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URBAN FARMING SCHOOL IN BREMERTON

Last modified on 2009-07-24 21:14:57 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

Glenn Huff and Jean Schanen

StartNow Corporation, home of StartNow Gardens located at 1134 Bloomington Ave. in Bremerton announces the formation of the StartNow Urban Farming School, to undertake operation in September, 2009.  The school will teach every aspect of urban farming, from garden bed siting and construction to marketing the harvest, and will include a community outreach program to build a food gardening presence across the city..  Glenn Huff and Jean Schanen, with 25 years of experience in market gardening, will head up the school, and other local farmers will participate in instruction and hands-on learning experiences.
The school will accommodate students living on the farm site, which will include at least three adjoining city properties, as well as commercial space for instruction, office, and community outreach.
We are seeking student applicants for four start-up positions, beginning in September of this year.  These students will receive a tuition waiver in exchange for work developing the site.
Those interested can submit resumes to Jean Schanen, 1134 Bloomington Ave. Bremerton  WA  98312, call (360) 475-9153, or email jscha@speakeasy.net

Urban Farming – Start Now

Last modified on 2009-06-25 22:48:56 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

If you strolled along the little side street of Bloomington Avenue off 11th in West Bremerton, you might not believe your eyes if you came upon the house and yard of Glenn Huff and Jean Schanen.

Urban Farmers Glenn Huff and Jean Schanen

Everywhere you look, something is growing, blossoming, or fruiting.  An amazing plethora of fruit, vegetables, flowers, and plants are found everywhere…including up on three levels of rooftops!  The couple’s farming enterprise, called Start Now, is a living tribute to urban gardening using only organic farming methods.

But their gardening origins were originally planted elsewhere.  Huff’s mother was widowed in Kansas with five children when he was two so she supported her family by raising and selling vegetables from her garden.  Little Glenn helped out by pulling his coaster wagon around hawking her produce.  Following service in the Navy and a civil engineering degree at Kansas State University, he worked for the State of Alaska designing and rebuilding roads, and then became a land developer in the Matanuska Valley.

Glenn Huff, Outstanding in His "Field"

Schanen also had gardening roots in her home town of Cincinnati Ohio where she grew vegetables as a toddler in her family’s victory garden. After obtaining an undergraduate degree in social science she went to the Washington University School of Law in St Louis. She migrated to Washington State, took the bar exam and on a whim, went to Alaska while awaiting the results.

Jean Schannen, "Up On The Roof"

Here, the star-crossed couple met in 1979 in what would evolve into a life-changing course for both.  Their first venture in farming began that year when they went to Belize to embark on a citrus farm project on about 750 acres of 8,000 acres of land that had been deemed worthless by the clear-cutting of mahogany trees. With some earth moving, fertilizer enhancement, and research into organic agriculture solutions, the couple was able to replace sand with fertile soil and bring about thriving sustainable crops of 30 varieties of citrus trees, guava, mango and other fruit trees on their farm, called “Parrot Hill”. Part of their work involved composting organic waste from citrus, sugar and fish processing industries.  It also became a teaching center for some of the techniques that Huff and Schanen pioneered.

mmm urban cherries

mmm urban strawberries

The ecological significance of their research and work here and later on led to the eventual formation of “Start Now”, a non-profit corporation formed for the purpose of teaching about establishing commercial projects that would enhance the earth, rather than detract from it.

Turning Back The Meter

But 13 years later in 1993, Huff and Schanen  sold Parrot Hill and started on a new project in an entirely different climate – they bought a small farm in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Here they found 57 acres of land that had been diminished by relentless rotation of corn soybeans, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  With far less rain and a hard winter, the challenges posed a different set of problems but again, using organic principles with readily obtainable items such as composted turkey manure, they were able to turn the land around as well as adding a solar greenhouse made from hay bales, the first such building in the state. Crops flourished and the couple also ran a restaurant on the farm specializing in vegetables and soups that emphasized direct field to customer consumption.

In 2003 the couple once again decided to embark on yet another new farming venture so they moved to Bremerton to be near Jean’s two children and start their urban farm.  Here they’ve created 19 solar panels for energy, a small green house for tomatoes, and will have more than 200 pints of succulent strawberries emerging from raised bed boxes as well as more than 2,000 heads of lettuce, 250 plants of basil, 125 half-pints of raspberries,  400 zucchinis, plus peas, fava beans, okra,  corn, melons, asparagus apricots and numerous other crops.  This amazing array of crops using organic principles is planted on their rooftop, a 60 by 100 foot garden space in their yard plus a 51 by 50 space their neighbor allows them to use.

Start Now fruit and vegetables are available at the Bremerton Farmers Market but Huff and Schanen feel very strongly about people growing their own food too.

“Get started growing your own food now…before you have to,” says Schanen.

Schanen and Huff  are sponsoring the excellent movie “Fresh” that will be shown at the next KCAA meeting on July 14 at 7 p.m. at the Norm Dicks Center in downtown Bremerton. For more information about their projects go to their web site at: www.startnow.org