she grows cities

2021 was an insane year to create, publish, and distribute a book about urban farming to a niche audience. But then again, is there a “normal” year to choose to create an almanac in this day and age? It turned out to be an insanely gratifying project that created new friendships, raised hundreds of dollars for two local food justice causes in LA, and was just a lot of fun to put together.

This blog was pretty quiet after the release of the almanac because:

• I was unexpectedly offered my DREAM JOB and ended up transitioning into my new role just a few weeks ago
• The almanac team and I were spending most of our time promoting the almanac and figuring out how to ship them to get them into your hands (THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE LOVE AND SUPPORT!)
• I was fortunate to travel to Quebec (again) right before Thanksgiving so I wanted to unplug and just enjoy the trip (maybe I’ll write a separate entry about why I love the province so much; it has to do with their amazing food culture and urban planning, ofc)
• Honest to God? I was just feeling burned out
• It’s funny how when you start composting/gardening so you can write about the experience, you spend more time outside rather than inside with your laptop

So this year, my plan is to actually bring my phone with me to my little wild garden so I can share the growth with you and provide realistic compost updates (it wasn’t as gross as I thought it would be and my garden LOVED the first layer I laid down before the rain storm).

Lastly, you probably noticed this entry is titled “Almanac II”. I haven’t been online, but offline, our team has been going to working group meetings and having internal talks about how we want to continue collaborating and growing the almanac in a way that is sustainable for ourselves, too.

I’m excited to share that, yes, there WILL be an Almanac II this year! It won’t look exactly like the first almanac, and we will be printing way more copies this time because…..(drumroll in my head) we are going to offer the print copies at local farmers markets and independent bookstores! We do plan to update the existing 2021 digital almanac sometime this year, too- we want to add some urban farms and farmers markets we missed the first time, and update the community directly as well.

Thank you to everyone who has been following along with this crazy, hyper-local project. I can’t wait to share more about what Almanac II will be! If you haven’t seen the first almanac yet, you can download a free copy at shegrowscities.com/almanac.

Thanks for making it this far. If you’re interested in more shegrowscities updates, I update @shegrowscities on IG regularly. And thanks for reading this blog about a girl who hates dirt and worms but tries to garden and compost anyway.