I recently read Farm City: The Education of An Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter. Ammmaaaaazing! Check out the New York Times Book Review. In sum, the memoir is about a woman who begins by doing some squat gardening on a vacant lot in “the ghetto” next to her apartment. Ultimately she ends up raising her own food and making charcuterie of her pigs, Big Boy and Little Girl. The book spans several years and takes place in Oakland CA. Entertaining and educational, it discusses food security and the importance of knowing where your food comes from.

Of course the memoir got me thinking about community gardens and the possibilities of vacant lots in St. Louis. The food security movement is taking hold here and St. Louis has many resources for urban farms and community gardens. Below are just a few pictures from around my neighborhood.

Tower Grove East has a prolific community garden. I know it doesn’t look like much now, but in the Spring Summer and Fall this is one of the most beautiful corners in the neighborhood. Want to live here?

The same goes for Fox Park Farm. Located at the corner of Russell and California, this space is glorious when in bloom and there always seems to be someone from the neighborhood out there working. Check these home sale listings if you want to know more about housing in the Fox Park neighborhood.

City Seeds is another enterprise altogether. It’s mission is to foster self-sufficiency in addicted and chronically mentally ill homeless; increase production and distribution of locally grown fresh food for low-income residents, and provide nutrition and food preparation/preservation programs.

As I mentioned above, there are ample opportunities to farm in the city. But there might just be one more coming soon. Check out the photo below. This is a vacant lot at the corner of Minnesota and Arsenal across from the old Bavarian Inn. It is currently owned by a notable St. Louis developer, who taking a cue from the benevolent lot owner in Carpenter’s book, has offered to let neighborhood folks start planting. This blog post is in fact a bit of a fishing expedition to see if there are people out there who would be interested in the opportunity to take on a raised bed or two. There would be no charge to garden, you would be welcome to all your own produce and the owner is even considering providing the raised beds.

Please let me know what you think…..

City Garden Montessori is in its second year as a St Louis City Charter School and is now accepting applications for next year’s kindergarten enrollment. Applications are due February 12th. Please contact Christie Huck at 314-664-7646 for more information

Recently one of my past clients invited me to visit City Garden Montessori. She has been a St Louis City resident and advocate for a long time, but had been sending her oldest son to a private school in Clayton. Last year they moved into the Shaw neighborhood and made a very fortunate discovery: City Garden Montessori. Since enrolling her son in the St. Louis City Charter school, she has been really excited by the experience and has been thrilled with the changes she has seen in her son. The Montessori Method of self direction and active engagement has done wonders for her highly gifted and very active 6 year old.

The school is located at the corner of Spring and Russell in the Shaw neighborhood. There are four classrooms in total including the pre-school program. (Pre-school is tuition based and serves ages two and half-five). The charter school includes one kindergarten class (age 5) and two elementary classes which in traditional Montessori fashion are mixed ages similar to the traditional grades of 1-3. Each classroom has two teachers. EACH CLASS HAS TWO TEACHERS!

When I visited one of the elementary rooms I saw lots of independent study, a math presentation and a lot of reading. In addition to academics the children have work tasks which include cleaning chores, animal duty or volunteering at a community soup kitchen. Additionally there is no shortage of parent volunteers. Some parents have organized a gardening committee as evidence by the raised beds and composting stations outside.

To learn more about Montessori Education in general click here.

To learn more about Montessori Education in St. Louis click here.

From the City Garden website:
City Garden Montessori Charter School is a tuition-free, public elementary school, serving the Botanical Heights, Forest Park Southeast Shaw, and portions of the Southwest Garden and Tiffany neighborhoods in the City of St. Louis.

Don’t live in the identified boundaries? click here
There are ample opportunities to move into the area with homes ranging from the low 100s to the 600s
If you are interested in the school but don’t live in the area, call anyway. If there are open spots in the kindergarten, they will consider children who live outside of the identified area.

Whew! Been a long time since I updated the blog. I have to admit I slacked off in December as I was winding down from a very busy and productive year. I thought January would be the opportune time to start blogging a new, but the phone hasn’t really stopped ringing and it looks like I am going to be busy with some wonderfully diverse new listings.

So as I am easing back into it, let me just start with a few sneak peeks at some coming soon properties.

Tower Grove East

29xx Minnesota: 3 beds/1.5 baths and 1 car brick garage. If you love wood work then you will love this house! All system updates were done about 5 years ago along with the roof. Extra insulation in the attic keeps this home particularly warm and the fully fenced backyard with brick patio is an oasis! Wood floors throughout and custom School House fixtures complete the package. $159,900

Shaw

40xx Shenandoah: 2beds plus office/1.5 baths and 2 car-garage-port. With approximately 1700 SQ FT of living space and full basement. First floor has woodfloors with living room, dining room and large kitchen. Upstairs has 2 large bedrooms punctuate by a huge office $174,500.

Gravois Park:

36xx Michigan: 3 beds/1 bath and 1 car garage. The first floor of this 1.5 story Craftsman is perfect for entertaining with a circular flow and hardwood floors. Upstairs there are three large bedrooms and 1 full bath. The closets are a nice surprise. The wide front porch is inviting and the two story enclosed rear porch adds a mud room and office to this home. $85,000

Everyone always wants to know if they should list their home (or keep it listed) during the holidays. There are a couple answers to that question. YES, because homes do sell in the months of December and January. NO, because traffic tends to slow down and there aren’t as many buyers out looking. NO, because it’s a hectic time of year and it’s too difficult to ship-shape for showings. YES, because there are people who MUST buy and if your house isn’t listed then those buyers won’t see it. NO, because it’s already been on the market for 6 months and there haven’t been any takers yet. YES, because there’s typically less inventory and less to choose from so your chances might actually be better.

In the end (like everything in else in the real estate world) the answer will be different for each house and each special set of circumstances. But here is a little data from the MLS about past sales during the holidays. I mapped a section of St. Louis City: South of 40, curving around River Des Peres, then back up the Mississippi to downtown.

Here’s what I looked for: Any house that sold in the month of December or January that was listed between 100K-300K

December 2004: 138 SOLD   January 2005: 75 SOLD
December 2005: 150 SOLD  January 2006: 107 SOLD
December 2006: 142 SOLD  January 2007: 80 SOLD
December 2007: 113 SOLD  January 2008: 66 SOLD
December 2008: 57 SOLD   January 2009: 32 SOLD

The idea here is that if a home closed in December chances are the buyers walked through sometime in November or early December. If the home closed in January, chances are the buyers came through in December or early January. So, based on past data from the MLS, it looks like there is a decline in viewing traffic during the month of December. But based on the number of solds in January, there are indeed people out there shopping for a home in December.

Happy Holidays!