Urban Farming Couple to Speak in Rochester
Retirees Bill and Billie Hickey made an intentional move a few years ago, from a roomy home and comfortable neighborhood into a small house in the worn down northwest Detroit neighborhood of Brightmoor, to plunge into a new life of community building. Here they found plentiful open space - overgrown vacant lots ready for conversion to family and community gardens - and joined their neighbors in becoming urban vegetable gardeners. Billie Hickey says, "Gardening together is one tool for building community, and it's also a way for us and our neighbors to experience food justice: we resist corporate foods, we're free to produce our own healthy foods, and we share our foods with others." Beyond food justice, the neighborhood cooperates on environmental improvement, doing street and lot cleanups, boarding up vacant houses, and creating pocket parks and native plantings. Neighbors foster economic health by helping unemployed youths start cottage industries, selling extra vegetables at farm markets, and promoting bikes as an affordable means of transportation.

The Hickeys will present their talk and photo program, "Building Community in Brightmoor," Sunday Feb. 19th, 11:30 a.m. at Paint Creek Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 1315 North Pine Street, Rochester. The public is invited; enter the parking lot from Oak St. north of Pine St. and follow the signs. Further information from: www.paintcreek.org, or Rev. Bugleisi at 248-202-1711.