Customer Reviews

Urban Farm

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I like magazine overall. Great articles teaching you how to make hybrid trees and bee keeping for example. There a few articles that seemed a bit contrived - community action. I get the social aspect, but I would rather have more focus on the techniques, how-tos, and learning than the social aspects. I would recommend this magazine to people living in urban areas.

I received the first issue of this magazine and I like it. It has a lot of good articles that are applicable to gardening such as raising rabbits and chickens. Some of the articles tend to be a bit too left-wing envirnomentalist for me, but overall I still like the magazine.

I ordered this magazine on a whim during a promotion and both my husband and I are fans. My husband has previously remarked he would like to try keeping chickens and bees, and this magazine gives practical information and stories of those as well as on topics like container and community gardens. The content focuses on sustainable living without being preachy, with beautiful pictures. The magazine arrived quickly, within 2-3 weeks of placing my order. Most of the ads are in the back of the magazine, except when related to article content. Overall, the magazine is informative, a little quirky and fun.

`Green' magazines often preach instead of teach with a finger-wagging attitude that makes reading a chore. Urban Farm makes sustainable living a fun, informative read.

The clean, easy-to-read design blends nicely with beautiful, full-color photographs and how-to illustrations that appear cover-to-cover.

This edition included 12 feature stories, four columns - Backyard Coop, Curbside Tools, Green Thumb and Urban Feast - and a handful of other pieces. Here are Urban Farm's five cover teasers in the July/August 2011 edition:

* Grow Hot Peppers on a windowsill or a balcony
* Street Smarts: Forage for Urban Edibles
* 4 Easy Steps to Freezer Jam
* Simple Bio-Retention: Incorporate a Rain Garden into Your Landscape
* Sweet Corn Season Arrives! Details and recipes inside

The most interesting feature is Debbie Moors' story `Not Just Window Dressing.' The story features the Windowfarms Project and introduces home-hydroponic systems that are built from the contents of a recycling bin.

I can't say enough about the photography. Sure, there are some stock photos but the main features nicely balance all the elements. Rhoda Peacher's freezer jam photos are simply mouth-watering (Yum! Brambleberry!) There are eight step-by-step color photos accompanying Michael Locke's instructions on how to build a kitchen table from a salvaged pre-hung door (each photo is given enough real estate that you won't need to rummage through a junk drawer for a magnifying glass).

In summary, Urban Farm is my best, new magazine subscription in recent memory. I'm pleasantly surprised by the use of color, quality content and the friendly tone. I used to find myself flipping through Better Homes and Gardens and Good Housekeeping, looking for something interesting to pop out but more often disappointed in the results. I didn't bother to renew Real Simple, which is chock full of pricey gadgets and so bereft of utilitarian advice it should be classified as a home show catalog instead of a magazine. If you subscribe to these other magazines and find them unfulfilling then I recommend Urban Farm.

Rating: Five stars.

We were already into urban gardening before we subscribed to this magazine. When I found it on Amazon.com it piqued my interest. We read a copy and loved every article. It doesn't have really indepth articles but it sure gets you motivated to try out the various ideas. We love having fresh vegetables every day just about here in Florida and are not worried about any mass outbreak of illness because of production line veggies.

Loved it, used it, saving copies for later use. This is not just a good mag but a learning tool for future projects.

Good Magazine with interesting articles and ideas for those of us who are living in the city. Since I don't have much room for an actual "farm" nice to get tips on living naturally and growing organically.

My 1st issue of Urban Farm arrived a couple of weeks ago. I started thumbing through it somewhat tentatively, expecting that I had probably subscribed to a somewhat kooky, too narrow, micro-interest magazine, that I would not resubscribe to. Holey moley; every article was of interest to me, and they spanned a very wide spectrum of todays urban agriculture issues that are being talked about in local newspapers and city halls across the country. A couple of days later I took my new magazine over to an suburban revitalization organization that I am on the board of, particularily wanting to share it with our planning and developement committee. I know I lost the attention of some of the members during the meeting, as they began reading the magazine. I am now eagerly waiting for the next month's issue. A smart buy. Highly recommended.

I've picked up Urban Farm a few times when at a bookstore, but only recently decided to get the subscription. I'm a hopeful urban farmer, looking to get some chickens this summer and expand my garden in the next year. This magazine is very well put together, easy to read, and full of helpful information. I recommend it to anyone who is looking to get into urban farming or is already there and interested in different aspects of the act.

I recently started beekeeping and as such it has lead me into agriculture which is why I originally picked up this magazine. The articles are filled with great ideas for city dwellers looking to grow their own crops and take care of bees as well as many other ways to live sustainably. I've only had two issues, but so far its been great.