This looks like 2010, right before I really had anything up there when I bought the property in 2010, I immediately went outside to start building the gardens. You know, the whole reason why I did this urban farm was because I knew that the system died in 2008. And I also knew that the single most important or the biggest problem for people was food. So I got rid of my little two bedroom condo, and I bought this property. And then I started to really grow food. And I didn’t know what I was doing at all. I had a huge learning curve.
TRANSCRIPT FROM VIDEO:
What can you do on a 1/2 of land? Let me show you because that’s all I have on my Urban Farm in Phoenix. And my goal initially was to create enough food, to feed 20 people, but that expanded. And now I think that I could easily create enough food to feed, maybe at least 100 people all on a half acre, right in the middle of the city.
Do you think that the world is headed in a direction that makes you a bit concerned for the future. And you’d like to be as self-sufficient and independent as possible, then you’ve come to the right place. My name is Lynette Zang. Now it’s time to go Beyond Gold and Silver.
This looks like 2010, right before I really had anything up there when I bought the property in 2010, I immediately went outside to start building the gardens. You know, the whole reason why I did this urban farm was because I knew that the system died in 2008. And I also knew that the single most important or the biggest problem for people was food. So I got rid of my little two bedroom condo, and I bought this property. And then I started to really grow food. And I didn’t know what I was doing at all. I had a huge learning curve. Trying to put in a fountain in the front. And here’s the thing. A lot of times what happens with people is they start going in a direction and it’s not the right direction, but they feel like they’ve already started going in there. So they keep going I’m telling you that big, huge found thing in the middle. I stopped it. This is the fountain that you’re looking at. And I just waited until the right person came along and I had the right thing. Yeah, a guy tried to tell me…I don’t wanna pool in my front yard but I did want a pond and I did need to correct that walkway. And you know, what you’re really looking at here is a combination of food for the stomach that looks like 2010 food for the stomach as well as food for the eyes and started taking out the lawn, which was a huge project that took quite some time to actually do so that I could put in food trees.
I mean, when you stop and think about it you know, we spend all of this time and money and everything on water, but we’re watering grass that you can’t eat. And a lot of people put in ornamental trees and spend all that time and money and energy on water, but it doesn’t produce food. So you’re spending all of this time and money and energy, and then going to the grocery store and buying subpar food. Why not just grow it? Why not just put in these beautiful trees, which by the way in Arizona with all of the heat that helps cool down the property, but I can go out. And when it’s peach season, I can pick a peach. I can pick a pomegranate. I can feed myself. And from this property alone right now I’m probably eating easily 85 to 90% of my food from this property.
If I needed to be a hundred percent, I could absolutely do it, but not one wasted space, hopefully not one wasted drop of water. So it feeds the eyes. It feeds the soul. And I can’t tell you, my favorite part of this property is that there is life on every square inch of it, whether it’s in the gardens or it’s back in the ponds or it’s in the chicken yard. So I took basically a dead piece of property and I just brought life into it. And that life feeds me, sustains me, makes me happy and joyous. I mean, think about it. I’m constantly researching nasty, nasty stuff. Well, if I live my life in this nasty stuff, I’m miserable and I’m unhappy. So what I get to do is walk out my door when I’m dealing with all this nasty stuff and then go into something that’s beautiful and nurturing.
I mean, sugar cane, I have both light and red sugar cane on the property. I have moringa and we let that go to seed so I can make oil. So I have my sugar and I have my oil. I have my fruits, there’s pomegranates, plums peaches. And when I was designing and thinking about this, what I realized is that I wanted to have something that was ready for me to eat. There’s the marina hedge. That’s probably my very favorite cause you could live on that. It’s so dense, but I wanted to have something that was mature and edible every single month out of the year. It’s an advantage that we have in Phoenix that it’s harder in the summer because it’s so hot, but we do have a 12 month grow season. What you just saw that little patch where the moringa seeds to begin with, it took about two weeks for them to sprout. And it didn’t take very long to create a fabulous hedge. We trim it back in the winter so that it gets all full there’s. The little hedge. You can see it right there. Put in in 2013 and it did not take very long for it to become a full size hedge. And I did hedges around the entire property so that if somebody is walking by and they are hungry, they can pick some moringa. Not that they would know what that is, but they could pick a plum. They could pick a peach, you know, they, they could pick food. So as we move forward, because who knows when there’s gonna be a serious breakdown, what we know right now. And as we experienced in March of 2020, you know, you couldn’t get a lot of food. Did it impact me? Heck no, I’m walking through the gardens going, thank God I did this because I even get to share with people.
You know, we have to think about these things because even so like when I went to the grocery store a couple weeks ago, there were things in the front. And then when I pulled the package down to buy it, there was nothing in the back. So they make it look like the shelves aren’t barren, but they are, we’re having issues with food. Do you want to have issues with food? No. So I grew a garden. It’s why I bought this property so that I could make sure to feed my family and myself. And I took what was dead earth fallow. And I put in these wonderful gardens and started to learn how to do it. You know, sometimes I have failures for sure. I mean, I was not a gardener when I started this, but what I knew is that I wanted to feed my family. I’m pretty sure you wanna feed your family too and yourself as well.
