Raising hope and veggies

Just wanted to make sure everybody saw Dan Geringer's page one story about an ongoing urban farming project in Brewerytown, one that's hitting a milestone this weekend. Regular E2P readers will recall that we've been cheerleading for this phenomenon for a while and it's great to see it taking hold in different neighborhoods around Philadelphia.

Here's the opening of the article:

PUTTING HIS money where his dream is, Marathon Restaurants CEO Cary Borish is investing $100,000 to turn a long-vacant, blighted Brewerytown lot into Marathon Farm, which will supply his six Philadelphia eateries with fresh vegetables and feed the residents of a neighborhood that has seen its share of hard times.

Although the third-of-an-acre lot on the corner of 27th and Master streets is still bordered by the ancient redbrick walls of a city warehouse that collapsed 20 years ago, Borish watched happily Sunday as blight gave way to beautiful on its way to bountiful.

In one raw, blustery weekend, community volunteers and Marathon farmers cut down and sawed up six towering weed trees, cleared 50 bags of trash, built two dozen wood-plank raised beds for vegetables and were framing out the potting and tool sheds.

This weekend, they will finish the farm in time for Mayor Nutter to officially open it on Monday - and let the planting begin

Read the whole thing here.