As the recession's double-whammy of skyrocketing food prices and massive job losses raises the threat of hunger for thousands of city families, urban mini-farms from the Southwark Queen Village Community Garden to Las Parcelas, in Norris Square, put organic vegetables on many tables and donate their surpluses to keep overburdened church food cupboards from going bare.
Like Mill Creek Farm, most of these urban vegetable gardens were carved out of city blocks where houses once stood.
The houses that once stood on 49th Street near Brown were built on unstable fill.
Decades ago, an underground creek slowly swallowed the fill. Foundations cracked. Sinking houses were abandoned, then demolished. Weeds and trash took over. Years went by.
Hard rains flooded the land. Mill Creek overflowed the storm sewers, carrying urban contaminants into the Schuylkill.
The Philadelphia Water Department leased the abandoned Mill Creek lot from the city's Redevelopment Authority in 2003 for a storm-water management project. "We were in the right place at the right time," Rosen said of herself and gardening colleague Walker.
But a cloud of uncertainty looms on the horizon.
The land is still owned by the Redevelopment Authority, so it is always at risk for development. The authority's 99-year lease with the water department can be terminated at any time with 90 days' notice.
Rosen and Walker are hoping that the authority will transfer the title to the Neighborhood Gardens Association, a land bank that would protect it as green space and assure that it can continue as a farm vital to feeding its neighbors.
