Working on Brother Nature's Farm

The only impressive thing about this shoddy photograph is that it captures a view of Brother Nature's farm in North Corktown without seeing the Motor City Casino. You gotta try hard for that. I had to hide it behind Brother Nature's house. The hideous building rises 15 storeys without anything close to it breaking three. On the far right of the pic you can see the Michigan Central train station, the 1910s building designed by Warren & Wetmore, the architects who gained the commission for Grand Central Station in New York based on this beauty. This is the very same building city council and Mayor Ken Cockrel is trying to demolish ASAP with stimulus funding. They call it blight. Everyone I've ever met sees it as a masterpiece, a real treasure.

I will be designing agricultural/gardening objects for Brother Nature to sell at Eastern Market this summer. I'm also helping with the grunt work of the expanding farm. Grunt work means make rows of dirt from the big piles the dump truck left. My back hurts tonight. But the day was amazing. First of all, it feels like you've wandered back a few hundred years when you take the turn off Trumbull into North Corktown. For reference, Trumbull and Michigan Ave is where Old Tiger Stadium is. Leaving there along Trumbull, you cross I-75, drive up 2 or 3 blocks and then turn left into the Nineteenth century. It's like a miniaturized version of historic American farming communities, where the streets of the urban grid take the place of field fences. But many of the houses in this neighborhood are original Victorians, built when old farming communities still flourished, so in a strange way it somehow makes perfect sense.

North Corktown is a recently-added name for the area the farm is located. It used to be a part of a larger Corktown district, before the freeway was put in and bisected the area. Couple that with all the typical reasons Detroit's population has been declining and you find the area vastly empty, with zero or one homes occupying several blocks and even the busiest ones less than half full. It's interesting what sticks out when this happens to a neighborhood: phone lines, fire hydrants, alleys and streets. The things that you would expect to find when you think of a neighborhood in the 11th largest city. Especially when you look at North Corktown on a map. But switch to 'satellite view' and you see the reality of the place- yes an urban grid of streets, moreso it's acres of open grass.

People walk through this neighborhood all day long. When they do, you see them. Right away. There's nothing else going on, for one, and for two and your vision extends for blocks and blocks. You also notice pheasants darting around like little roadrunners. I couldn't believe it when I heard that wild pheasants were making a comeback in Detroit, not the suburbs but only in the city. But I'm glad they are. They're amazing- with deep red and green feathers. You hear them doing their mating call thing this time of year. But don't try and get their picture, they're sly little devils. I will get one though.