AP profiles Patchwork Urban Farms’ Sunil Patel

Sunil Patel wants to connect neighborhoods via a network of community gardens and independently sourced property that utilizes unused land to turn it into productive, biodynamic farmland. Launched a year ago, the project — Patchwork Urban Farms — caught the attention of the Associated Press. Here’s an excerpt from the Hendersonville Times-News‘ blueridgenow.com site:

“Once, in America, and not that long ago, yard vegetable gardens were as common as sidewalks to the front door.

Farming didn’t necessarily have to be, and often wasn’t, the resident’s livelihood.

Gardens simply were part of the U.S. landscape.

Today, however, as those such as Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan have written, the populace has become divorced from its food sources.

Asheville’s Sunil Patel wants to change that.

‘We don’t know anymore that the land is just as much a part of ourselves as our heart is,’ said Patel, 35, farmer and founder of Patchwork Urban Farms in Asheville. He started the company a year ago this month.

Patel’s vision is to create an environment where the land that produces people’s food is the land on which those same people already live, work and play.

Patel and Patchwork have obtained permission to use six plots of land through crop sharing. Those plots range from a tenth of an acre to 1.5 acres. They are located throughout Asheville and in Swannanoa. … ” — from the Jan. 17, 2015, “Asheville Man Begins Drive to Establish Urban Farmers“