The Promise and Challenge of Urban Gardening in Detroit
From rare peppers to blight tickets, one Detroiter spent decades growing a healthier self and city. Here’s why he might move on.
Final story in “The Healing Soil: Detroit’s Urban Farms,” a three-part series
By Koby Levin
Outlier Media
November 18, 2024
Excerpt:
Rufino Vargas walked along the border of his greenhouse, on the westside of Detroit this summer, collecting chili peppers.
He stooped to point out a red one whose seeds he had ordered from Peru. Another, the chilaca, is from Guerrero, the Mexican state where he was raised. Some are especially spicy, others have an extra helping of healthy amino acids. He knows them all — all 60-plus varieties — by sight and taste. “Four of these and one tomato — that’s a recipe for a very good salsa,” he says, pointing to a knee-high plant heavy with dark-green chilis.
Ortega Urban Farms, which Vargas built from scratch over two decades on a pair of vacant lots, is a labor of love rooted in his rural childhood, where agricultural techniques were part of the family lore. Agriculture “is what keeps me alive, it’s my passion,” he says, speaking in Spanish.
Like some other gardeners throughout Detroit, Vargas credits his good health, at 59, to the farm — to the healthy food it gave him, and the emotional and physical benefits of working the land.
Still, this fall’s harvest may be his last in Detroit. Vargas plans to move to the west side of Michigan after the farm was hit with thousands of dollars in blight tickets from the City of Detroit. A friend has property near Lake Michigan where Vargas could farm and run a restaurant.
Read the complete article here.
Source: https://cityfarmer.info/the-promise-and-challenge-of-urban-gardening-in-detroit/
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