our story.

Alleycat Acres is a urban farming collective that aims to reconnect people with food. To achieve this, we create community-run farms on under utilized urban spaces.








By farming the cityscape, we are helping to create solutions that address a number of issues facing our communities. Our urban farms lay the groundwork to enable anyone to join in the process of what we refer to as Farming 2.0: cultivating food, relationships, and a connection to our land in an urban setting.

Food is more than what we eat: it’s a medium through which we can forge intimate, meaningful relationships between people and place. Farming is a medium that reconnects us, both mentally and physically, to our surroundings. Our entire operation is based on the collective belief that urban food systems are key in creating healthy communities.

In an era where the automobile is king, we opt to use bikes as our mode of transportation. By challenging the existing paradigms around food production and transportation, we are creating alternative methods to show just how much can be accomplished when we collectively roll up our sleeves and work side by side.

Together, we can plant seeds of change.

(oh yeah, check out our bio's here)

History

Sean Conroe, our founder, grew up working on gardens and farms in upstate New York. His family moved to Las Vegas in his late teens, where his connection with the land, and food, was lost. But he was soon reintroduced to nature after moving to Seattle in 2004. Through his volunteer experience at Bullock's Permaculture Homestead and his food-focused coursework at Seattle Central Community College, Sean started thinking about creating an organization that could help reconnect people to food and to the land that enables us to live.

Near the end of 2009, Sean started looking for other Seattleites who were passionate about urban farming and sustainability. The beta website went up on Dec. 21, 2009, he started interviewing people in mid-January. By Jan. 25, 2010, 11 core members had gathered and held their first meeting: Wendy Ashmun, Martin Ballew, Amber Banks, Tori Brewster, Gia Clark, Sean Conroe, Kate Kurtz, Scott MacGowan, Bryan McLellan, Sarah Kuck & Sommer Whitmarsh.

During it, the group began laying the foundation for the organization and bringing the idea to life. A week later, they found a plot of land to work on in Beacon Hill, donated by a local homeowner whose only request was for the project to be "quiet, clean and green." Alleycat Acres was officially born.

Our name is a pairing of two words that we thought would appropriately address our two passions: bikes and farming. The "Alleycat" part is the name of a bike race; the "Acres" part refers to a measurement of land, where we grow our food. Think of us as food messengers, racing to build a more sustainable, highly localized food system, where we can all reconnect with food as well as with each other. 

Today, our small grassroots effort has blossomed:

• We've been covered by GOOD! Magazine, Grist Magazine, The Seattle Times, KOMO News, KUOW/NPR, Urban Farm Hub, Voice of America and a number of online blogs.
• Our volunteer base of 200+ individuals have contributed over 1,500 service hours on our farms & partner projects, including the Mayor of Seattle, Mike McGinn.
• We've worked alongside youth that are part of these organizations: City Year, The Girl Scouts, OUT for Sustainability & have collaborated on projects with many others: Creatives 4 Community. 
• A number of local and national businesses have pitched into help us: Chrome Bags, The Corson Building, Full Tilt Ice Cream, Levi Strauss & Co., & Madison Market.
• Farmers in the Sno-Valley Tilth Association have pitched in as well: Jubilee Farm, Frog Chorus Farms, Tahoma Farms, Dog Mountain Farms & Summer in a Jar.

Future
From bees, to pedal powered compost stations, to hydroponics and vertical farming...the sky is the limit. Have an idea? Get in touch with us. One thing remains though -- and that is our commitment to providing ways to reconnect us with the food we eat and the city we call home. Come as strangers, leave as friends. And in doing so, together we can grow forth.