Over the next few months, I will feature one location of an urban farm tour that I attended in June 2014.  Unfortunately, these tours only occur once a year, so you will have to wait until June 2015 for the next round of tours (the tour is organized by the Institute of Urban Homesteading located in Oakland, California, and the sites change annually so there is always something new to see and explore).  The good news, however, is that in 2014, these tours have extended into Solano County; hopefully, this trend will continue.  Because the sites are private residences, with rare exception, addresses for them will not be disclosed to preserve and protect the privacy interests of the urban farmer-homeowners. 

The first urban farm that I will feature in this series, is Dog Island Farm located in Vallejo, California.  I was excited to learn that it made it onto this year's tour list, as it was featured in the SF Chronicle and other Bay Area newspapers in the past few years.  Dog Island Farm is considered a "large" site in that the lot size consists of 12,197 square feet.  of that square footage, 9,350 square feet is used for urban farming (i.e., 76% of the total lot size). 

Dog Island Farm began in 2008 with a small house (750 square feet) and a large backyard choked with weeds.  The owners of the property had a vision for this 1/4 acre property could become.  Six years later, it is now home to chickens, turkeys, goats, rabbits and bees.  The front yard is planted with mostly edible and bee friendly plants.  With the exception of the house and a large outdoor entertaining space where workshops and events are held, most of the property is dedicated to food production, which includes over 2 dozen fruit trees and 1,200 square feet of planted vegetable beds. 

Dog Island Farm hosts workshops every so often.  For more information, please see http://www.dogislandfarm.com/.