FamilyFarmed's Urban Ag Bus Tour

By popular demand, FamilyFarmed is running a late summer harvest Urban Ag Bus Tour! Hop on the bus and peek inside four of the leading farm sites, community programs, and sustainability incubators in Chicago and experience some of the most amazing urban agriculture projects in the nation.

The bus will pick up at the new Kitchfix location in the Gold Coast (1165 N State St.) and will travel to each of the four south side locations before returning. Muffins and coffee will be waiting for you at Kitchfix, and a small snack will be provided by one of our featured purveyors along the way.

Tour locations are as follows:

Windy City Harvest, a project of the Chicago Botanic Gardens, is a job training program that works with the City Colleges of Chicago to offer a certificate in Sustainable Horticulture and Urban Agriculture! We'll be touring their Legends Farm, a 2-plus acre site that serves as an incubator for six small farm businesses independently run by graduates of both the Apprenticeship program and Business and Entrepreneurship for Local Foods course. 

Growing Power is one of the best known urban agriculture organizations in the country. Their founder, Will Allen, won a MacArthur Genius Fellowship in 2008 for his work in Milwaukee. We’ll be visiting their awesome Iron Street Farm, where their Chicago operations are centered.

The Plant, located in Back of the Yards, is one of the most innovative and exciting urban farm and food projects in Chicago, or maybe in the country! Inside a former meat packing facility, you can find aquaponics, hydroponics, a mushroom farm, a shrimp farm, a bakery with a wood fired oven, a brewery, a Kombucha brewery, and more. The entire building is being re-purposed into a closed-loop system, with an anaerobic digester to convert food waste into energy! Tours of the building are run by Plant Chicago, NFP.

Growing Home is an innovative job training program for formerly homeless or incarcerated people. In 2013 they won an award for the Outstanding Community Strategy of the Year from the Chicago Community Trust. You can see where it all began at their Wood St. Farm!