First of all we, Martin and Dan, would like to thank you for helping us to grow food for our community. There is nothing more important to the health and well being of our community than providing food in a healthy, sustainable and sensible manner. You are supporting our local economy by keeping the money that you and your neighbors spend on food within our community. You are creating food security for our region in times of rising fuel costs and subsequently unstable food prices. You are doing all of this while making real connections with like-minded individuals who are participating in City Garden Farms. Together, we are recreating the local connections that have been lost over the years as family farms have been diminished and eaten up by corporate farming. Together, we can take one small step to reverse this process.

Think of us as the “new family farm”: Local, Sustainable and Sensible

City Garden Farms / Landowner Agreement

In return for the use of your land City Garden Farms (CGF) offers the following proposal.

• CGF will maintain a working garden in your yard, lot or plot. This garden will consist of common vegetables, herbs and flowers. Your garden is one of a network of gardens that make up the whole of CGF. You may have one or many different crops growing on your property at any one time.

• CGF promises to use all organic and sustainable farming practices.

• Maintenance of the garden on your property will be scheduled at times that agree with your personal schedule. We ask that you grant us some latitude with these times. If we do need to work on your property at an unscheduled time, we will do our best to give you ½ day advance notice by phone and/or email.

• CGF Landowners will receive a full or ½ subscription of our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program depending on the amount of land being utilized. ( <2000 sq ft = ½ subscription, >2000 sq ft = 1 full subscription).

• CGF requires the use of your water. Low-output drip and soaker hoses are our preferred method of watering in our style of farming. We will take every opportunity to reduce the amount of water used. We practice water conservation techniques for gardening.

• Most maintenance work in your yard will be completed with simple hand tools such as hoes, shovels, scissors, knives, wheel hoes, seeders and other common manually operated garden tools. However, from time to time, CGF will need to operate a rear tine rototiller in your yard. We ask that the home owner verify that there are no utility lines near where we'll be rototilling. Check this by simply dialing 811. It's a free service and it will notify all necessary utilities that you want them to mark your underground utility lines. 

• CGF asks that the Landowner not pick their own vegetables from the garden. If there is a particular vegetable you are interested in, tell us. We'll do our best to get it for you. The vegetables we grow are our livelihood. We depend on harvesting and selling as much as we can.

• At the end of each season CGF will leave the yard, lot or plot tilled and leveled. We hope you will continue working with us season after season. However, if you choose not to continue on with CGF or if CGF has to stop utilizing your property for any other reason we ask that we be allowed to finish out the current season. Planning is everything in our style of farming. We need to be able to count on completing at least one full growing season at each site.

Landowner Signature: ___________________________________________________/____________

                                                  (Signature)                               (Print Name)                      (Date)

CGF Signatures: _______________________________________________________/____________

                                                  Martin Barrett                            Dan Bravin                       (Date)