From Farm to Table in One Restaurant

It has always been a local and sus­tain­able ven­ture for own­ers Mike and Helen Cameron, since the cre­ation of their first Uncommon Ground loca­tion (Devon Avenue is the sec­ond). “We started Uncommon Ground 20 years ago, purely from the idea of hav­ing very community-based con­cepts and just want­ing to do really good home­made cook­ing,” Helen Cameron told Organic Connections. “I came from this very prac­ti­cal and common-sense place—making things from scratch, really embrac­ing the Slow Food ideals before I even knew Slow Food existed. We were into being sus­tain­able, being respon­si­ble for the envi­ron­ment and so on, even in the early days. As time went on, that really started pro­gress­ing and we were able to make more and more con­nec­tions with local pro­duc­ers and farm­ers. We’ve always pur­sued that. Now our two Uncommon Ground restau­rants are the highest-ranked third-party-certified green restau­rants in the city of Chicago, by the Green Restaurant Association. I’m very proud of that.”

It was when the Camerons decided to expand to a sec­ond loca­tion that the con­cept of a rooftop farm was born. “The idea for it actu­ally came from the day that we were about to go into con­tracts to buy the build­ing for our sec­ond restau­rant,” Helen recalled. “We brought a lad­der over there to take a look at the con­di­tion of the roof. Mike held the lad­der for me as I climbed up, and as soon as my head cleared the para­pet I could see this vast expanse of silver-lined roof­ing, shin­ing in the sun. The first thing that kind of popped into my head was a big red tomato. I think about food all the time, and it’s been prob­lem­atic for me to grow toma­toes at home where I live because I don’t have quite enough sun­shine in my back­yard to pull it off. It really bums me out, because I think one of the great­est presents of the sum­mer­time is a good heir­loom tomato. I grew up with those; I would even wake up in the mid­dle of the night as a kid and go out in the back­yard and pluck a tomato, eat it and go back to sleep. Those toma­toes are just a joy, a trea­sure in my early life, so that’s the first thing I thought of. When I got up there, I was like, ‘Oh my God, Mike, we could grow food up here!’ He came up, we looked around, and he agreed that we could take advan­tage of that full, sunny space.”

It was for­tu­nate they decided on the rooftop farm before they began seri­ous work on ren­o­vat­ing the build­ing. The roof needed to be able to sus­tain the weight that a farm entails, which includes soil, so the Camerons brought in a struc­tural engi­neer to advise them on what they needed to do. They were then able to roll the costs into their financ­ing and begin the required tasks.

“Because we knew we’d be open much of the time, we real­ized we needed the entire space of the build­ing to work,” Helen said. “That included the base­ments, but Mike couldn’t stand up straight in them because some of the ceil­ings were just too low. It was nec­es­sary to increase the height, so we had to dig down 5 feet. In the process of doing that, we rein­forced our load-bearing walls: we replaced the wood beams that were hold­ing up the build­ing from the base­ment level with steel I-beams so that we could han­dle a greater weight load up on the roof. Then from the roof per­spec­tive, we real­ized that we weren’t going to be able to put the farm directly on the sur­face of the roof; so we rein­forced the para­pet walls and put in a grid of steel beams that sup­port a float­ing deck. We then built the planter beds them­selves: ten 10-foot by 4-foot by 12-inch-deep planter boxes made from cedar and steel—materials that are very long last­ing. Next, because there needed to be a rail­ing sys­tem to code for the roof, we decided to use the rail­ing sys­tem for smaller planter boxes as well, all around the perime­ter of the farm.”

To com­plete the minia­ture ecosys­tem and help make it self-sustaining, the Camerons added a full irri­ga­tion sys­tem, four bee­hives, and bar­rels to col­lect rain­wa­ter. Green build­ing and sus­tain­able prac­tices were also uti­lized else­where in con­struc­tion of the restau­rant: solar ther­mal pan­els were installed on the roof to heat water and reduce gas con­sump­tion, all paints were low VOC, and wood was from locally har­vested fallen timber.

Click any image above to see a larger version.

Today the gar­den grows a wide vari­ety of crops, includ­ing pep­pers, egg­plant, let­tuces, heir­loom toma­toes, radishes, beets, okra, spinach, fen­nel, mus­tard, bush beans, shal­lots, and more, as well as flow­ers for the bees.

According to Helen, the rooftop farm has changed their lives in many won­der­ful ways. First of all, the ingre­di­ents from the gar­den are used in both restau­rants’ menus.

But Helen has seen even more value from the farm in set­ting a vitally needed exam­ple. “I feel that we have a very, very pos­i­tive local influ­ence,” she said. “Many more peo­ple are grow­ing their own food now, using earth boxes on their bal­conies; wher­ever they can grow some­thing they’re inspired to do so. It’s been a tremen­dous con­nec­tion to our imme­di­ate com­mu­nity, and then to the grander com­mu­nity of peo­ple who are look­ing to bring addi­tional urban agri­cul­ture into the city by doing a lot more things like com­mu­nity gardening—creating good, viable food sys­tems in the city.”

It is only part of farm direc­tor Dave Snyder’s duties to main­tain the farm. “The other half of Dave’s job is edu­ca­tion,” Helen explained. “We have six urban agri­cul­ture interns that work for us, who are respon­si­ble for help­ing us grow the food and take care of plants organ­i­cally. They’ve come a long way just over the sum­mer in terms of really under­stand­ing sus­tain­abil­ity from the urban ag aspect; but because of the way we oper­ate, they’re get­ting, by exten­sion, a lot more infor­ma­tion. For instance, we work with Loyola University down the street, and they take all our used fryer oil and pro­duce biodiesel with it.

“We also tour many school groups and all vari­eties of peo­ple who are inter­ested in urban agri­cul­ture, and in par­tic­u­lar rooftop food pro­duc­tion. I’ve been doing plenty of pub­lic speak­ing about it as well.”

The city of Chicago has noticed. “I just got asked to be on the mayor’s task force for ver­ti­cal farm­ing,” Helen said. “The city really wants to com­mit to get­ting a ver­ti­cal farm in place, some­thing that could pro­duce a sub­stan­tial amount of food, with much more grow­ing space than I have. It’s very impor­tant to me.”

Helen con­cludes with her state­ment of the value of bring­ing farm­ing down to such an inti­mate level. “I see how into it peo­ple are, and how it bonds them. Kids love pick­ing things and plant­ing seeds. It’s a way of acti­vat­ing peo­ple and bring­ing them back to one of the most impor­tant things that they do, and that’s eat­ing. If you think about it, food is such an inti­mate thing: you are what you eat—that is your health; that is what gives you what is nec­es­sary to sur­vive. We need to begin tak­ing con­trol of that fact in our own lives. When you start doing that, it’s so pleas­ant; we’re all enjoy­ing this so much. Then you get to know the peo­ple, the com­mu­nity bonds a lit­tle bit more, and kids are busy and they’re not get­ting into trou­ble. It’s just really an awe­some cycle of life. If we can keep on going, hope­fully we can bring food to food deserts in the city, which is a big issue here in Chicago. There are areas where peo­ple can’t get fresh food, and that’s really bad. We need com­mu­nity gar­dens, ver­ti­cal farms—whatever. Any which way we can bring good healthy food to peo­ple, we need to do it.”

For more infor­ma­tion on Uncommon Ground, visit their web­site at www.uncommonground.com.