People are often surprised to learn that someone gets paid full-time for doing something as unusual and pleasurable as running City Farmer . One of the secrets of keeping our office going for almost 20 years is keeping overhead costs to a minimum. Our Demonstration Garden, a ten minute drive from the office, sits on City property which we use in exchange for maintaining a beautiful landscape.
Wages is another important expenditure item.
For many years we received short-term Federal Government grants to administer job training projects which were environmental in nature. For over ten years we were able to offer gardening classes, start a large community garden, a rooftop garden, a school garden and a horticulture therapy garden with just two to three trainees working up to six months at a time. The remainder of the year was spent producing literature describing the projects just completed, with funds coming from the private sector and charitable foundations. The nature of most granting systems means that we have to be creative and find new projects every couple of years. For the past five years we have delivered compost education programs, the core funding coming from municipal government sources.