Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette Digging, observing and discussing the land on Odessa Place last week were Carole Walsh, left, of Friendship, founder of the Urban Farming Initiative; project steward Milton Minor of Lincoln-Lemington, who lives across the street and has kept the land mowed and free of litter for the year he has lived there; Dr. Robbie Ali of Shadyside, who bought the land and said he wanted something environmentally positive on it; and Myles Minor, 7.

By Diana Nelson Jones
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette A few weeks ago, Dr. Robbie Ali paid the back taxes on a three-quarter-acre vacant lot on Odessa Place in Lincoln-Lemington and acquired the deed. Then he called Carole Walsh.

"He said, 'I got the land. Bring the community,' " said Ms. Walsh, who co-founded the Urban Farming Initiative four years ago.

She assembled a group of about 20 on a recent evening for a first-step celebration of what she has been promoting for years, a vegetable farm as an economic development tool for a lagging neighborhood.

"My dream is that each of these lots will be turned into an enterprise for young people in the community so they will learn how to run a business," by growing plants for sale, selling the harvest or both. "One of my main dreams is a bio-dynamic greenhouse used as a learning and gardening center."

Her model is the 15-year-old Food Project in Boston, www.thefoodproject.org. Its stewards' goals are social change and safe food. Last year, 160 teenagers there grew and sold 250,000 pounds of vegetables on 31 donated acres, she said. The youth get paid and have their share of control throughout the system.

Since she started the initiative four years ago, like-minded people have joined in to garden a parklet in East Liberty and a Garfield lot, both city-owned. The land in Lincoln-Lemington is the first the group has had control of.

Dr. Ali, of Shadyside, met Ms. Walsh, of Friendship, several years ago when they were volunteer advisers at Peabody High School, his alma mater. She was teaching urban gardening, and he was in the health careers academy. Both wanted to continue guiding youth and working on behalf of neighborhoods that are deprived of investment.

"I wanted to do a gardening project," he said, "and someone from my work knew I was interested in having some land. It had belonged to someone in their family for 50 years." He shrugged. "I said, 'yeah.'

"I have some faith in it, I guess."

He paid $3,500 for the lot. The adjacent lot became vacant in February, when the city demolished a condemned house.

Dr. Ali practices emergency medicine at McKeesport Hospital and directs the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches. He joined emergency medical teams in New York City after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami. He travels often to Indonesia to continue providing health care and to Borneo, where he promotes health care and rainforest conservation.

"I'm an environmental pessimist," he said. "I wish I couldn't be. I try to work with people who seem to care and help them take an idea and make it work." He is interested in "greening the neighborhoods," he said, "but I am just a facilitator. The whole plan depends on people getting involved."

Lori Schaller, executive director of YouthPlaces, an after-school program with 17 locations citywide, said her organization wanted to join the farming project. "It's a community empowerment thing, a potentially great way for the kids to develop skills, connect with the larger community and give back to it."

To the recent ceremony on the land, Dennis Walker brought five teenage girls from the YouthPlaces program he manages at the nearby Paulson Recreation Center.

Milt Minor came from across the street, happy to see a crowd on land he has been mowing and trying to keep litter free in the year he has lived there.

John Haviland, a friend of Ms. Walsh's, moved here from New York City in March specifically to use his experience in land reclamation and restoration on this project. He has been working with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, whose biologist, Mary Beth Steisslinger, has joined the initiative's board.

David Crow came from Los Angeles to share his success story in urban farming, the Learning Garden in Venice, Calif., which used to be an illegal dump. After three years, he said, it is a nonprofit foundation that supports horticulture, medicine and master gardening classes.

The simplest positive result is that the neighborhood "looks better, eats better and feels better," said Mr. Crow, an herbologist and acupuncturist who has been traveling the country promoting community gardens in the interest of health care. The long-shot possibility is that it helps the neighborhood's economy, expands and draws more people, spinning off related enterprises and leading other neighborhoods to use vacant, troubled lots for the same results.

The city is pocked with as many as 12,000 vacant lots, with more on the way. There are some obstacles to farming them. Home foundations are hard to dig through, and lead paint from razed homes contaminates the soil. The Lincoln-Lemington land will be tested and remediated if necessary, Ms. Walsh said. Remediation usually involves bringing in clean soil as a cover, but, she said, some plants can leech mercury out of the soil.

Mr. Minor moved onto Odessa Place a year ago with his sons and said he had since tried to keep the vacant lot mowed and to pick up litter.

"This whole area was people's toilet paper and beer bottles," he said. "I knew someone had just purchased the property, and when I saw a man out there, pointing it out to someone, I went out and introduced myself," meeting Dr. Ali. "He told me why he bought it and what his wishes were.

"I'm very interested in herbal medicines, and we really hit it off," he said, adding that he is a retired physician's assistant. Ms. Walsh alluded to Mr. Minor as the future garden's steward, but, he said, simply, "It's across the street. I'm not going to have any choice."