Project Overview:

Our aim is to convert an abandoned house in Detroit into a community house.  We will also make use of the empty field across from the house and convert it into a community garden and free food forest.  The house will serve as a place for interfaith and non-religious meetings, classes, events and community dinners.  The front portion of the 4 acre field will be used for vegetable gardens and greenhouses and fruit trees, while the back portion that abuts the Rouge River will be returned to native habitat for the extensive wildlife that lives there. 

Our Goals:

  Our goals are to make a sustainable food source for people in the neighborhood and to empower others, through education and hands on learning, to reinvent their relationship with their food.  The gardens and greenhouses will be open to everyone in the neighborhood and the house will be available for neighbors to come and teach classes, host meetings or have workshops.  We will be making every step of the process a learning event.  From planting seeds, to installing rain barrels for watering.  We will be offering classes for people in the neighborhood and surrounding areas to learn about how to make an existing building more “green”.  We will also be offering classes, open to everyone, about environmentally friendly gardening.  We will be guided by the ideas of Permaculture, in our garden and house design.  (Permaculture is a technique employed in agriculture that makes use of of the “waste” of every system in place.  i.e. the water from your sink, waters your garden.)  We hope to bring food growing into the open and into the neighborhood and to foster community engagement.  

The fruit trees that we grow will comprise our “Free Food Forest”.  The idea of a free food forest is to allow any member of the community, especially those who may be insecure in their food needs, to come gather food when they need it.  As various fruits become ripe, people will be able to come and pick their own healthy, organic fruit.  This allows people to become an active participant in their food consumption and develop a deeper relationship with the land from which their food comes.

   By making this 4 acre plot of land a place of community engagement, it will hopefully revive our responsibility towards caring for our public spaces.  Right now, it is a dark vacant corner that is often the target for dumping trash and debris.  By turning this large swath of land into an area that is loved and cared for, its effects should ripple out beyond its borders and have an upturn in the entire surrounding area.  

   The back half of the 4 acre plot, which abuts the Rouge River will be returned to native species so that the many types of wildlife can continue to thrive there.  That area is home to several families of Deer, wild turkeys, beavers, groundhogs, foxes, possums, raccoons, chipmunks, squirrels, and countless varieties of birds, including a few Sandhill Cranes.  We will keep the large patches of milkweed, which attract large numbers of Monarch Butterflies.  The non-native, invasive plants will be removed, along with trash that has accumulated.  We will re-plant the area with native flowers, grasses and trees.  We will then be cutting some walking trails through the woods with benches to sit and enjoy the wildlife.

   We also have the specific aim to be an intentionally inclusive environment for all people.  We plan on hosting regular interfaith events in a non-judgmental space, as well as practical workshops on food justice and sustainability.  We will be working together with local Rabbis, Pastors, Priests, and Imams to ofter engaging programs and get members of different religious communities working together.  We will bring people of all religious, and non-religious backgrounds together to share in our joint experience of food.  

Background:

  Sky and David bought a house 3 years ago on the West side of Detroit.  That home had been abandoned for 10 years.  They have been fixing it by hand doing all the repairs themselves.  They moved to Detroit to start an intentional community based on agriculture.  We are currently in the process of setting up our own 501(c)(3).