The weather was forecast to be wet, windy and frigid on Saturday, September 22, but apparently the weather gods look favorably upon urban agriculture and local food enterprises, because we ended up having a perfectly beautiful and sunny first day of autumn for our Monster Food Truck Rally & Urban Agriculture Showcase at The Plant.  People of all ages and backgrounds from across the city came throughout the day to buy fresh veggies, honey, soap and other goods from local farms and gardens, take tours of The (amazing) Plant, watch local filmmaker Sarah Carlson’s documentary “Food Deserts in a Land of Plenty”, try delicious treats from a wide assortment of food trucks, and enjoy live music from some great local bands.  Kids were even treated to the StoryBus, a mobile children’s museum!

Pleasant House Bakery offered delicious savory pies made with local and organic ingredients–many from their own gardens!

Visitors were able to get a great sense of Chicago’s vibrant urban agriculture movement by talking with representatives from the school gardens, urban farms, restaurant production gardens, and urban agriculture enterprises that set up tables and tents in The Plant’s beautiful outdoor garden area, and AUA provided an expanded view of what’s happening across the city by presenting a continuously looping urban agriculture community slideshow throughout the day.  We also were very excited to announce our new Membership Drive, and it was a thrill to see our signup sheets fill up with new AUA members.  Some were even kind enough to make donations to help us fund another great year of promoting urban agriculture in Chicagoland!

AUA would like to thank The Plant for hosting and co-sponsoring the event with us, and we encourage everybody to pay a visit to their site.  They offer regular tours; click here for tour schedule and tickets.  We’d also like to thank all of the great local farms, gardens, organizations, bands, food trucks and other food enterprises that participated in the event.  Please scroll down below the slideshow for a full list of event participants and links.

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Farms, Gardens and Urban Agriculture enterprises/organizations:

Local food trucks and food enterprises:

Local bands: