We’ve launched into month 6 at The Farm Proper, our mobile urban farm experiment at The Bakery.
What we’re harvesting: Aztec spinach, strawberries, wild arugula, pole beans, magenta lambsquarter, purple radishes, beets, kale, tatsoi.
The Farm Proper is an experimental project created by a collaborative of artists, designers, and backyard growers to inspire urban cultivation and pocket farms. Using abandoned/defunct shopping carts as our medium, we have designed a scenario to take over a temporarily available industrial lot to provide the community with organically grown food.
Our intention was to start a conversation and indeed it’s begun with some welcomed coverage via Fast Company and designboom of Milan, Italy.
Check in on the farm at Facebook or Flickr for an evolving set of photos. And don’t be a stranger – we’ve got some events planned for this summer at the farm. Sign up for updates here.
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In this story, these people (Farm Proper)are using stolen property. While they think the shopping carts are abandoned, they are in fact stolen from thier owners (the individual stores). This is covered by the California Shopping Cart law. These carts cost hundreds of dollars, and they should be returned to their owners.
Fox 5 does not need to encourage said theft of these shopping carts
As a retail manager, I am concerned about this farm. These “recycled” shopping carts are actually stolen property. They belong to the companies who spend millions of dollars in order to provide their customers easier shopping. The customers then repay the companies by walking their purchases home in a stolen cart. Or kids steal them right out of the shopping center to play on them for an hour and abandon and/or vandalize them. It would be a better use of time and energy to round up these carts and return them to their rightful owners, since the accumulated loss of them causes inflation of prices in order to cover cost of replacements. It would be a greater community service than sending out the message you have created. By creating this farm, you are encouraging people that it’s ok to disrespect someone elses property if they’re not the ones who stole it. Stolen property is stolen no matter how you use it.
It would be an even greater community service if you, the ones that have come to defend these stores, realized that these store only care about profit margins and loss prevention. The people that run the farm proper care about their neighborhood and their community. i have personally seen these shopping carts, and they have busted wheels, and are somewhat inoperable. Putting a broken piece to work for the better of a community is exactly what these stores should support, not looking to take back an item that someone else has found a very creative and beneficial use for! By the way, next time, instead of getting all huffy over watching the news, try going out and making the news!
I don’t know what you’re on, but neither of us got “all huffy”. We were both stating facts. It doesn’t matter what condition these carts are in. They are not the Farm Proper’s property to do with what they please. And by showing this on the news, Fox 5 has encouraged people to steal. The people who run this farm are theives. If they were smart, they’d approach the stores that own the carts and ask for donations. Because, despite what you think, the stores do care about more than profit margins and loss prevention and they make huge donations weekly. If you’ve ever worked in retail you’d know that. And if you haven’t then you’re speaking out of ignorance. So next time, instead of getting all huffy over comments that state facts, why don’t you shut your mouth about things you know nothing about.