Eat a Perpetual Peach

Here's the future drill in this cradle-to-cradle world: Girl eats peach, girl poops peach, poop makes new peach.

by Bruce Schimmel

I tasted a perfect peach recently, its flesh so sweet that it made my ears ache. It took just one bite to get me jonesing, which means I'm going back for another. I hope I can interest you in a bite, as well.

Such peaches deserve to be shared, and for this one, I was third in line. Two nibbles in front of me were the two farmers who grew it. Johanna Rosen and Jade Walker had declared this peach to be a tad too tender to make it to market so, alas, we were compelled to devour it on the spot. Athletic and tan, the two young women � I admit � added something to the fruit's allure, making this peach seem even sweeter. Still, the setting for the tasting might surprise you.

Smaller than an acre, Mill Creek Farm at 49th and Brown streets (just north of Market) is a green swath set in a gray and sometimes bloody landscape. Last year, the two women convinced the Philadelphia Water Department and the state's Growing Greener program that they could tease fine food out of a piece of city land. That they could grow wonderful, inexpensive produce using little more than tap water and people power. Elements to which Rosen and Walker have added a truckload of ingenuity.

Mill Creek Farm is more than an organic farm. In eschewing pesticides, it is a cleverly engineered enterprise where very little from the outside world is needed, because nothing is wasted. It's a place where wastes are "upcycled" into something more valuable � in this case, food. And, in this instance, I do mean all of the wastes. For these women have some tricks and gadgets that make waterless urinals seem pale by comparison.

The farmers are running Mill Creek based on an emerging idea known as "cradle to cradle." It's a concept that goes beyond recycling, promising a future beyond privation. Where waste is said to "equal" food. The farm's primary source of power, apart from the sun, is human. The farm doesn't have, or need, electricity.

Every day, the two farmers walk their rows of kale, collards, okra, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots and beets. Instead of laying on the chemicals, they bend over each plant and pick off bugs by hand. Last year, the women built a large, two-room building that serves as a lunchroom, wash-up station, sanitation facility and a naturally cool storage shed for the food.

Read Sam Tremble's coverage of the The Women's Gardens Cycle Tour,  which visited Mill Creek and other local farms last weekend. 

The building itself is made mostly out of leftovers. Its thick walls, made of straw and local soils, are studded with glass bottles. Set into a small hill, the earthen structure has a green roof that traps the cool, even on a recent sweltering day. Then, for transportation, the women have a bio-diesel pickup, soon to be run entirely on waste vegetable oil. Vegetable scraps from the farm feed a compost heap, which in turn is used to replenish the soil.

Not even human waste is wasted. Because inside, there is a composting toilet that digests human feces. Which you know is working, because there's no smell. After that toilet has finished its extended meal � or, more precisely, our meals � the women are thinking about using the soil to nourish the roots around their fruit trees.

So here's the future drill in this cradle-to-cradle world: Girl eats peach, girl poops peach, poop makes a new peach. (I know it's a gross thought, but consider this an opportunity to, uh, digest it.) For, just like nature, the idea is to engineer a system where the waste product of one process provides the fuel for another.

In such a world, you don't have to reduce your use. Since nothing is wasted, using more is good. (When Midwest cattle ranchers use waste digesters to pull the methane gas out of bull shit � and use it for energy � it's no longer just bullshit, is it?)

For sure, the Mill Creek poop will not be hitting their peach roots anytime soon, since some questions still remain about lingering viruses. Still, I hope these farmers can crown their creation with a cradle-to-cradle cycle.

The Mill Creek Farm sells its produce to the public on Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but Rosen and Walker invite people to drop by anytime to look around or pick up some fresh veggies. And, if you're lucky, eat a peach.

(bruce@schimmel.com)