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(clockwise from left: NOFFN team members Pam Broome, Lisa Mohr, Phillip Soulet and Kris Pottharst)

As I mentioned last week, I really fell in love with New Orleans during the short time I was there last month. I left there convinced that for all its problems, the town (and surrounding region) is full of farmers, activists and organizers who are working to revitalize local food systems as the city moves forward and rebuild that greener New Orleans I mentioned in last week’s post about the Crescent City Farmers Market.

One group of such activists is the New Orleans Food & Farming Network (NOFFN), a grassroots organization working on several different levels on the fight for good food. Headed up by Kris Pottharst (who knows a ton about not only what’s happening in food in New Orleans now, but is strongly rooted in the heritage of the area and told us that while the French brought the recipes to old New Orleans, it was her German ancestors who floated barges of vegetables down the river — I guess it runs in her blood), NOFFN works to improve access to good food and preserve regional agricultural traditions through city gardens, training sessions, and projects like this cool NOLA Food Map.

I was graciously welcomed to one of NOFFN’s gardens by Kris Pottharst (director), Pam Broome (Farm Yard Program Manager), Lisa Mohr (board officer and food journalist) and Phillip Soulet (city gardener turned urban farmer). Phillip heads up this particular garden, and took the time to show us around while he gathered beans, strawberries and flowers for a dinner he was cooking for some friends that evening. Phillip is farming somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 square feet there and hopes to start selling his produce to the public soon. He and Kris spent some time reminiscing about their grandmother’s Creole gardens and the heirloom vegetables he grows, like mirliton squash (aka chayote) and red pole beans.

Nearly every local I met was eager to share a Katrina story with me, and while many told tales of water levels, Kris told me of the depression that hit after the flood, when so many awaited financial assistance that never came. Eventually, she said, they decided that there was nothing to do but get it done themselves, and since then, the scrappy organizers at NOFFN have been aggressively tracking down new spaces for gardens and initiating new projects like churchyard and backyard gardens.

Phillip told me that Katrina acted as a sort of catalyst for his foray into gardening. He’d been thinking about how nice it would be to grow vegetables for a couple of years before the storm devastated the city, and says that the hurricane taught him to make his passion for gardening a priority. “Before then, I’d wanted to, but could never quite come up with the reasons to make the time. Katrina taught me that if you can’t make the time, it’s not even worth thinking about. Find something else. Make it worth your time.”