Detroit’s Urban Farms: Budget Battles and Milking Goats

by Paul Brady on

I had never milked a goat before the time I wrapped my fingers around Apple’s teat and squeezed, inside a barn on a one-acre plot next to a public school in Woodbridge, Detroit. Two volunteers at the farm, Doug Reith and Leeann Drees, offered to bring me along for their turn at tending the animals at the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a school that’s also home to one of the city’s best known urban farms, made so by its appearance in the much-lauded documentary Grown in Detroit and a profile in Oprah Magazine.

Urban farms have become sort of cliche in Detroit, cast as a gardener’s pipe dream that will save the city, one batch of arugula at a time. There’s no question that many stories on the subject have been done. But at the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a school for pregnant teens and young mothers, four in five girls participate in free and reduced-price meal programs. Cliche or not, this is a city that needs cheap, nutrient-dense food — the kind that comes out of the sun and soil of a farm, urban or otherwise.

But the pastures at CFA, as its known, are facing a crisis.

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As Rachel Maddow recently reported, city-wide budget cuts are threatening to close the school, and if that happens, the fields will go fallow. My hosts Doug and Leeann, who make cheese with surplus goat milk harvested from the farm, told me about a protest to keep the school open, a sit-in that was quickly broken up by police.

Why risk arrest to protest the school’s closure? Says one student in a YouTube video of the sit-in, talking about pregnant women, including herself, “Sometimes it’s like we don’t have no hope. Basically it’s our job to give them some hope. You can’t just let them feel like they’re alone. [This says to them] You’re not alone, because you’ve got people like us fighting for you.”

As the budgetary fight wages on-a decision on CFA is scheduled for this summer-the goats still need to be milked twice a day. As the sun was setting and the mosquitoes were coming out in force, Apple and her pen-mate Royal, gave almost two liters of milk, most of which will stay on the farm. (I was most proud of myself for avoiding the flying hooves of Apple, who probably hasn’t been called docile lately.)

Walking past the rabbit warrens, hen house and horse pasture, where the school’s brown mare trotted over to greet us, Doug and Leeann wondered what would happen to the farm if the school was shut down. Without girls and volunteers and, yes, money to tend the fields, they’d probably just be abandoned. Like so much else in Detroit.


Making Cars in the Great Lakes: Inside Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant

by Paul Brady on

Before I left Chicago for points east, I had a chance to tour Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant, a complex that finishes about 1160 vehicles a day. A great majority of those are Ford Explorers, pieced together by line workers wearing safety glasses and headphones, working pneumatic tools in a hypnotizing ballet of endless repetition. Whir, whir, whir.

Walking the floor, following pedestrian pathways marked by bright yellow paint, I watched linemen and women raise engine assemblies into vehicle bodies, hang doors and bolt wheels, as conveyor belts ceaselessly inched the unfinished machines ever forward. (A tip: When touring the plant, one steps over the drive-chains running through channels in the floor.)

My tour guide Larry, a dead ringer for Jesse Ventura, even let me jump in a just-finished Explorer the moment it rolled off the line. Videographer Stephen Greenwood, who’s riding along for this part of my ride, captured the mesmerizing shots after the break.

Traveling the American Road – Ford Assembly Plant Tour


Traveling the American Road: A Video Introduction from Chicago

by Paul Brady on

Last week, I kicked off a summer-long road trip around the country, a project we’re calling Traveling the American Road. After picking up my ride in Chicago, I set out to see the city, and this video intro will fill you in on the project, a quest to find out how people are confronting change in the wake of the Great Recession and determine the state of the American road trip in an era of $4-a-gallon gas. Oh, and you can keep up with us here on Gadling, at travelingtheamericanroad.com or on Facebook, Twitter and Gowalla.

Traveling the American Road – Introduction


Zingerman’s Deli: Is a $15 Sandwich Worth the Price?

by Paul Brady on

Everyone told me that I had to eat at Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, so I drove past Michigan Stadium and turned off Main Street, parked on Detroit Street and discovered that it’s not just a sub shop but an overflowing gourmet market that happens to serve tasty, Dagwood-sized sandwiches.

After sampling some brownies, I put in an order for a Bill’s 2 over Prime, a brisket-and-turkey-on-challah number, stacked with Vermont cheddar and slathered with yellow mustard. (I went with a crunchy “new” pickle instead of Zingerman’s classic, garlic-cured “old” pickles.) Outside, at a picnic table, sitting under an umbrella to stave off the summer sun, I dug in, hoping for a sublime sandwich experience after dropping $14.50 on my sandwich and $3.50 on a lemonade. Delicious? Absolutely. But was my lunch really worth nearly $20? I’m still chewing it over.

Hitting the Road in Chicago, a City of Reinvention

by Paul Brady on

If the story of this road trip is the reinvention of America, Chicago makes for a fitting starting point. Burned to the ground in the 19th century, its skyline now bristles with architectural gems, including some of the tallest buildings in the country.

And while the economy here has diversified over the years, heavy industry and manufacturing still exist, whether its on the industrial corridor north of Goose Island, a greening stretch of Cermak Road or at the Ford Chicago Assembly Plant south of the city, where cars have been built since 1924.

To get a handle on the evolving city, I spoke with Micheline Maynard, the senior editor of Changing Gears, a 10-month-old multimedia journalism project involving three area public radio stations that aims to tell the stories of residents in the changing Great Lakes region. At the WBEZ 91.5 studios on Navy Pier, itself a rejuvenated bit of infrastructure that now bustles with tourists, Micheline told me about Chicago’s path to a diversified modern economy.

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“You visit Chicago now and you look at the beautiful parks and you look at the tall buildings-there’s a lot of money here-and it’s hard to remember that 100 to 150 years ago this was a city built on industry,” she told me. “The difference between [Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago] is that Chicago diversified. Chicago kind of saw decades ago that it couldn’t rely only on industry, and successive mayors Daley made an effort to have other kinds of businesses and other kinds of development.”

Micheline mentioned Millennium Park as an example, the blissful waterfront green space that’s probably best known as the home of Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, the mirrored sculpture everyone calls The Bean. Opposed by many during construction, it’s now a major tourist attraction and a symbol of what sustained attention to long-term development can achieve, turning an underutilized public space into a bustling urban center.

Entrepreneurship was on view at Wrigley Field, too. I managed to catch the last half of Wednesday’s Cubs-Astros game from the upper reserved seats. My ticket was just $14 and the seat was great, on the first base side above the visitors dugout. (Never mind that my Cardinals fan of a father would be sorely disappointed I was attending a game at the home of the Redbirds’ regional rivals. Then again, the Cubs did lose, 3-1.)

But the seats that looked the most interesting weren’t even in the park. Apartment buildings near the stadium, along Sheffield and Waveland avenues, are topped with private bleachers that once sold seats for as much as $300 each. But business has been off, and fans can now get on the Wrigley Rooftops for as little as $99, still much more than $14 but a price that includes unlimited food and brews.

Creativity is also finding a place on Hubbard Street, a strip of decidedly average nightlife joints where a handful of local industry veterans have recently opened the lovely Hubbard Inn. With classic cocktails and a couple dozen beers on draft, it’s no doubt a drinking hall, but small plates-mushroom-topped flatbreads, steak tartare, grilled prawns-help keep everyone on the level. As one of the owners told Time Out Chicago about trying to do something new on Hubbard Street: “It’s not your kind of turn-and-burn vodka-tonic, Bud Light place.” It was a fitting location for our road trip kick-off party on Tuesday night.