Good Story... Where do i get a shirt that says "Who's your farmer" Love it!! :)
Susan
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/07/29/farmer_red.html
'Farmer Red's' Atlanta farm endangered
By BRIAN FEAGANS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/30/08
Brian "Red" Harrison hated the thought of selling five acres he'd so carefully pieced together behind his Ormewood Park home. But the taxes were killing him.
Then, eight years ago, Harrison had a seemingly crazy idea, one that would slash his taxes and allow him to keep the cherished green space.
He would become a farmer. In Atlanta.
Today Harrison owns what, according to tax rolls, is the city's only vegetable farm. He cultivates some of the land himself, leases other pieces to organic growers and opens up the rest to neighbors. It's like an unofficial park, where folks can picnic, walk their dog or learn how to grow vegetables.
There's just one problem. The laid-back Harrison, 40, grew up in less-than-rural Stone Mountain and, as an adult, has held a series of restaurant jobs. In his first go at farming, he's spread his crops — and his investments — a little thin.
Now he and concerned neighbors find themselves embroiled in a new version of an old saga. They're trying to save the farm — with a skyscraper view.
Things got off to such a promising start, Harrison explains from a weedy patch of eggplants and tomatoes. He planted Christmas trees. And after successfully clearing kudzu from much of the land, he began growing vegetables and blueberries, too. He took classes on organic farming and added a beehive.
Thursdays found him driving a vintage red tractor through Ormewood Park, across Moreland Avenue and into East Atlanta for the farmers market. Sporting denim overalls and a red beard, Harrison seemed the perfect answer to the bumper stickers on his 1953 Farmall. They read "Keep East Atlanta Weird" and "Who's Your Farmer?"
Harrison had joined a trend in urban farming, where food is grown closer to the people who eat it. Just on the other side of East Atlanta, in unincorporated DeKalb County, the five-acre Gaia Gardens supplies organic produce to the East Lake Commons neighborhood. And small-scale growers from East Point to Chamblee sell their bounty inside the Perimeter, too.
But Harrison was one of only two vegetable growers in the city of Atlanta to make use of a Georgia law meant to protect farms in the path of development (the other, off Howell Mill Road, says his farm has been reduced to a garden). Instead of forking out more than $6,000 in property taxes on the undeveloped five acres, he pays roughly $100. In exchange, Harrison has to farm the land for 10 years. Not doing so comes with a heavy penalty: double the taxes saved.
Burt Manning, the county's new chief appraiser, was dubious from the moment he learned of the agriculture designation in 2006. "I said, 'You can't have a farm in the middle of the city of Atlanta. This has to be some developer trying to keep from paying their taxes.'"
But after walking the property, Manning was convinced. There were beans amid the bungalows.
Harrison, meanwhile, saw his nickname go from "Red" to "Farmer Red." His thumbs were more stubborn, however. They wouldn't turn green.
"I planted 100 blueberry bushes," Harrison says, staring at a row of brown shrivel. "Fifty or 60 made it."
The Christmas trees fared even worse. "Some died naturally," Harrison says. "I ran over a few. Some I sprayed with the kudzu killer by accident."
And the bees? "They got sick and died off," Harrison says. "Twice."
Harrison changed directions last year and began leasing out the best land, much to the delight of Ken and Mary Lovell. The couple moved to Atlanta from Alabama three years ago and began scouring the area around their Grant Park home for a place to grow black-eyed peas, corn and heirloom rattlesnake green beans. At first they found nothing.
"Then God sent Red," Mary Lovell says as she and her husband pull potato plants from the rich soil.
Here, the Lovells have established a teaching garden for friends and neighbors. It's fertilized with manure from the city's police horses and nurtured with the couple's lifelong passion for growing vegetables.
"This is so unique," says Ken Lovell, an engineer by day. "It would be such a travesty for it not to be maintained."
But that fear has hit neighbors such as Lara Catledge, who, on this evening, helps the Lovells clear a row for peas. Her dog, Coco, runs free.
"I live next to an organic farm," Catledge says. "My friends say you must be the luckiest duck. Every time I see a developer go by and look at the land, I say, 'No, please don't.'"
A handmade sign in the distance hints at hard times. It reads "NEEDED: Sponsors, Grants, Donations, Loans."
While farming, Harrison has racked up credit-card debt. He couldn't keep up with mortgage payments on two rental homes and lost them to foreclosure. This summer, he took a 9-to-5 job restoring tombstones in sections of Oakland Cemetery damaged by a March tornado.
That has left less time for watering and weeding. The red tractor hasn't been making its regular trips to East Atlanta. The battery is dead. The red beard is gone, too. Harrison shaved.
Even so, there are signs of hope. Neighbors and friends held a hootenanny fund-raiser for Harrison earlier this summer. And the leased plots are flourishing, from the Lovells' sky-high corn to Emeka Okona's poblano peppers. A beekeeper has even brought the buzz back, to the tune of seven hives.
Harrison plans to put the land under conservation easements that, should he be forced to sell, would prevent development. But he's hoping it won't come to that.
"If I can get caught up with all the bills," he says, "maybe I can be full time again."
Harrison isn't the perfect farmer. Nor is Atlanta the perfect farmland. But in that way, they make a good fit, like that nickname, Farmer Red.
