Farm Dreams (2023) s01e06 Episode Script
Raise the Roof
1
(rooster crows)
INDY: If you've ever
dreamed of owning a farm,
come with me.
PETE: Things are living and
things are growing on a rooftop.
INDY: I am Indy Officinalis.
I am a farmer who
loves helping other farmers.
My passion for
farming started in my teens,
working on a
homestead in North Carolina and
led me to urban
farming in LA.
I've worked on farms
from coast to coast but
farming is hard work.
MAN: We've planted about
ten variety of fruit trees
and they all died.
INDY: So I'm traveling the
country to offer some hope.
Hi.
WOMAN: Indy.
MADISON: Oh,
my gosh, Indy.
INDY: Join me as I
transform farms on rooftops,
in back yards, warehouses.
This is insane.
And even out on the ocean.
Farm rescue on a boat ♪
INDY: And on the way
we'll get tips from some of
my expert farmer friends.
WOMAN: This
is so awesome.
I'm so excited!
(laughter)
INDY: Today I'm in
Berkeley, California
where a soaring new
idea is taking hold.
Gardens grown sky high.
I'm visiting
Joanna Letz, the founder,
owner and operator of
Bluma Farms but out of view,
this farm is
struggling to be seen and
Joanna is
running herself ragged.
I've had years of experience
working on rooftop farms so if
I can bring visibility
to this secret oasis,
then surely it will bloom.
JOANNA: Welcome.
INDY: Hi!
Wow, this is so cool.
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: It's so
beautiful up here.
Thank you for having me.
JOANNA: Thanks for coming.
We are up here on a rooftop,
six stories in the
heart of Berkeley.
It's kind of
wild farming up here.
When I remember to look up,
I mean, we have
San Francisco here, Oakland,
the Berkeley Hills behind us.
INDY: Oh, yeah.
JOANNA: Here you'll
see our whole farm.
INDY: Oh, wow!
JOANNA: It's a very
interesting set up.
We have 16 growing roofs
with a total of about a quarter acre
and we grow, like, 50 to 60
different varieties of flowers
and then also the herbs.
I was initially looking
for land on the ground,
close to where I live down the
block and it's hard to come by
land in the city
and so in the city,
this is where it's
gonna happen.
INDY: This is such a
cool set up that it's, it's multiple different roofs.
I haven't seen a
rooftop farm like this.
And so people live
in these buildings?
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: Okay.
JOANNA: So, what
It's all residential
and the building was built in
the fall of 2016 and the farm
was built with the building so
it's not a normal place to
be farming but here we are.
INDY: Give me the full tour.
I wanna see what else.
JOANNA: Yeah,
let's keep going.
We have a lot of baby
plants in the ground.
INDY: Oh, nice.
JOANNA: Lavender
that's about to bloom.
INDY: Wow, this lavender.
It looks so pretty
and the rosemary.
JOANNA: The rosemary.
INDY: It's always fun to be
able to show off your garden.
I'm sure that you're spending
so much time just working
this alone, right,
it's just you?
JOANNA: Um, I have a crew.
I wouldn't be able to do
this without them for sure.
INDY: Because the demand
for flowers can ebb and flow with
the seasons and
with the holidays,
Joanna tells me her
ability to keep full time staff
has been somewhat erratic.
It's really incredible to
just walk down a random street
in Berkeley and see this
building that looks like
every other building
on this street but on the top it's just teeming with
life and Bluma Farm is set up
a little bit different than other
rooftop farms that I've
experienced because the way that
Joanna grows, she's growing
on different level platforms
so you're actually seeing all of
these little pockets of vibrant,
beautiful flowers.
JOANNA: I mean, my
favorite thing is harvesting
and growing the herbs.
You just get all the
wonderful scents and smells.
A lot of what we call
the hedgerows are planted
with California natives.
INDY: Oh, cool, okay.
JOANNA: So it's kind of
a pollinator habitat and
somehow the insects
find their way up here.
I was surprised how well the
plants do and we harvest so many
flowers from this
little quarter acre on these rooftops so it's, like,
I hope that this
encourages people to grow
wherever they're at.
INDY: In cities it's really
important to take advantage of
vertical space so
what Joanna's doing,
farming on a rooftop
is really innovative.
It's, it's almost like the
last frontier in urban spaces.
Rooftop farms can be an
invaluable habitat for birds or
traveling pollinators who
can take rest or find a snack.
Rooftop farms can also
be a source of food and
work opportunities for
those in the community,
providing insulation
for the building,
reduce rainwater
runoff and help bring down
the temperature in
the immediate area.
Having plants, rather
than asphalt radiating heat,
does wonders for that.
JOANNA: I need to go
harvest a few things.
INDY: Awesome, oh, fun.
I love harvesting flowers.
My gosh, these
look so beautiful.
JOANNA: But, yeah this is
INDY: I just wanna
roll around in this.
Do you ever do that?
JOANNA: If there's a
nice spot, I might, like,
go and take a little
nap under the flowers.
INDY: This is so magical.
So, so this is what
we need to harvest?
JOANNA: So we're gonna be
harvesting for our bouquets that
we'll be making tomorrow.
INDY: Oh, yay.
JOANNA: This is godetia.
We planted this in the fall and it started
blooming maybe a month ago and,
you know, maybe we'll
harvest some of the sweet peas as well
'cause they'll definitely
go in our bouquets.
INDY: So do you make
your arrangements up here
as you go or do you harvest
everything of one variety and
then go somewhere else?
JOANNA: Unless it's
some special circumstance
INDY: Mm-hmm.
JOANNA: I'll be
harvesting and then we design in the basement
INDY: Right, right.
JOANNA: In our studio.
INDY: And so then you sell
them to a store that carries them?
JOANNA: We have an
online shop so people are ordering directly from us.
We do a lot of weddings,
so we'll come up,
we'll harvest
right for our weddings,
we'll design in our studio and
then we'll go out and set it up.
INDY: Right.
So tell me why
you've chosen flowers?
JOANNA: A big part of it
could be so my grandparents survived
the holocaust in
Poland and my grandpa,
there wasn't a lot of, a
lot of joy in his life and
his garden was his one place
where I just saw him smile and
I think flowers just
bring people so much joy.
Farming, for me,
is both a way to, like,
heal from the past and
heal from some of this, like,
inner-generational trauma
as well as to heal the world and
to provide this
offering of something beautiful and abundant.
My grandparents went
back to Poland in their 90s.
INDY: Oh, wow.
JOANNA: And the apple tree
that they ate from during
hiding is still there.
INDY: So, so the
apple tree, like,
that was literally the
tree that your grandparents
JOANNA: That they survived
partly from that tree and
they went back and
ate from it and it was,
I think this very
powerful experience from them and for me, like,
I do have this
intimate relationship with
the plants that I'm growing.
INDY: I think it's just
beautiful how deeply personal of
a practice this is
for you that you're, you're carrying on a legacy
through the work
that you're doing.
Her farm is, is
more than just a job and it's more than just a way to
bring joy to her community
but it's also a way to preserve
the joy of her family.
Cool. That was so fun.
This farm is deeply
personal to Joanna,
even the name Bluma,
is a Yiddish word.
It's not just a career,
it's a part of her heritage.
JOANNA: I've definitely
questioned every year what
I'm doing and whether I
can keep doing it and, like,
how to make it
work for myself.
I think there were a
lot of years where I was just kind of, like,
my nose to the grindstone
but now I'm in year eight and
I think it comes down to
how to make this business
financially stable
in a way where we're not completely reliant
on the flowers
that we're growing
'cause that is really tough.
They're very fragile.
We have to harvest
them at the right point,
get them in the cooler and
get them out to people before
they start dying, basically.
So we're trying to sort of
figure out what to do here.
I'm not exactly
INDY: What are in the bags?
JOANNA: Like, a volcanic rock.
INDY: So right now
this is kind of, like,
extra garden
surplus storage area.
JOANNA: At the
moment, yeah.
INDY: Running this farm isn't
just about growing flowers.
It's also about
operating a business.
Between nurturing her plants,
her staff and her customers,
it seems like Joanna has
little time to nurture herself.
So what is the
vision for your farm?
JOANNA: Being able to
welcome people up to the farm,
especially given
where we are, like,
we're right here in the city
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: Yet people
don't know we're here.
INDY: Right.
JOANNA: If they don't know
to look up and even if they look up
from the street, it's like, they
won't know that we're a farm.
INDY: Right, just engaging
the local community and just, like,
letting folks know that
you're here, you're, right.
JOANNA: We're here.
INDY: Being a rooftop
farm has its advantages.
I mean, the air quality is
better and you have an endless
amount of full sun but
there's also some disadvantages,
the major one being that
people don't know that her farm exists
even when they're
walking right past it.
JOANNA: For the
business as a whole,
having some kind of revenue
from inviting people up here could
increase our capacity to really
be here for the long haul.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: I mean, I think too
just for people to see that
we can grow, you can
grow stuff anywhere.
INDY: Right, right.
I know just from my
experience in rooftop farming
that water was, like,
one of the biggest bills that we had in growing food.
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: So you have an
irrigation system in every bed
and then that water is
being pumped up here from?
JOANNA: Our
farm irrigation comes from the basement in our studio.
We do have issues
with pressure and
it uses energy
to get it up here.
INDY: Right, just
because of the height that
the water has to travel?
JOANNA: Exactly and
then we're in California,
we're in the
middle of a drought
INDY: Right, right.
JOANNA: So how we can
use less water up here?
INDY: I'm really inspired
by the work that Joanna does.
I'm passionate
about rooftop farming.
I think it's an incredible way
to grow food within a city and
I want to see her succeed
because the farm is important,
not just for her but for the
preservation of her heritage
and of her family.
JOANNA: I want to
believe that there's a way to make this farming thing,
this business work and
not work myself constantly.
INDY: Joanna has something
truly special at Bluma Farms
and the family
connection runs deep but
being on the roof makes
it hard to get people in,
get flowers out and keep the water
running in an economical way.
This farm is too enchanting
to stay so hidden away.
I'd like to find ways to help Joanna
get the Berkeley community
connected to the farm, grow
the company's local presence
to increase flower
sales and alleviate some of
the irrigation and water
supply issues that exist in the California climate
so that she can have
more time for herself.
I've spent years
working on rooftop farms so
I think I know just the
farms and farmers to visit to get some ideas for Bluma.
Time to meet up
with familiar faces at
some of my local
haunts back in LA.
INDY: So I'm going to visit
Dan Allen of Farmscape and
his rooftop farm is on
the top of the Jonathan Club.
It's a social club where
members enjoy athletics,
events and fine dining and
just like Bluma this farm serves
the immediate community
in a hyper local way.
Farmscape is literally a farm
in the middle of an events space
so they always have
people visiting the farm and
using their farm
as a gathering space.
So I think that they'll
have a lot of ideas as to how
Joanna can turn her farm into
more of a collective center.
DAN: Welcome.
INDY: Hi.
DAN: Thank you
for making it out.
INDY: Yes,
thanks for having me
DAN: Yeah!
INDY: This is so cool.
DAN: Oh, my gosh. So this is
the Jonathan Club rooftop farm.
INDY: Oh!
DAN: We're five stories up.
INDY: It smells so good, like,
I can smell the farm,
it's interesting being in the
middle of downtown and, like,
getting this
great smell of jasmine.
DAN: Yeah. I was gonna say
the jasmine gives you a nice aroma,
there's some
herbs in the garden,
some orange blossom
that you get.
INDY: It's so nice.
DAN: Yeah, it's a lovely space.
This is a converted series
of paddle tennis courts and
a running track and over time
we converted the rooftop to
what you see now.
The latest edition
is this seating area.
This seating area allows them
to obviously take advantage of
the beautiful rooftop
but also do so in really close proximity to the farm.
INDY: Yeah, I'd love
to check out the farm.
DAN: Let's do it, let's do it.
That's the main event.
(laughs)
INDY: Wow!
DAN: This is it.
INDY: This is beautiful.
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: I love this.
DAN: Thank you.
So, our summer crop
went in about a month ago so
what you're seeing is
a young summer garden.
It'll start yielding heavily
in the next month or two.
So, all the produce that
we grow here stays on site.
INDY: Oh, cool.
DAN: They have a restaurant,
their staff is up
here daily harvesting,
work here once
a week managing the site.
INDY: Wow, look at the
beans. DAN: Yeah.
This will be a cranberry bean
that the chef asked us to grow.
INDY: Oh, wow,
look at your tomatoes.
DAN: Yeah!
INDY: Oh, my gosh.
DAN: Like, with
the tomatoes right now, we're pruning suckers
INDY: Oh, yeah!
DAN: Shaping them to match
the type of infrastructure that
we're using in each of
the different areas so
the caged tomatoes get to
be the bushiest which means
we get to let
more suckers go.
INDY: Mm-hmm. But suckers
are just that vertical
DAN: Yeah, it's called a
sucker because it diverts a lot
of energy and if you don't
wanna actually grow that additional
leader on the plant,
you wanna prune it off.
INDY: It can really take over,
they take over your house.
DAN: Yeah, right.
We're in a drought in
southern California and we're trying to
make really thoughtful use of
all the water we use which is
why we use the drip irrigation,
really watering the
entire root zone of the planters
that develops because
that's gonna help it set
as much fruit as possible
throughout the season and
encourage the roots to go
deeper so that you don't have to
do it as frequent
as surface irrigation.
INDY: My own experience in
rooftop farming is that watering
things evenly makes
such a huge difference,
especially when you're losing
so much water to evaporation
just being that much
closer to the sun.
DAN: Mm-hmm.
INDY: How long have you
been growing food here?
DAN: We've been working
with the club for 11 years to do it.
INDY: Okay, wow, so,
you've really, you've had
11 years to perfect
growing on a rooftop?
DAN: Yes, there's a couple of
things that are really specific
to being on a rooftop.
There are different parts
of the roof that are sunnier
and shadier, so we actually
did a sun study when we sited
the garden here and
in particular you see a denser center row here
because it ended up being
one of the sunnier spots.
INDY: So, you just kind of
plan, you make your crop plan
according to how much
sun that you're getting?
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: Nice, all right,
show me what else.
DAN: Yeah, yeah, all right, so
everything we're growing up here
in about 3,000 square feet
so it's not a huge area in
the scheme of things
but we're able to grow a really wide variety of crops.
Peppers.
INDY: Yes, beans.
DAN: Well, we wanna
make use of the vertical growing space too, right?
In an urban environment,
every square foot counts and if we can
use the pole beans to grow
up this trellis and cover it,
besides being beautiful it means we get
more food out of a small space.
INDY: So, you guys
have tomatoes starting?
DAN: Mm-hmm.
Summer squash.
INDY: You have some edible
flowers back there, nasturtium.
DAN: Yeah, we got trees
INDY: Oh, yeah.
DAN: So this is the majority
of the growing area but
we have fruit surrounding most of the space.
INDY: Oh, cool. Oh, cool,
yeah, I'm starting to notice that.
DAN: Yeah, so a lot of citrus.
INDY: An olive tree.
DAN: Mm-hmm. So, most of
the gardens really young.
As you can see the summer
crop is just starting but
do you wanna at least trying something from
the garden while we're here?
INDY: I do, yeah.
DAN: Let's do it.
INDY: Ooh.
Incredible.
Those are beautiful
looking blueberries.
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: I'm just
gonna eat one right now.
DAN: Just go for it, go for it.
No, they're quite good.
INDY: These are delicious,
you've understated them.
DAN: Oh, good. Mm-hmm.
INDY: Like, blueberries
that you get in the store,
they taste almost
just like blue mush.
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: This has at least
five different flavors that
I'm getting at once right now.
DAN: It really pops, yeah.
INDY: It's, like,
tangy, sweet, blue.
It tastes blue somehow.
(laughter)
DAN: Yeah, yeah.
INDY: Yeah, these are so good.
DAN: Let's take
advantage of that seating we were looking at earlier.
(sighs)
DAN: Grab a seat.
INDY: Just having
folks up here dining
DAN: Mm-hmm.
INDY: Do you feel
like that increases their interest in the farm?
DAN: A lot.
The nice part about creating
this event space is it's an
opportunity to actually bring
people up here and, and say,
"By the way, you can
meander through the garden."
INDY: Exactly.
DAN: And, yeah.
And then the other part
that's important to us is just
showing that, you know, you
can literally grow your food
feet away from where
you're ready to enjoy it and
it's something that you
can really feature, right?
INDY: No, that's such a good point because
when you think about it,
it's almost like growing food,
in the US especially,
has had this history of
being kind of, like, a gross,
dirty thing that
happens somewhere else.
I mean, it's like, when
people think about farming,
they're thinking about manure
and dirt and kind of something
that happens away
from fine dining.
So, it's really beautiful to
see it converge up here in a way
that is aesthetically pleasing.
I mean, it just feels
good to be in this space.
DAN: Yeah. Well, it's a
meaningful connection, right?
Not only are you dining
literally feet from where
that food was harvested but it
also gives you a firsthand look
at what the growing
process looks like.
INDY: Right, right.
DAN: So you've worked
on a rooftop farm, right?
INDY: Yeah, yeah, at the Los Angeles Community
Action Network which is, like,
literally right down the street.
DAN: Oh, my gosh, yeah,
not far away at all.
Oh, that's great.
INDY: It's a really, you know,
unique way of growing food.
I, I'm sure that you
feel it here, I mean,
you're literally looking
right across at someone sitting
in their office
while you're on a farm.
DAN: Well, occasionally
it's so peaceful and quiet and
then other moments like
this maybe not so much but
it is a reminder
of where you are.
INDY: Yeah.
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: Awesome, well, thank you so much for having
me and for showing me everything.
DAN: Thank you
for making the trip.
INDY: And I feel
like has been so helpful.
As Dan mentioned the rooftop
garden where I used to work with
the Los Angeles Community
Action Network or LACAN
is just down the
road from here.
I think it's time I
visit my old stomping ground.
(laughs)
Monique!
MONIQUE: Oh, my God!
INDY: Hi!
MONIQUE: Indy.
INDY: It's so good to see you.
MONIQUE: Oh, my God,
give me a hug.
What you doing back here?
INDY: Just outside the
rooftop garden where I used to
work I bump into one of my
friends who runs the program,
Monique Noel.
MONIQUE: There's
lots to show you.
INDY: Monique is part of the food and
wellness committee for LACAN,
a non-profit that's been
addressing issues of housing,
civil rights and
access to healthy food in
the Los Angeles
area since 1999.
This looks so great,
the flowers, I love the flowers.
MONIQUE: Right, I know,
and the rosemary,
it always grows out of control
but that's the beauty of it,
the wildness of it, I
love the way it's just there.
INDY: Working at LACAN for
two years as a farm manager was
a transformative
experience for me.
It was hard work and I
learned that if you can grow food on
Skid Row, you can
grow food anywhere.
MONIQUE: So here
we have a lemon tree.
INDY: Ooh. That looks nice.
MONIQUE: Uh-huh.
We have our rosemary here.
INDY: Oh, sage.
MONIQUE: Sage.
Everything that we're
growing up here we use and
we eat and this is the
INDY: Pete, what's up?
PETE: Indy, what's up?
INDY: Back there,
hiding and eating tomatoes.
Good to see you.
PETE: You're busting
me getting breakfast.
INDY: My boss
when I worked here was
the Executive Director
of LACAN, Pete White.
Oh, man, I'm
gonna eat one too.
PETE: Yeah, they're pretty
good. INDY: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
PETE: They're decent.
INDY: That is super good.
It looks so good up here.
PETE: I know, let's look at some of the
other stuff that's up here.
INDY: Yeah, yeah,
give me a tour.
PETE: Check it out.
INDY: Give me a tour.
PETE: We have some
purple beans growing right here.
INDY: Ooh, you
know I like beans.
PETE: I know you
love the beans, man!
INDY: Yes!
PETE: And then we have
this tall dinosaur kale.
INDY: Oh, the kale is crazy.
PETE: You know, I kind of
love it because it's taller than me.
Not many things
are taller than me.
INDY: This is a nice
spring garden going on.
PETE: No, that's right.
INDY: Yeah.
PETE: That's right.
Things are living and
things are growing on a rooftop.
INDY: Always living and
growing and the flowers look amazing.
PETE: Oh, man, and
you know the flowers are bringing the pollinators.
INDY: Yes.
PETE: We got the
butterflies coming,
we got the birds
coming so it's going down.
INDY: Which is magical
because when you're downstairs,
we are in Skid Row and,
you know, it's a very intentional space that
has been ignored on purpose
and so being able to
grow food in this space,
I mean, that's everything.
PETE: I think you named
it service level what we're,
what we get to experience is all of the
organized abandonment, right?
INDY: Yeah.
PETE: But on the rooftop
we're able to elevate in so many other
ways and not just simply
coming up the stairs but, you know,
walking on a rooftop
and just breathing fresh air,
much like many other, um,
low income communities,
access to fresh fruits and
vegetables is slim to none.
INDY: Right. Right.
MONIQUE: You know,
it's important to have this space here,
it's important to be able
to have these gardens to grow
and to be able to just relax.
INDY: There are so many
ways to bring nature and plants into
urban industrial areas
but one issue that troubles
every rooftop farmer
is access to water.
I
(laughs)
I remember when I was here
and I was watering things by hand
using city water and one time
I left the hose flowing.
PETE: Oh, so now you tell,
that was the bill that I was like,
"What happened, this
is a high water bill."
INDY: But, but I
have these friends,
they have a similar set up.
Now they're really focused
on trying to figure out how to
bring water to their garden
in a way that isn't gonna drive
their water bill
through the roof.
I wanna check in with Pete
about some exciting technology from
a company called Skywell that has totally
changed Pete's water game.
PETE: As long as there's 27%
relative humidity in the air,
this large machine
creates 100 gallons of water per night, right?
INDY: What!
PETE: And so, when you're
that, when you're in a region like
Los Angeles that's, you know,
adjacent to the ocean,
there's always gonna be at least
27% relative humidity in the
air and so we built a reservoir and
we just started using
water from the clouds to
actually feed our gardens.
INDY: An atmospheric water
generator uses technology to
collect water from the air.
Fans pull air over a cooling
coil which prompts condensation.
The water droplets are
collected and filtered for
drinking or watering gardens.
The collected water can
be stored in a reservoir and
hooked up to a drip irrigation
system that's set on a timer.
So this means that you're
not on public city water?
PETE: So with the
current set up that we have,
we are using some.
We're using 50%
less water, right?
INDY: Wow, okay,
that's significant.
PETE: And that's significant
INDY: Yeah, that is.
PETE: In a place
like Los Angeles.
INDY: That's amazing.
My friends at Bluma, they are
just pumping their water from
a lower level up to
their rooftop farm and,
I mean, that's running
their electricity bill up and
it's just difficult.
It's hard on their system.
PETE: You have to make it
as easy and as comfortable for
folks to garden because if, if ease and
comfortability is not there,
the garden will die.
INDY: Right.
PETE: Farmers know, right,
and urban farmers know all too well
that the cost of, you know,
of running a garden,
the highest cost is the water.
INDY: The water, yeah, and
then the water that is being
harvested is that
drinkable water?
PETE: Oh, yeah, well,
you can bathe in it,
you can cook in it
and it's delicious.
INDY: Yeah.
It's locally sourced.
I mean, how many
can say that?
PETE: How local, this
is my water right here.
I'm about to
drink you later, right?
So, yes.
INDY: That's so cool.
MONIQUE: And Skid Row, I
mean, there's no water in Skid Row.
There's no real
facilities for people to use.
There's no drinking water.
So, for us to be able to
offer this as a place for people
to come, a destination for
people to come and get fresh,
clean water is amazing.
I mean, that's a
game changer for us.
PETE: That's right.
INDY: That's incredible.
Sweet, yeah, I'd love
to try some downstairs
PETE: Yeah, 100%.
INDY: Go check it out.
INDY: All right.
Drinking water.
Joanna wants to be more
eco-friendly and she also wants
a way to get water to the roof
without having to pump it from
her basement so the
Skywell system seems like
just the perfect fit.
PETE: Bottoms up.
MONIQUE: It's good.
PETE: Right?
INDY: It's really good,
it's really good.
This is water from our
air that tastes crisp
PETE: Tastes delicious, right?
INDY: It's crisp,
it's delicious.
And it's filtered, right?
PETE: 100%.
INDY: It's really good.
MONIQUE: I'm about to take
this salad bowl to one of my friends,
one of our neighbors
just down the block.
INDY: Yeah, can I come?
MONIQUE: Come with me.
INDY: Yeah.
PETE: I'm not going.
So I'm gonna say,
I'm gonna see you later.
INDY: Thank you.
PETE: It was so good seeing you.
INDY: So good
to see you too.
MONIQUE: I'm gonna
put this in the basket.
INDY: Wow, this
bike is so cool.
You've been doing your
deliveries with this bike?
MONIQUE: Yes.
INDY: That's the idea?
MONIQUE: Yeah, so, we
know that folk in the community,
you know, can't really get
around too much but it's better
than being in a car 'cause I
can get through little alleyways and
just find people where they
are and this has really worked out.
INDY: That's so cool, like, actually
bringing the farm to them.
MONIQUE: That's right.
INDY: Yeah, and so then what do you, what
do you keep in the basket?
What do you?
MONIQUE: So, sometimes
we have meals that we've prepared
but oftentimes, it's
vegetables and fruit and
stuff from the
garden and herbs.
We have little herb bundles
that we deliver to people, um, water,
it's just things that
kind of people need to be well.
INDY: If you're a farm and
most of your customers are right in
your neighborhood, having a
bike makes it really simple to
interact with your customers
and also make deliveries.
I love that and
you can just, like,
zip around and bring things
straight to the community.
That's such a
great way to engage.
I love that.
MONIQUE: And it's good
for the environment too.
INDY: Yeah, oh, good point.
Win, win, awesome.
After I finish these deliveries,
it's time to head back to
Berkeley and Bluma Farm to put
these great new
rooftop ideas to the test.
I'm so excited to share all my
new ideas with Joanna on how to
make her business grow
that I want to shout them from
the rooftops but Mother's Day
is fast approaching so she's
working around the clock
to get her orders in on time.
Hi.
JOANNA: Hey.
INDY: Hey, how are you?
BOTH: It's so
good to see you.
INDY: It's good to be back,
everything looks beautiful.
JOANNA: Yay, thank you.
INDY: So are you,
you're picking these all for arrangements right now?
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: Mother's
Day orders.
INDY: Yes.
JOANNA: This week.
INDY: That's awesome.
JOANNA: Yeah, so I've
harvested some sweet peas,
more of the godetia, um,
and raspberry.
I'm just harvesting for some
orders and then headed down to
the basement to start
putting stuff together.
INDY: Oh, no way.
Can I give you a hand?
JOANNA: That'd be
awesome. INDY: Yay, perfect.
Looks like Joanna is
preparing for the holiday rush
all by herself so I'll share
my rooftop farming ideas after
I give her a hand.
Yay.
JOANNA: All right.
INDY: Perfect.
So, who are these
bouquets going to?
JOANNA: This is an
order for a winery
INDY: Oh, cool.
JOANNA: That's
super close by in Berkeley.
Most of our deliveries are
in Berkeley so that's nice so
we don't have to
travel too far to get there.
So, yeah, we got lemon
verbena, we got some sticky monkey
INDY: Smells so good.
JOANNA: Um, and sweet peas.
I always try to put stuff
that's fragrant and something
that's wild so it really
kind of feels like the farm.
Yay, nice to have
some extra hands.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: And show what we do.
INDY: It takes a lot of
experience and practice to
seed plants and
make them grow.
I think I've got that part
down pretty well but it's
a whole other set of skills to
make an artistic arrangement.
I feel like I'm
creating a monster.
JOANNA: Looks gorgeous.
INDY: Yeah. Okay.
JOANNA: I think farming is
both art and science and it's so fun
to be able to just go up and
harvest and come down here and
put stuff together.
You know, it's just
working, working, working.
I would start work at 4:00 am
and be done at midnight and
I think that definitely weighed on my ability to
make good decisions for
the business but I just can't
wait to see what kinds of ideas
Indy comes up with to
help me make this farm
go for the long run.
I really just wanna keep doing
it and I need a little help.
INDY: Seeing her
amongst the flowers,
in her natural element
doing what she loves,
it makes me even more
excited and passionate about helping
her because she, she
just belongs on this farm.
Flowers bring people joy.
I think it's an incredible
unique product to grow.
JOANNA: We're ready to roll.
INDY: Yeah, so you need to
bring these up to the street level?
JOANNA: We do.
INDY: There's something I actually wanna
show you on the ground level.
JOANNA: Ooh, all right.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: Exciting
INDY: Yeah, you wanna come
and check it out? Let's do it.
I'm more than happy to be an
extra set of hands today but for
future deliveries, she's going
to need a little more assistance
and I've got a custom made surprise that
should do just the trick.
Before we go to your car,
I wanted to show you
JOANNA: Oh, my God.
INDY: The new
Bluma Farms delivery bike.
JOANNA: What?
INDY: Yes, yes.
JOANNA: This is for me?
INDY: Yes, it is.
JOANNA: Oh, my God.
INDY: So I was
visiting my friends at
the Los Angles
Community Action Network
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: And they use a bike
that's really similar to
this to do all of
their farm deliveries and
you were talking about how
there is just so many people who live
right in this neighborhood who don't
know that Bluma Farms exist.
JOANNA: Now they're
gonna see me on the bike.
INDY: Exactly.
JOANNA: With their flowers.
INDY: Exactly.
JOANNA: Amazing.
I never would have imagined
myself on this electric bike
and here it is for me.
It's this beautiful bike that
people are gonna get to see me
riding through the
city with my flowers.
I feel like it embodies the
kind of spirit that is my farm.
This is so amazing.
Thank you so much.
INDY: I'm so glad.
Should we load them
up and see how it looks?
JOANNA: I really
can't believe it.
Yeah, let's do it.
INDY: Yeah, okay cool.
Making deliveries on
a bike with the Bluma logo
featured prominently
will ensure that everyone in
the neighborhood knows
about Joanna's company and parking
the bike outside her building
will show folks where Bluma is.
Now I've got more
surprises in store.
The flowers look
incredible on this.
JOANNA: Wow.
INDY: This is so cute.
JOANNA: Wow! And I got a
helmet too to stay safe.
Thank you.
INDY: Yes, of course.
Okay, there's one more
thing that I wanna show you.
JOANNA: One
more thing. What?
(knocking)
What is going on?
INDY: Dun, dun, dun
JOANNA: Oh, my goodness.
INDY: Ta-da.
JOANNA: What is this?
INDY: It's nothing but special deliveries
today and like any farm,
especially in California,
Joanna may just get her
biggest money
problem solved,
how to reduce her water bill.
My friends at Los Angeles
Community Action Network,
they have one of these on
their rooftop farm and it's incredible
that they're able to just
take water out of the air,
put it into this machine and
then you can use that to pump
into your irrigation system,
to water all of your plants
so you're not
relying on your city water
to be pumped
all the way from
the basement and use
all of that unnecessary energy
just to water your plants.
JOANNA: Right.
Oh, my goodness. Wow.
This is gonna make such
a difference on my farm.
This is, like, exactly the
kind of thing that my farm needs
to go into the future.
As a rooftop farm, we
don't have as many options
in terms of water
holding capacity, so, I mean,
I'm just sort of flabbergasted
by the innovative technologies
that they've created.
Wow, what a trip.
INDY: All right, so, are you
ready to make some deliveries?
JOANNA: Yeah. I mean, yes.
So excited to try this out.
INDY: Cool. I
have my bike too.
JOANNA: Let's hit the road.
INDY: Yeah!
JOANNA: All right.
Getting used to the bike.
INDY: You look great.
JOANNA: Thanks.
INDY: I feel like
that color suits you.
JOANNA: Woo-hoo.
It's, like, such a
beautiful moment and I, like,
get to interact with the
community in this way and
have people see me driving
through the city on this bike
with all our flowers,
nothing feels better than that.
INDY: So much fun.
JOANNA: That
was really, really fun.
INDY: Did you enjoy it?
JOANNA: Oh, my God, so much.
INDY: I feel like
I have helmet hair.
JOANNA: Oh.
INDY: This is so cute.
JOANNA: Yeah,
it's super cute.
Hi.
JOSH: Hey.
It's good to see you guys.
Look at these,
they look beautiful.
Thank you so much,
see you again soon.
JOANNA: Bye.
INDY: Your first bike delivery.
JOANNA: Woo-hoo.
Empty delivery cart.
INDY: I know.
Doesn't that feel good?
JOANNA: Feels so good.
INDY: We're off.
JOANNA: We're off.
INDY: I'll follow you, I
don't remember the way back.
JOANNA: Cool.
INDY: Handpicked,
arranged and delivered just in the nick of time.
JOANNA: Woo-hoo!
Such a nice ride.
INDY: So. Yes.
I had another delivery
come this morning.
JOANNA: Another delivery?
INDY: Yes.
JOANNA: What?
Oh, my God, what is it?
INDY: Well, it's wood but
JOANNA: Okay?
INDY: I'm gonna
show you what it's for.
Do you wanna go
up to the roof?
JOANNA: Yeah, great.
INDY: Okay, let's go.
Let me show you,
let's come over here.
JOANNA: Wow.
INDY: Okay, so all of the
wood that we saw downstairs,
I was thinking that if we
put some of that down and
used it as flooring, then
you have this, like, nice,
open clear space where
you can have workshops.
The idea is just to bring more
folks who aren't even aware that
Bluma Farms is right here in
the middle of their community.
I feel like, having
something like that here could
be such an integral piece.
JOANNA: To know that so
many people want me to succeed and
want this farm to continue,
means so much to me.
It makes me feel like
I'm not alone doing this.
I feel so grateful to have people in my
corner saying, "Yeah,"
like cheering me
on and saying,
"Hey, you can do this,"
and it means so much.
INDY: Thank you for bringing
me into your farm and
JOANNA: Thank you
for being here.
INDY: Showing me all of
the work that you're doing.
This has been an, an
incredible opportunity and I can't wait to
see what you do
with this space.
I'm definitely
gonna come back and see.
I, I'm so confident that you're
going to just transform this
area into something incredible.
JOANNA: I think my grandpa
would be really proud of what
I've built and that I'm farming.
Meeting Indy and all of these
things that she has offered
my farm means that, you
know, I can keep going into the future.
INDY: I can't wait to come
back and see just how much
her business has grown and if
Joanna has managed to carve out
a little more time for herself.
INDY: It's been a few weeks
since I've seen Joanna and
she's been so busy that I
catch her just as she finishes
a few deliveries
around the neighborhood.
JOANNA: Woo-hoo.
INDY: Hi. That looks awesome.
JOANNA: Yes,
it's so, so much fun.
INDY: And you look great on
it. Oh, it's good to see you.
JOANNA: Good to see you.
INDY: Wow, so
you're loving the bike?
JOANNA: It's so fun and
people just love seeing me around town, with it filled,
just did deliveries, it
was all filled with flowers.
Now we have party supplies.
INDY: That's exciting.
You're having a party here?
JOANNA: We're having a party, we're gonna
inaugurate the new deck.
INDY: There's a new deck.
JOANNA: Yeah!
INDY: I can't wait to see it.
JOANNA: Yeah, let's grab
a bag and we'll head in.
INDY: When I left Joanna, I
had given her the raw materials and
this idea of the seating area
but I was really concerned that
maybe the new deck and
seating area didn't work out.
JOANNA: Here we go.
Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
INDY: Oh, my gosh, I love it.
JOANNA: Yay.
INDY: This is amazing.
I am so glad that it worked
out, this is perfect, it's amazing.
JOANNA: I know, I mean,
it's still a work in progress.
We're gonna put in plants in
the hedgerows here and we could host
all kinds of workshops
and classes and maybe, like,
a Bluma Café and have
coffee and treats and,
I don't know, poetry.
INDY: Yeah. Yes.
JOANNA: It's just gonna
be so nice to be able to
host people here and show
off the farm and have parties,
like we're gonna
have tonight so.
INDY: Yeah. Yes!
It looks like Joanna is
still getting ready for
the festivities later but I
love how this deck turned out.
Being able to turn it into something
functional is incredible.
JOANNA: It's, like,
game changer.
It really, like, warms my heart
to be able to have this space.
I feel like there's so much
hope in farming and to get to share
that with people, feels like something
really positive and good.
INDY: Yeah, it does.
JOANNA: So
I think that building
relationships with the soil
really helped my grandpa because most of
his life he was pretty sad.
He lost all of his family
in the holocaust but I think,
for me, learning about plants
and taking care of the soil has
also been sort of a
transformative experience and
healing in a lot of ways and
I think my grandpa
would be really proud.
Thank you for
helping make this happen.
INDY: Of course, of course.
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: I'm so happy
to be a part of this.
How's business been?
JOANNA: Thank you.
Business is good.
We have a wedding
tomorrow so
if you wanna come
harvest a few things.
INDY: Of course, awesome,
always happy to harvest flowers.
JOANNA: Yay.
You can harvest all the
way to the bottom there.
INDY: Okay.
Bluma seems to be thriving.
The deck looks gorgeous.
The bike delivery system is
on point and business is booming.
I just hope that this
farm still isn't taking
everything out of Joanna.
JOANNA: Let's go grab some
herbs and make some sun tea.
INDY: What herb is it?
JOANNA: Chamomile.
INDY: Oh, my gosh,
they're so cute.
Awesome. No
electricity needed.
That is so beautiful.
JOANNA: So pretty.
INDY: Unfortunately one of
my solutions didn't work out.
The building's proprietors
decided not to install
the atmospheric water
generator on the roof.
It just goes to show that not every solution
is viable for every farm.
JOANNA: The owners were
worried about the weight and
the power usage in getting
it up here so the owners of
the building
decided not to take it.
INDY: Mm.
I am still really
concerned that Joanna's not able
to use water on the
farm as efficiently as she would like to.
I think that that's kind of
the hard part of farming is
one solution that works
perfectly on one farm,
can just not land on another.
So it's important to
always have a backup plan.
Um, I actually do have
something in my car that
I feel like could possibly
work if you're open to
giving something else a try?
JOANNA: Yeah, definitely.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: That'd be great.
INDY: All right.
I'll go grab it.
All right, little sun tea.
The water problem in
California can't always be
solved out of thin air.
In this case, some clever
technology may do the trick.
So this is a
Wi-Fi-enabled controller
that will allow
you to turn off and on
your irrigation system
remotely from your phone
JOANNA: Amazing.
INDY: Yeah, yeah.
JOANNA: Thank you.
INDY: So, let's say, it starts
raining and you're at home.
Instead of running over to the
farm and having to manually turn
it off, you can just do
it right from your phone.
JOANNA: Whoa. Cool.
Oh, this is gonna make
my life so much easier.
INDY: Well, being able to turn
on and off the irrigation system
is just going to make it
run that much more efficiently.
JOANNA: Thank you.
Excited to, to put it to use.
I mean, it's just like
if the technology exists,
we should be using it
and just making those
very timed decisions and
not having to be at the farm,
makes my life easier.
INDY: So, open up the app.
JOANNA: Cool.
INDY: You can set it
so that you can turn on
different quadrants
if you want.
JOANNA: Right.
That's really so important
right now for any farm in
California to figure
out ways to reduce water.
INDY: So, yeah, just
press on from there.
JOANNA: Amazing.
Okay, let's see.
INDY: Yay, it's working.
JOANNA: Yay.
INDY: That's so great.
It may not look
like much but this slow and
steady drip irrigation is an easy way to conserve
water and if Joanna can now
control her watering through
a Wi-Fi system on her phone,
she'll save water and
have more time to herself.
JOANNA: All right. It's time
to get ready for the party.
INDY: Party.
So much of farming is out
of our control but finding
new solutions is always
a cause for celebration.
Now it looks
like the butterflies,
birds and bees aren't
the only ones who know about this flowery oasis.
JOANNA: Hi.
INDY: Hi.
Oh, this looks awesome.
JOANNA: Thank you.
INDY: Everything
looks so beautiful.
What?
This is great, this is, like,
exactly what you imagined.
JOANNA: Exactly, yeah.
Do you wanna meet everyone?
INDY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JOANNA: Okay, everybody,
I wanted to introduce Indy
INDY: Hey, everybody.
JOANNA: So this is family,
loved ones, friends.
So, Indy helped get this
deck to happen so thank you.
INDY: Yes. Of course.
JOANNA: And it's such, like,
a pleasure to inaugurate this
space where we can
bring people up and, like,
have them see the
farm and get to enjoy it.
INDY: And it's wild to think
that this was all storage.
JOANNA: Right?
INDY: Like, just the
last time I was here.
JOANNA: And
now it's, like, here.
INDY: People celebrating,
celebrating you and the farm.
JOANNA: I know. I know.
And we have delicious
food and some wine and
INDY: Exactly.
JOANNA: Enjoy.
INDY: Oh, speaking
of beverages,
let me show you this.
JOANNA: Okay. Wow.
INDY: So, you remember
the other Skywell system.
This is a lot smaller but
it's great for drinking water
and for events
like this, it's perfect.
JOANNA: And that's
just from the atmosphere?
INDY: It's being
pulled directly
JOANNA: Pulled from the sky.
I mean, cool, that's so wild.
INDY: Cheers.
JOANNA: Cheers.
INDY: It's so good.
JOANNA: It's really good.
So, if anybody wants to try
water from the atmosphere,
go ahead and
drink up, nice and cold.
INDY: It's so fun
to be a part of this.
JOANNA: Thank
you, so special.
INDY: So it really, like,
this is the moment that I feel
like it, everything is
really coming together.
It's like a farm is nothing
without people and community
JOANNA: Right?
INDY: So seeing everyone here.
JOANNA: It's so perfect.
INDY: Yeah.
I think Joanna's not
necessarily feeding people physically but
she's feeding the soul
part of individuals and
we need that kind of joy.
JOANNA: Bye.
INDY: Bye. Bye.
JOANNA: Thank you.
INDY: Farming shouldn't
just be about consumption.
It should be about giving
back what we give to the land,
what we bring to our
community and I think Joanna is bringing
a lot to her community
by providing something that
folks can use to celebrate.
While most solutions
for Bluma Farms worked out,
they're not always one size
fits all but when farmers get
together and help other
farmers, we create a stronger community
with one another and
the people we serve,
no matter where the farm.
Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.
(rooster crows)
INDY: If you've ever
dreamed of owning a farm,
come with me.
PETE: Things are living and
things are growing on a rooftop.
INDY: I am Indy Officinalis.
I am a farmer who
loves helping other farmers.
My passion for
farming started in my teens,
working on a
homestead in North Carolina and
led me to urban
farming in LA.
I've worked on farms
from coast to coast but
farming is hard work.
MAN: We've planted about
ten variety of fruit trees
and they all died.
INDY: So I'm traveling the
country to offer some hope.
Hi.
WOMAN: Indy.
MADISON: Oh,
my gosh, Indy.
INDY: Join me as I
transform farms on rooftops,
in back yards, warehouses.
This is insane.
And even out on the ocean.
Farm rescue on a boat ♪
INDY: And on the way
we'll get tips from some of
my expert farmer friends.
WOMAN: This
is so awesome.
I'm so excited!
(laughter)
INDY: Today I'm in
Berkeley, California
where a soaring new
idea is taking hold.
Gardens grown sky high.
I'm visiting
Joanna Letz, the founder,
owner and operator of
Bluma Farms but out of view,
this farm is
struggling to be seen and
Joanna is
running herself ragged.
I've had years of experience
working on rooftop farms so if
I can bring visibility
to this secret oasis,
then surely it will bloom.
JOANNA: Welcome.
INDY: Hi!
Wow, this is so cool.
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: It's so
beautiful up here.
Thank you for having me.
JOANNA: Thanks for coming.
We are up here on a rooftop,
six stories in the
heart of Berkeley.
It's kind of
wild farming up here.
When I remember to look up,
I mean, we have
San Francisco here, Oakland,
the Berkeley Hills behind us.
INDY: Oh, yeah.
JOANNA: Here you'll
see our whole farm.
INDY: Oh, wow!
JOANNA: It's a very
interesting set up.
We have 16 growing roofs
with a total of about a quarter acre
and we grow, like, 50 to 60
different varieties of flowers
and then also the herbs.
I was initially looking
for land on the ground,
close to where I live down the
block and it's hard to come by
land in the city
and so in the city,
this is where it's
gonna happen.
INDY: This is such a
cool set up that it's, it's multiple different roofs.
I haven't seen a
rooftop farm like this.
And so people live
in these buildings?
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: Okay.
JOANNA: So, what
It's all residential
and the building was built in
the fall of 2016 and the farm
was built with the building so
it's not a normal place to
be farming but here we are.
INDY: Give me the full tour.
I wanna see what else.
JOANNA: Yeah,
let's keep going.
We have a lot of baby
plants in the ground.
INDY: Oh, nice.
JOANNA: Lavender
that's about to bloom.
INDY: Wow, this lavender.
It looks so pretty
and the rosemary.
JOANNA: The rosemary.
INDY: It's always fun to be
able to show off your garden.
I'm sure that you're spending
so much time just working
this alone, right,
it's just you?
JOANNA: Um, I have a crew.
I wouldn't be able to do
this without them for sure.
INDY: Because the demand
for flowers can ebb and flow with
the seasons and
with the holidays,
Joanna tells me her
ability to keep full time staff
has been somewhat erratic.
It's really incredible to
just walk down a random street
in Berkeley and see this
building that looks like
every other building
on this street but on the top it's just teeming with
life and Bluma Farm is set up
a little bit different than other
rooftop farms that I've
experienced because the way that
Joanna grows, she's growing
on different level platforms
so you're actually seeing all of
these little pockets of vibrant,
beautiful flowers.
JOANNA: I mean, my
favorite thing is harvesting
and growing the herbs.
You just get all the
wonderful scents and smells.
A lot of what we call
the hedgerows are planted
with California natives.
INDY: Oh, cool, okay.
JOANNA: So it's kind of
a pollinator habitat and
somehow the insects
find their way up here.
I was surprised how well the
plants do and we harvest so many
flowers from this
little quarter acre on these rooftops so it's, like,
I hope that this
encourages people to grow
wherever they're at.
INDY: In cities it's really
important to take advantage of
vertical space so
what Joanna's doing,
farming on a rooftop
is really innovative.
It's, it's almost like the
last frontier in urban spaces.
Rooftop farms can be an
invaluable habitat for birds or
traveling pollinators who
can take rest or find a snack.
Rooftop farms can also
be a source of food and
work opportunities for
those in the community,
providing insulation
for the building,
reduce rainwater
runoff and help bring down
the temperature in
the immediate area.
Having plants, rather
than asphalt radiating heat,
does wonders for that.
JOANNA: I need to go
harvest a few things.
INDY: Awesome, oh, fun.
I love harvesting flowers.
My gosh, these
look so beautiful.
JOANNA: But, yeah this is
INDY: I just wanna
roll around in this.
Do you ever do that?
JOANNA: If there's a
nice spot, I might, like,
go and take a little
nap under the flowers.
INDY: This is so magical.
So, so this is what
we need to harvest?
JOANNA: So we're gonna be
harvesting for our bouquets that
we'll be making tomorrow.
INDY: Oh, yay.
JOANNA: This is godetia.
We planted this in the fall and it started
blooming maybe a month ago and,
you know, maybe we'll
harvest some of the sweet peas as well
'cause they'll definitely
go in our bouquets.
INDY: So do you make
your arrangements up here
as you go or do you harvest
everything of one variety and
then go somewhere else?
JOANNA: Unless it's
some special circumstance
INDY: Mm-hmm.
JOANNA: I'll be
harvesting and then we design in the basement
INDY: Right, right.
JOANNA: In our studio.
INDY: And so then you sell
them to a store that carries them?
JOANNA: We have an
online shop so people are ordering directly from us.
We do a lot of weddings,
so we'll come up,
we'll harvest
right for our weddings,
we'll design in our studio and
then we'll go out and set it up.
INDY: Right.
So tell me why
you've chosen flowers?
JOANNA: A big part of it
could be so my grandparents survived
the holocaust in
Poland and my grandpa,
there wasn't a lot of, a
lot of joy in his life and
his garden was his one place
where I just saw him smile and
I think flowers just
bring people so much joy.
Farming, for me,
is both a way to, like,
heal from the past and
heal from some of this, like,
inner-generational trauma
as well as to heal the world and
to provide this
offering of something beautiful and abundant.
My grandparents went
back to Poland in their 90s.
INDY: Oh, wow.
JOANNA: And the apple tree
that they ate from during
hiding is still there.
INDY: So, so the
apple tree, like,
that was literally the
tree that your grandparents
JOANNA: That they survived
partly from that tree and
they went back and
ate from it and it was,
I think this very
powerful experience from them and for me, like,
I do have this
intimate relationship with
the plants that I'm growing.
INDY: I think it's just
beautiful how deeply personal of
a practice this is
for you that you're, you're carrying on a legacy
through the work
that you're doing.
Her farm is, is
more than just a job and it's more than just a way to
bring joy to her community
but it's also a way to preserve
the joy of her family.
Cool. That was so fun.
This farm is deeply
personal to Joanna,
even the name Bluma,
is a Yiddish word.
It's not just a career,
it's a part of her heritage.
JOANNA: I've definitely
questioned every year what
I'm doing and whether I
can keep doing it and, like,
how to make it
work for myself.
I think there were a
lot of years where I was just kind of, like,
my nose to the grindstone
but now I'm in year eight and
I think it comes down to
how to make this business
financially stable
in a way where we're not completely reliant
on the flowers
that we're growing
'cause that is really tough.
They're very fragile.
We have to harvest
them at the right point,
get them in the cooler and
get them out to people before
they start dying, basically.
So we're trying to sort of
figure out what to do here.
I'm not exactly
INDY: What are in the bags?
JOANNA: Like, a volcanic rock.
INDY: So right now
this is kind of, like,
extra garden
surplus storage area.
JOANNA: At the
moment, yeah.
INDY: Running this farm isn't
just about growing flowers.
It's also about
operating a business.
Between nurturing her plants,
her staff and her customers,
it seems like Joanna has
little time to nurture herself.
So what is the
vision for your farm?
JOANNA: Being able to
welcome people up to the farm,
especially given
where we are, like,
we're right here in the city
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: Yet people
don't know we're here.
INDY: Right.
JOANNA: If they don't know
to look up and even if they look up
from the street, it's like, they
won't know that we're a farm.
INDY: Right, just engaging
the local community and just, like,
letting folks know that
you're here, you're, right.
JOANNA: We're here.
INDY: Being a rooftop
farm has its advantages.
I mean, the air quality is
better and you have an endless
amount of full sun but
there's also some disadvantages,
the major one being that
people don't know that her farm exists
even when they're
walking right past it.
JOANNA: For the
business as a whole,
having some kind of revenue
from inviting people up here could
increase our capacity to really
be here for the long haul.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: I mean, I think too
just for people to see that
we can grow, you can
grow stuff anywhere.
INDY: Right, right.
I know just from my
experience in rooftop farming
that water was, like,
one of the biggest bills that we had in growing food.
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: So you have an
irrigation system in every bed
and then that water is
being pumped up here from?
JOANNA: Our
farm irrigation comes from the basement in our studio.
We do have issues
with pressure and
it uses energy
to get it up here.
INDY: Right, just
because of the height that
the water has to travel?
JOANNA: Exactly and
then we're in California,
we're in the
middle of a drought
INDY: Right, right.
JOANNA: So how we can
use less water up here?
INDY: I'm really inspired
by the work that Joanna does.
I'm passionate
about rooftop farming.
I think it's an incredible way
to grow food within a city and
I want to see her succeed
because the farm is important,
not just for her but for the
preservation of her heritage
and of her family.
JOANNA: I want to
believe that there's a way to make this farming thing,
this business work and
not work myself constantly.
INDY: Joanna has something
truly special at Bluma Farms
and the family
connection runs deep but
being on the roof makes
it hard to get people in,
get flowers out and keep the water
running in an economical way.
This farm is too enchanting
to stay so hidden away.
I'd like to find ways to help Joanna
get the Berkeley community
connected to the farm, grow
the company's local presence
to increase flower
sales and alleviate some of
the irrigation and water
supply issues that exist in the California climate
so that she can have
more time for herself.
I've spent years
working on rooftop farms so
I think I know just the
farms and farmers to visit to get some ideas for Bluma.
Time to meet up
with familiar faces at
some of my local
haunts back in LA.
INDY: So I'm going to visit
Dan Allen of Farmscape and
his rooftop farm is on
the top of the Jonathan Club.
It's a social club where
members enjoy athletics,
events and fine dining and
just like Bluma this farm serves
the immediate community
in a hyper local way.
Farmscape is literally a farm
in the middle of an events space
so they always have
people visiting the farm and
using their farm
as a gathering space.
So I think that they'll
have a lot of ideas as to how
Joanna can turn her farm into
more of a collective center.
DAN: Welcome.
INDY: Hi.
DAN: Thank you
for making it out.
INDY: Yes,
thanks for having me
DAN: Yeah!
INDY: This is so cool.
DAN: Oh, my gosh. So this is
the Jonathan Club rooftop farm.
INDY: Oh!
DAN: We're five stories up.
INDY: It smells so good, like,
I can smell the farm,
it's interesting being in the
middle of downtown and, like,
getting this
great smell of jasmine.
DAN: Yeah. I was gonna say
the jasmine gives you a nice aroma,
there's some
herbs in the garden,
some orange blossom
that you get.
INDY: It's so nice.
DAN: Yeah, it's a lovely space.
This is a converted series
of paddle tennis courts and
a running track and over time
we converted the rooftop to
what you see now.
The latest edition
is this seating area.
This seating area allows them
to obviously take advantage of
the beautiful rooftop
but also do so in really close proximity to the farm.
INDY: Yeah, I'd love
to check out the farm.
DAN: Let's do it, let's do it.
That's the main event.
(laughs)
INDY: Wow!
DAN: This is it.
INDY: This is beautiful.
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: I love this.
DAN: Thank you.
So, our summer crop
went in about a month ago so
what you're seeing is
a young summer garden.
It'll start yielding heavily
in the next month or two.
So, all the produce that
we grow here stays on site.
INDY: Oh, cool.
DAN: They have a restaurant,
their staff is up
here daily harvesting,
work here once
a week managing the site.
INDY: Wow, look at the
beans. DAN: Yeah.
This will be a cranberry bean
that the chef asked us to grow.
INDY: Oh, wow,
look at your tomatoes.
DAN: Yeah!
INDY: Oh, my gosh.
DAN: Like, with
the tomatoes right now, we're pruning suckers
INDY: Oh, yeah!
DAN: Shaping them to match
the type of infrastructure that
we're using in each of
the different areas so
the caged tomatoes get to
be the bushiest which means
we get to let
more suckers go.
INDY: Mm-hmm. But suckers
are just that vertical
DAN: Yeah, it's called a
sucker because it diverts a lot
of energy and if you don't
wanna actually grow that additional
leader on the plant,
you wanna prune it off.
INDY: It can really take over,
they take over your house.
DAN: Yeah, right.
We're in a drought in
southern California and we're trying to
make really thoughtful use of
all the water we use which is
why we use the drip irrigation,
really watering the
entire root zone of the planters
that develops because
that's gonna help it set
as much fruit as possible
throughout the season and
encourage the roots to go
deeper so that you don't have to
do it as frequent
as surface irrigation.
INDY: My own experience in
rooftop farming is that watering
things evenly makes
such a huge difference,
especially when you're losing
so much water to evaporation
just being that much
closer to the sun.
DAN: Mm-hmm.
INDY: How long have you
been growing food here?
DAN: We've been working
with the club for 11 years to do it.
INDY: Okay, wow, so,
you've really, you've had
11 years to perfect
growing on a rooftop?
DAN: Yes, there's a couple of
things that are really specific
to being on a rooftop.
There are different parts
of the roof that are sunnier
and shadier, so we actually
did a sun study when we sited
the garden here and
in particular you see a denser center row here
because it ended up being
one of the sunnier spots.
INDY: So, you just kind of
plan, you make your crop plan
according to how much
sun that you're getting?
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: Nice, all right,
show me what else.
DAN: Yeah, yeah, all right, so
everything we're growing up here
in about 3,000 square feet
so it's not a huge area in
the scheme of things
but we're able to grow a really wide variety of crops.
Peppers.
INDY: Yes, beans.
DAN: Well, we wanna
make use of the vertical growing space too, right?
In an urban environment,
every square foot counts and if we can
use the pole beans to grow
up this trellis and cover it,
besides being beautiful it means we get
more food out of a small space.
INDY: So, you guys
have tomatoes starting?
DAN: Mm-hmm.
Summer squash.
INDY: You have some edible
flowers back there, nasturtium.
DAN: Yeah, we got trees
INDY: Oh, yeah.
DAN: So this is the majority
of the growing area but
we have fruit surrounding most of the space.
INDY: Oh, cool. Oh, cool,
yeah, I'm starting to notice that.
DAN: Yeah, so a lot of citrus.
INDY: An olive tree.
DAN: Mm-hmm. So, most of
the gardens really young.
As you can see the summer
crop is just starting but
do you wanna at least trying something from
the garden while we're here?
INDY: I do, yeah.
DAN: Let's do it.
INDY: Ooh.
Incredible.
Those are beautiful
looking blueberries.
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: I'm just
gonna eat one right now.
DAN: Just go for it, go for it.
No, they're quite good.
INDY: These are delicious,
you've understated them.
DAN: Oh, good. Mm-hmm.
INDY: Like, blueberries
that you get in the store,
they taste almost
just like blue mush.
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: This has at least
five different flavors that
I'm getting at once right now.
DAN: It really pops, yeah.
INDY: It's, like,
tangy, sweet, blue.
It tastes blue somehow.
(laughter)
DAN: Yeah, yeah.
INDY: Yeah, these are so good.
DAN: Let's take
advantage of that seating we were looking at earlier.
(sighs)
DAN: Grab a seat.
INDY: Just having
folks up here dining
DAN: Mm-hmm.
INDY: Do you feel
like that increases their interest in the farm?
DAN: A lot.
The nice part about creating
this event space is it's an
opportunity to actually bring
people up here and, and say,
"By the way, you can
meander through the garden."
INDY: Exactly.
DAN: And, yeah.
And then the other part
that's important to us is just
showing that, you know, you
can literally grow your food
feet away from where
you're ready to enjoy it and
it's something that you
can really feature, right?
INDY: No, that's such a good point because
when you think about it,
it's almost like growing food,
in the US especially,
has had this history of
being kind of, like, a gross,
dirty thing that
happens somewhere else.
I mean, it's like, when
people think about farming,
they're thinking about manure
and dirt and kind of something
that happens away
from fine dining.
So, it's really beautiful to
see it converge up here in a way
that is aesthetically pleasing.
I mean, it just feels
good to be in this space.
DAN: Yeah. Well, it's a
meaningful connection, right?
Not only are you dining
literally feet from where
that food was harvested but it
also gives you a firsthand look
at what the growing
process looks like.
INDY: Right, right.
DAN: So you've worked
on a rooftop farm, right?
INDY: Yeah, yeah, at the Los Angeles Community
Action Network which is, like,
literally right down the street.
DAN: Oh, my gosh, yeah,
not far away at all.
Oh, that's great.
INDY: It's a really, you know,
unique way of growing food.
I, I'm sure that you
feel it here, I mean,
you're literally looking
right across at someone sitting
in their office
while you're on a farm.
DAN: Well, occasionally
it's so peaceful and quiet and
then other moments like
this maybe not so much but
it is a reminder
of where you are.
INDY: Yeah.
DAN: Yeah.
INDY: Awesome, well, thank you so much for having
me and for showing me everything.
DAN: Thank you
for making the trip.
INDY: And I feel
like has been so helpful.
As Dan mentioned the rooftop
garden where I used to work with
the Los Angeles Community
Action Network or LACAN
is just down the
road from here.
I think it's time I
visit my old stomping ground.
(laughs)
Monique!
MONIQUE: Oh, my God!
INDY: Hi!
MONIQUE: Indy.
INDY: It's so good to see you.
MONIQUE: Oh, my God,
give me a hug.
What you doing back here?
INDY: Just outside the
rooftop garden where I used to
work I bump into one of my
friends who runs the program,
Monique Noel.
MONIQUE: There's
lots to show you.
INDY: Monique is part of the food and
wellness committee for LACAN,
a non-profit that's been
addressing issues of housing,
civil rights and
access to healthy food in
the Los Angeles
area since 1999.
This looks so great,
the flowers, I love the flowers.
MONIQUE: Right, I know,
and the rosemary,
it always grows out of control
but that's the beauty of it,
the wildness of it, I
love the way it's just there.
INDY: Working at LACAN for
two years as a farm manager was
a transformative
experience for me.
It was hard work and I
learned that if you can grow food on
Skid Row, you can
grow food anywhere.
MONIQUE: So here
we have a lemon tree.
INDY: Ooh. That looks nice.
MONIQUE: Uh-huh.
We have our rosemary here.
INDY: Oh, sage.
MONIQUE: Sage.
Everything that we're
growing up here we use and
we eat and this is the
INDY: Pete, what's up?
PETE: Indy, what's up?
INDY: Back there,
hiding and eating tomatoes.
Good to see you.
PETE: You're busting
me getting breakfast.
INDY: My boss
when I worked here was
the Executive Director
of LACAN, Pete White.
Oh, man, I'm
gonna eat one too.
PETE: Yeah, they're pretty
good. INDY: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
PETE: They're decent.
INDY: That is super good.
It looks so good up here.
PETE: I know, let's look at some of the
other stuff that's up here.
INDY: Yeah, yeah,
give me a tour.
PETE: Check it out.
INDY: Give me a tour.
PETE: We have some
purple beans growing right here.
INDY: Ooh, you
know I like beans.
PETE: I know you
love the beans, man!
INDY: Yes!
PETE: And then we have
this tall dinosaur kale.
INDY: Oh, the kale is crazy.
PETE: You know, I kind of
love it because it's taller than me.
Not many things
are taller than me.
INDY: This is a nice
spring garden going on.
PETE: No, that's right.
INDY: Yeah.
PETE: That's right.
Things are living and
things are growing on a rooftop.
INDY: Always living and
growing and the flowers look amazing.
PETE: Oh, man, and
you know the flowers are bringing the pollinators.
INDY: Yes.
PETE: We got the
butterflies coming,
we got the birds
coming so it's going down.
INDY: Which is magical
because when you're downstairs,
we are in Skid Row and,
you know, it's a very intentional space that
has been ignored on purpose
and so being able to
grow food in this space,
I mean, that's everything.
PETE: I think you named
it service level what we're,
what we get to experience is all of the
organized abandonment, right?
INDY: Yeah.
PETE: But on the rooftop
we're able to elevate in so many other
ways and not just simply
coming up the stairs but, you know,
walking on a rooftop
and just breathing fresh air,
much like many other, um,
low income communities,
access to fresh fruits and
vegetables is slim to none.
INDY: Right. Right.
MONIQUE: You know,
it's important to have this space here,
it's important to be able
to have these gardens to grow
and to be able to just relax.
INDY: There are so many
ways to bring nature and plants into
urban industrial areas
but one issue that troubles
every rooftop farmer
is access to water.
I
(laughs)
I remember when I was here
and I was watering things by hand
using city water and one time
I left the hose flowing.
PETE: Oh, so now you tell,
that was the bill that I was like,
"What happened, this
is a high water bill."
INDY: But, but I
have these friends,
they have a similar set up.
Now they're really focused
on trying to figure out how to
bring water to their garden
in a way that isn't gonna drive
their water bill
through the roof.
I wanna check in with Pete
about some exciting technology from
a company called Skywell that has totally
changed Pete's water game.
PETE: As long as there's 27%
relative humidity in the air,
this large machine
creates 100 gallons of water per night, right?
INDY: What!
PETE: And so, when you're
that, when you're in a region like
Los Angeles that's, you know,
adjacent to the ocean,
there's always gonna be at least
27% relative humidity in the
air and so we built a reservoir and
we just started using
water from the clouds to
actually feed our gardens.
INDY: An atmospheric water
generator uses technology to
collect water from the air.
Fans pull air over a cooling
coil which prompts condensation.
The water droplets are
collected and filtered for
drinking or watering gardens.
The collected water can
be stored in a reservoir and
hooked up to a drip irrigation
system that's set on a timer.
So this means that you're
not on public city water?
PETE: So with the
current set up that we have,
we are using some.
We're using 50%
less water, right?
INDY: Wow, okay,
that's significant.
PETE: And that's significant
INDY: Yeah, that is.
PETE: In a place
like Los Angeles.
INDY: That's amazing.
My friends at Bluma, they are
just pumping their water from
a lower level up to
their rooftop farm and,
I mean, that's running
their electricity bill up and
it's just difficult.
It's hard on their system.
PETE: You have to make it
as easy and as comfortable for
folks to garden because if, if ease and
comfortability is not there,
the garden will die.
INDY: Right.
PETE: Farmers know, right,
and urban farmers know all too well
that the cost of, you know,
of running a garden,
the highest cost is the water.
INDY: The water, yeah, and
then the water that is being
harvested is that
drinkable water?
PETE: Oh, yeah, well,
you can bathe in it,
you can cook in it
and it's delicious.
INDY: Yeah.
It's locally sourced.
I mean, how many
can say that?
PETE: How local, this
is my water right here.
I'm about to
drink you later, right?
So, yes.
INDY: That's so cool.
MONIQUE: And Skid Row, I
mean, there's no water in Skid Row.
There's no real
facilities for people to use.
There's no drinking water.
So, for us to be able to
offer this as a place for people
to come, a destination for
people to come and get fresh,
clean water is amazing.
I mean, that's a
game changer for us.
PETE: That's right.
INDY: That's incredible.
Sweet, yeah, I'd love
to try some downstairs
PETE: Yeah, 100%.
INDY: Go check it out.
INDY: All right.
Drinking water.
Joanna wants to be more
eco-friendly and she also wants
a way to get water to the roof
without having to pump it from
her basement so the
Skywell system seems like
just the perfect fit.
PETE: Bottoms up.
MONIQUE: It's good.
PETE: Right?
INDY: It's really good,
it's really good.
This is water from our
air that tastes crisp
PETE: Tastes delicious, right?
INDY: It's crisp,
it's delicious.
And it's filtered, right?
PETE: 100%.
INDY: It's really good.
MONIQUE: I'm about to take
this salad bowl to one of my friends,
one of our neighbors
just down the block.
INDY: Yeah, can I come?
MONIQUE: Come with me.
INDY: Yeah.
PETE: I'm not going.
So I'm gonna say,
I'm gonna see you later.
INDY: Thank you.
PETE: It was so good seeing you.
INDY: So good
to see you too.
MONIQUE: I'm gonna
put this in the basket.
INDY: Wow, this
bike is so cool.
You've been doing your
deliveries with this bike?
MONIQUE: Yes.
INDY: That's the idea?
MONIQUE: Yeah, so, we
know that folk in the community,
you know, can't really get
around too much but it's better
than being in a car 'cause I
can get through little alleyways and
just find people where they
are and this has really worked out.
INDY: That's so cool, like, actually
bringing the farm to them.
MONIQUE: That's right.
INDY: Yeah, and so then what do you, what
do you keep in the basket?
What do you?
MONIQUE: So, sometimes
we have meals that we've prepared
but oftentimes, it's
vegetables and fruit and
stuff from the
garden and herbs.
We have little herb bundles
that we deliver to people, um, water,
it's just things that
kind of people need to be well.
INDY: If you're a farm and
most of your customers are right in
your neighborhood, having a
bike makes it really simple to
interact with your customers
and also make deliveries.
I love that and
you can just, like,
zip around and bring things
straight to the community.
That's such a
great way to engage.
I love that.
MONIQUE: And it's good
for the environment too.
INDY: Yeah, oh, good point.
Win, win, awesome.
After I finish these deliveries,
it's time to head back to
Berkeley and Bluma Farm to put
these great new
rooftop ideas to the test.
I'm so excited to share all my
new ideas with Joanna on how to
make her business grow
that I want to shout them from
the rooftops but Mother's Day
is fast approaching so she's
working around the clock
to get her orders in on time.
Hi.
JOANNA: Hey.
INDY: Hey, how are you?
BOTH: It's so
good to see you.
INDY: It's good to be back,
everything looks beautiful.
JOANNA: Yay, thank you.
INDY: So are you,
you're picking these all for arrangements right now?
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: Mother's
Day orders.
INDY: Yes.
JOANNA: This week.
INDY: That's awesome.
JOANNA: Yeah, so I've
harvested some sweet peas,
more of the godetia, um,
and raspberry.
I'm just harvesting for some
orders and then headed down to
the basement to start
putting stuff together.
INDY: Oh, no way.
Can I give you a hand?
JOANNA: That'd be
awesome. INDY: Yay, perfect.
Looks like Joanna is
preparing for the holiday rush
all by herself so I'll share
my rooftop farming ideas after
I give her a hand.
Yay.
JOANNA: All right.
INDY: Perfect.
So, who are these
bouquets going to?
JOANNA: This is an
order for a winery
INDY: Oh, cool.
JOANNA: That's
super close by in Berkeley.
Most of our deliveries are
in Berkeley so that's nice so
we don't have to
travel too far to get there.
So, yeah, we got lemon
verbena, we got some sticky monkey
INDY: Smells so good.
JOANNA: Um, and sweet peas.
I always try to put stuff
that's fragrant and something
that's wild so it really
kind of feels like the farm.
Yay, nice to have
some extra hands.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: And show what we do.
INDY: It takes a lot of
experience and practice to
seed plants and
make them grow.
I think I've got that part
down pretty well but it's
a whole other set of skills to
make an artistic arrangement.
I feel like I'm
creating a monster.
JOANNA: Looks gorgeous.
INDY: Yeah. Okay.
JOANNA: I think farming is
both art and science and it's so fun
to be able to just go up and
harvest and come down here and
put stuff together.
You know, it's just
working, working, working.
I would start work at 4:00 am
and be done at midnight and
I think that definitely weighed on my ability to
make good decisions for
the business but I just can't
wait to see what kinds of ideas
Indy comes up with to
help me make this farm
go for the long run.
I really just wanna keep doing
it and I need a little help.
INDY: Seeing her
amongst the flowers,
in her natural element
doing what she loves,
it makes me even more
excited and passionate about helping
her because she, she
just belongs on this farm.
Flowers bring people joy.
I think it's an incredible
unique product to grow.
JOANNA: We're ready to roll.
INDY: Yeah, so you need to
bring these up to the street level?
JOANNA: We do.
INDY: There's something I actually wanna
show you on the ground level.
JOANNA: Ooh, all right.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: Exciting
INDY: Yeah, you wanna come
and check it out? Let's do it.
I'm more than happy to be an
extra set of hands today but for
future deliveries, she's going
to need a little more assistance
and I've got a custom made surprise that
should do just the trick.
Before we go to your car,
I wanted to show you
JOANNA: Oh, my God.
INDY: The new
Bluma Farms delivery bike.
JOANNA: What?
INDY: Yes, yes.
JOANNA: This is for me?
INDY: Yes, it is.
JOANNA: Oh, my God.
INDY: So I was
visiting my friends at
the Los Angles
Community Action Network
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: And they use a bike
that's really similar to
this to do all of
their farm deliveries and
you were talking about how
there is just so many people who live
right in this neighborhood who don't
know that Bluma Farms exist.
JOANNA: Now they're
gonna see me on the bike.
INDY: Exactly.
JOANNA: With their flowers.
INDY: Exactly.
JOANNA: Amazing.
I never would have imagined
myself on this electric bike
and here it is for me.
It's this beautiful bike that
people are gonna get to see me
riding through the
city with my flowers.
I feel like it embodies the
kind of spirit that is my farm.
This is so amazing.
Thank you so much.
INDY: I'm so glad.
Should we load them
up and see how it looks?
JOANNA: I really
can't believe it.
Yeah, let's do it.
INDY: Yeah, okay cool.
Making deliveries on
a bike with the Bluma logo
featured prominently
will ensure that everyone in
the neighborhood knows
about Joanna's company and parking
the bike outside her building
will show folks where Bluma is.
Now I've got more
surprises in store.
The flowers look
incredible on this.
JOANNA: Wow.
INDY: This is so cute.
JOANNA: Wow! And I got a
helmet too to stay safe.
Thank you.
INDY: Yes, of course.
Okay, there's one more
thing that I wanna show you.
JOANNA: One
more thing. What?
(knocking)
What is going on?
INDY: Dun, dun, dun
JOANNA: Oh, my goodness.
INDY: Ta-da.
JOANNA: What is this?
INDY: It's nothing but special deliveries
today and like any farm,
especially in California,
Joanna may just get her
biggest money
problem solved,
how to reduce her water bill.
My friends at Los Angeles
Community Action Network,
they have one of these on
their rooftop farm and it's incredible
that they're able to just
take water out of the air,
put it into this machine and
then you can use that to pump
into your irrigation system,
to water all of your plants
so you're not
relying on your city water
to be pumped
all the way from
the basement and use
all of that unnecessary energy
just to water your plants.
JOANNA: Right.
Oh, my goodness. Wow.
This is gonna make such
a difference on my farm.
This is, like, exactly the
kind of thing that my farm needs
to go into the future.
As a rooftop farm, we
don't have as many options
in terms of water
holding capacity, so, I mean,
I'm just sort of flabbergasted
by the innovative technologies
that they've created.
Wow, what a trip.
INDY: All right, so, are you
ready to make some deliveries?
JOANNA: Yeah. I mean, yes.
So excited to try this out.
INDY: Cool. I
have my bike too.
JOANNA: Let's hit the road.
INDY: Yeah!
JOANNA: All right.
Getting used to the bike.
INDY: You look great.
JOANNA: Thanks.
INDY: I feel like
that color suits you.
JOANNA: Woo-hoo.
It's, like, such a
beautiful moment and I, like,
get to interact with the
community in this way and
have people see me driving
through the city on this bike
with all our flowers,
nothing feels better than that.
INDY: So much fun.
JOANNA: That
was really, really fun.
INDY: Did you enjoy it?
JOANNA: Oh, my God, so much.
INDY: I feel like
I have helmet hair.
JOANNA: Oh.
INDY: This is so cute.
JOANNA: Yeah,
it's super cute.
Hi.
JOSH: Hey.
It's good to see you guys.
Look at these,
they look beautiful.
Thank you so much,
see you again soon.
JOANNA: Bye.
INDY: Your first bike delivery.
JOANNA: Woo-hoo.
Empty delivery cart.
INDY: I know.
Doesn't that feel good?
JOANNA: Feels so good.
INDY: We're off.
JOANNA: We're off.
INDY: I'll follow you, I
don't remember the way back.
JOANNA: Cool.
INDY: Handpicked,
arranged and delivered just in the nick of time.
JOANNA: Woo-hoo!
Such a nice ride.
INDY: So. Yes.
I had another delivery
come this morning.
JOANNA: Another delivery?
INDY: Yes.
JOANNA: What?
Oh, my God, what is it?
INDY: Well, it's wood but
JOANNA: Okay?
INDY: I'm gonna
show you what it's for.
Do you wanna go
up to the roof?
JOANNA: Yeah, great.
INDY: Okay, let's go.
Let me show you,
let's come over here.
JOANNA: Wow.
INDY: Okay, so all of the
wood that we saw downstairs,
I was thinking that if we
put some of that down and
used it as flooring, then
you have this, like, nice,
open clear space where
you can have workshops.
The idea is just to bring more
folks who aren't even aware that
Bluma Farms is right here in
the middle of their community.
I feel like, having
something like that here could
be such an integral piece.
JOANNA: To know that so
many people want me to succeed and
want this farm to continue,
means so much to me.
It makes me feel like
I'm not alone doing this.
I feel so grateful to have people in my
corner saying, "Yeah,"
like cheering me
on and saying,
"Hey, you can do this,"
and it means so much.
INDY: Thank you for bringing
me into your farm and
JOANNA: Thank you
for being here.
INDY: Showing me all of
the work that you're doing.
This has been an, an
incredible opportunity and I can't wait to
see what you do
with this space.
I'm definitely
gonna come back and see.
I, I'm so confident that you're
going to just transform this
area into something incredible.
JOANNA: I think my grandpa
would be really proud of what
I've built and that I'm farming.
Meeting Indy and all of these
things that she has offered
my farm means that, you
know, I can keep going into the future.
INDY: I can't wait to come
back and see just how much
her business has grown and if
Joanna has managed to carve out
a little more time for herself.
INDY: It's been a few weeks
since I've seen Joanna and
she's been so busy that I
catch her just as she finishes
a few deliveries
around the neighborhood.
JOANNA: Woo-hoo.
INDY: Hi. That looks awesome.
JOANNA: Yes,
it's so, so much fun.
INDY: And you look great on
it. Oh, it's good to see you.
JOANNA: Good to see you.
INDY: Wow, so
you're loving the bike?
JOANNA: It's so fun and
people just love seeing me around town, with it filled,
just did deliveries, it
was all filled with flowers.
Now we have party supplies.
INDY: That's exciting.
You're having a party here?
JOANNA: We're having a party, we're gonna
inaugurate the new deck.
INDY: There's a new deck.
JOANNA: Yeah!
INDY: I can't wait to see it.
JOANNA: Yeah, let's grab
a bag and we'll head in.
INDY: When I left Joanna, I
had given her the raw materials and
this idea of the seating area
but I was really concerned that
maybe the new deck and
seating area didn't work out.
JOANNA: Here we go.
Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
INDY: Oh, my gosh, I love it.
JOANNA: Yay.
INDY: This is amazing.
I am so glad that it worked
out, this is perfect, it's amazing.
JOANNA: I know, I mean,
it's still a work in progress.
We're gonna put in plants in
the hedgerows here and we could host
all kinds of workshops
and classes and maybe, like,
a Bluma Café and have
coffee and treats and,
I don't know, poetry.
INDY: Yeah. Yes.
JOANNA: It's just gonna
be so nice to be able to
host people here and show
off the farm and have parties,
like we're gonna
have tonight so.
INDY: Yeah. Yes!
It looks like Joanna is
still getting ready for
the festivities later but I
love how this deck turned out.
Being able to turn it into something
functional is incredible.
JOANNA: It's, like,
game changer.
It really, like, warms my heart
to be able to have this space.
I feel like there's so much
hope in farming and to get to share
that with people, feels like something
really positive and good.
INDY: Yeah, it does.
JOANNA: So
I think that building
relationships with the soil
really helped my grandpa because most of
his life he was pretty sad.
He lost all of his family
in the holocaust but I think,
for me, learning about plants
and taking care of the soil has
also been sort of a
transformative experience and
healing in a lot of ways and
I think my grandpa
would be really proud.
Thank you for
helping make this happen.
INDY: Of course, of course.
JOANNA: Yeah.
INDY: I'm so happy
to be a part of this.
How's business been?
JOANNA: Thank you.
Business is good.
We have a wedding
tomorrow so
if you wanna come
harvest a few things.
INDY: Of course, awesome,
always happy to harvest flowers.
JOANNA: Yay.
You can harvest all the
way to the bottom there.
INDY: Okay.
Bluma seems to be thriving.
The deck looks gorgeous.
The bike delivery system is
on point and business is booming.
I just hope that this
farm still isn't taking
everything out of Joanna.
JOANNA: Let's go grab some
herbs and make some sun tea.
INDY: What herb is it?
JOANNA: Chamomile.
INDY: Oh, my gosh,
they're so cute.
Awesome. No
electricity needed.
That is so beautiful.
JOANNA: So pretty.
INDY: Unfortunately one of
my solutions didn't work out.
The building's proprietors
decided not to install
the atmospheric water
generator on the roof.
It just goes to show that not every solution
is viable for every farm.
JOANNA: The owners were
worried about the weight and
the power usage in getting
it up here so the owners of
the building
decided not to take it.
INDY: Mm.
I am still really
concerned that Joanna's not able
to use water on the
farm as efficiently as she would like to.
I think that that's kind of
the hard part of farming is
one solution that works
perfectly on one farm,
can just not land on another.
So it's important to
always have a backup plan.
Um, I actually do have
something in my car that
I feel like could possibly
work if you're open to
giving something else a try?
JOANNA: Yeah, definitely.
INDY: Yeah.
JOANNA: That'd be great.
INDY: All right.
I'll go grab it.
All right, little sun tea.
The water problem in
California can't always be
solved out of thin air.
In this case, some clever
technology may do the trick.
So this is a
Wi-Fi-enabled controller
that will allow
you to turn off and on
your irrigation system
remotely from your phone
JOANNA: Amazing.
INDY: Yeah, yeah.
JOANNA: Thank you.
INDY: So, let's say, it starts
raining and you're at home.
Instead of running over to the
farm and having to manually turn
it off, you can just do
it right from your phone.
JOANNA: Whoa. Cool.
Oh, this is gonna make
my life so much easier.
INDY: Well, being able to turn
on and off the irrigation system
is just going to make it
run that much more efficiently.
JOANNA: Thank you.
Excited to, to put it to use.
I mean, it's just like
if the technology exists,
we should be using it
and just making those
very timed decisions and
not having to be at the farm,
makes my life easier.
INDY: So, open up the app.
JOANNA: Cool.
INDY: You can set it
so that you can turn on
different quadrants
if you want.
JOANNA: Right.
That's really so important
right now for any farm in
California to figure
out ways to reduce water.
INDY: So, yeah, just
press on from there.
JOANNA: Amazing.
Okay, let's see.
INDY: Yay, it's working.
JOANNA: Yay.
INDY: That's so great.
It may not look
like much but this slow and
steady drip irrigation is an easy way to conserve
water and if Joanna can now
control her watering through
a Wi-Fi system on her phone,
she'll save water and
have more time to herself.
JOANNA: All right. It's time
to get ready for the party.
INDY: Party.
So much of farming is out
of our control but finding
new solutions is always
a cause for celebration.
Now it looks
like the butterflies,
birds and bees aren't
the only ones who know about this flowery oasis.
JOANNA: Hi.
INDY: Hi.
Oh, this looks awesome.
JOANNA: Thank you.
INDY: Everything
looks so beautiful.
What?
This is great, this is, like,
exactly what you imagined.
JOANNA: Exactly, yeah.
Do you wanna meet everyone?
INDY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JOANNA: Okay, everybody,
I wanted to introduce Indy
INDY: Hey, everybody.
JOANNA: So this is family,
loved ones, friends.
So, Indy helped get this
deck to happen so thank you.
INDY: Yes. Of course.
JOANNA: And it's such, like,
a pleasure to inaugurate this
space where we can
bring people up and, like,
have them see the
farm and get to enjoy it.
INDY: And it's wild to think
that this was all storage.
JOANNA: Right?
INDY: Like, just the
last time I was here.
JOANNA: And
now it's, like, here.
INDY: People celebrating,
celebrating you and the farm.
JOANNA: I know. I know.
And we have delicious
food and some wine and
INDY: Exactly.
JOANNA: Enjoy.
INDY: Oh, speaking
of beverages,
let me show you this.
JOANNA: Okay. Wow.
INDY: So, you remember
the other Skywell system.
This is a lot smaller but
it's great for drinking water
and for events
like this, it's perfect.
JOANNA: And that's
just from the atmosphere?
INDY: It's being
pulled directly
JOANNA: Pulled from the sky.
I mean, cool, that's so wild.
INDY: Cheers.
JOANNA: Cheers.
INDY: It's so good.
JOANNA: It's really good.
So, if anybody wants to try
water from the atmosphere,
go ahead and
drink up, nice and cold.
INDY: It's so fun
to be a part of this.
JOANNA: Thank
you, so special.
INDY: So it really, like,
this is the moment that I feel
like it, everything is
really coming together.
It's like a farm is nothing
without people and community
JOANNA: Right?
INDY: So seeing everyone here.
JOANNA: It's so perfect.
INDY: Yeah.
I think Joanna's not
necessarily feeding people physically but
she's feeding the soul
part of individuals and
we need that kind of joy.
JOANNA: Bye.
INDY: Bye. Bye.
JOANNA: Thank you.
INDY: Farming shouldn't
just be about consumption.
It should be about giving
back what we give to the land,
what we bring to our
community and I think Joanna is bringing
a lot to her community
by providing something that
folks can use to celebrate.
While most solutions
for Bluma Farms worked out,
they're not always one size
fits all but when farmers get
together and help other
farmers, we create a stronger community
with one another and
the people we serve,
no matter where the farm.
Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.