Heru Urban Farms urban "food desert" project

After the great discussion around my post on suburban homesteading, I'm back with a 2-part series on a successful urban farming project.

Heru Lewis took responsibility for his own health and his community, and in five years went from backyard bucket gardener to full-time urban farmer, supplying CSA boxes to food desert areas in St. Louis, Missouri. His model is interesting, as it's split between the for-profit venture, supplying to restaurants as well as the CSAs, and a non-profit, providing educational opportunities to urban youth.

The two-part story is:
1: The gatekeeper of Maffit is a unicorn - in this one, I cover his rarity as a farmer, especially a black farmer and his trajectory from gym teacher to FT urban farmer using a split for- and non-profit model.

2: When you're farming, intention is everything - in this one, we dig into some of his spiritual practices, like sage cleansing and meditation, as well as more practical techniques such as companion planting.

You'll find podcast versions at the links as well.

And here are some images.

Questions for Permies:

- Anyone else trying the for-profit/non-profit mashup?
- What about the spiritual aspects touched on in part 2? Thoughts? I found Heru's unabashed honesty about his practices refreshing; whereas, a lot of people tend to apologize for their spiritual work, like it's too woo-woo for regular conversation.