Tilt

A few weeks ago Tilt decided to take over our neighbor’s lawn of weeds and transform it into an urban garden (with the property owners’ permission of course). After laboring many hours under the summer sun, pulling up roots, turning over dirt and nurturing the soil, we planted an assortment of fruits and veggies that are growing fast. The plants were purchased from local farmers at the market that takes place on Sunday mornings under the route 83 overpass.

Personal and urban farms have become increasingly popular during recent years. The “going green” phenomenon has caused Americans to begin questioning where their food comes from, whether or not it is organic, and how many miles it travels before it reaches the supermarket. In this era of global mass production and factory farming, food has become super efficient to produce in massive quantities, and plants have been engineered to yield the biggest and brightest fruits and vegetables. Not only this, but much of our food in America is imported from countries throughout the world. Have you ever wondered how you could possibly eat a pineapple in December?

As much as we all love eating Costa Rican pineapples in December, and buying gigantic juicy tomatoes from the supermarket, this practice isn’t very sustainable. It requires tons of fossil fuels to transport pineapples all the way from Costa Rica to your plate. Bill McKibben argues in his literary work titled Deep Economy that we need to move beyond economic growth and back towards a more local, community driven prosperity, which in turn will be a more sustainable economy. Our urban garden here at Tilt, is an effort to bring the community together and emphasize consuming local goods.