mission of Garbage Hill Farm is to take on the responsibility of helping people to see beauty in garbage and diverting from the waste stream though creative re-use and permaculture. The farm’s name sake comes from my hometown’s Westview Park which was built upon a garbage dump and is lovingly known as "Garbage Hill".