B Building Soil, Planting Progress: Erin Pihlaja
B Building Soil, Planting Progress: Erin Pihlaja
B Building Soil, Planting Progress: Erin Pihlaja
Collard City Growers and the Troy Bike Rescue launch Food Cycle, a bikepowered composting project that aims to bring new t life to a struggling North Troy community. Story and photos by
ERIN PIHLAJA
N A BLISTERING SUMMER DAY, IN AN ALLEYWAY BET WEEN SIXTH AVENUE AND RIVER STREET,
Abby Lublin fills up giant plastic tubs with water using a neighbors garden hose. The tubs collect rainwater but are running low, and Lublin relies on this water to maintain a large garden at 3337 Sixth Ave., which was a vacant lot only one year ago. The garden is open to the public; only a small sign notes that it is the work of a group called Collard City Growers (CCG). Loud and lively Spanish music spills out from the same neighbors car, parked with all four doors open to help amplify the music. Lublin hides from the sun under a floppy straw hat and dark sunglasses. In denim cut-offs and a checked buttondown shirt, she looks the part of farmer, in this case an urban one. On Sixth Avenue in North Central Troy, a neighborhood often described in phrases like urban blight or as one with big city problems, the seeds of something new are growing. Shaking the stigma that this is merely an area riddled with crime and boarded-up houses, a few grassroots organizations have settled here, and they were just infused with $10,000 to help germinate their visions for the tight-knit but embattled community. It wasnt long before Lublin, and her neighbor Andrew Lynn of the Troy Bike Rescue (TBR), realized that they could align their similar causes and steer towards a common plan that they dubbed Food Cycle. Food Cycle is a collaborative project mainly between TBR and CCG, with help from the Sanctuary for Independent Media and the Missing Link Street Ministry. These four organizations all fall within blocks from one another along the same avenue. All of the groups rely mainly on volunteers and donations, and focus on community building with an emphasis on youth activities. Put simply, CCG is a garden that sits, sans fence, on a former vacant lot, and TBR is a collective of bicycle enthusiasts who save bikes continued on page 8
Fertile delivery: (l-r) Andrew Lynn, Abby Lublin and Dakota of Food Cycle.