Could it be possible to earn $100,000 living off the wasted grassy lawn many a homeowner bemoans watering and mowing?

Well, at the very least Curtis Stone believes he can earn a living off it.

Stone has spent a couple of years preparing to launch his urban farming business here in Kelowna, operating entirely off the lawns and gardens of his city-dwelling neighbours.

The soon-to-be farmer has a plot at the corner of Saucier and Ethel, beside a house currently rented by the Katimavik student exchange program.

He secured the lot by offering the owners and the exchange program beside food for the use of the land.

“It’s good for them because they don’t have to worry about taking responsibility for a lawn anymore,” he said.

“…More and more these days people are becoming aware of climate change and wasting water, and a lawn just sits there.

“Some guy goes out and waters it. He mows it, but what does it return? Nothing.”

Stone was soon given access to another plot on Pandosy from another interested soul who heard about what he was doing and decided to take the box of food once a week and give up the lawn care chores.

The practice is called SPIN (Small Plot Intensive) farming. It’s turning people like Stone, a one-time musician and tree planter, into farmers capable of supplying their neighbours with the food they might normally buy from a grocery store.

“When I moved back to Kelowna a year and a half ago, I had this idea that I wanted to do something towards the community,” Stone explained.

“I was sick of spinning the wheels of a system I don’t believe in and I decided I wanted to do something towards sustainability because I was tired of living in a system I don’t believe in.”

Importing food from all over the world can mean we expend 100 calories of energy to produce 10 calories of apple and we’re destroying the planet in the meantime, he explained.

So when a friend introduced him to the urban farming concept, telling him there are people earning up to $100,000 off an acre of land, he was hooked.

“I’ve set myself up to be a one man operation,” he said. “And I’ll be using all organic methods, although I probably won’t ever be a certified organic operation.”

Last summer, he travelled from Kelowna to Tijuana, Mexico, on his bicycle working on organic farms in a work for room and board program known as WWOOFing—or the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.

From there he started a compost by handing out ice cream buckets from a local ice cream parlour to friends who could provide kitchen scraps.

And he connected with the SPIN farming network, where he’s been able to ask a couple of questions a week over the course of the year.

The SPIN-farming concept is a Canadian one, dreamt up by Saskatoon’s Wally Satzewich and Gail Vandersteen who’ve written a “how-to” guide for farmers.

“I talk to people in Michigan who are farming, I talk to people in Vancouver who are farming and it’s a really connected network,” said Stone.

Sandwiched between two condo buildings at his Ethel Street location, he’s also already secured a clientele which will include some restaurants, who are interested in the more profitable greens crops, and neighbours, who he figures will take anything from cucumbers to garlic.

“With all the things that are going on in the world today, it seems like we’re getting to this peak, and I wanted to do something,” he said. “This is something I figured I could do that was within my means. It may be small, but people walk by all the time and say: Oh what’s going on here? They love it and they want to buy food from me.”

jsmith@kelownacapnews.com