It was a cold day in January, and snowing hard outside, yet in the imaginations of the twenty or so people in Julia Hilton’s living room just off Main Street, it was already summer and we were in the garden. This was one of the first meetings of The Two Block Diet, a group of neighbours who are getting together to take the idea of eating local to the next level: how much of what we eat can come from our neighbourhood, and how can we work together to make that happen? “That way,” says co-founder Kate Sutherland, “we can all grow more food, and it’s more fun!” It’s a deceptively simple idea, with far-reaching implications for how we relate to our food, the Earth, and each other.

It all began with a block party last summer. “It started as a conversation,” Kate tells me. “I said, ‘Come see my tomato plants!’ and Julia said, ‘Come see my garden!’” From there, the idea of connecting over growing food quickly grew. “We figured that there had to be other people who knew about gardening and wanted to share, and people who had space and wanted to learn,” says Julia. “So we made up a poster and flyered the neighbourhood. We announced a meeting and people just showed up.”

It’s that just-get-down-and-do-it motivation that’s kept the group together and kept up the momentum. Julia gives Kate a lot of credit. “It wouldn’t have survived if Kate hadn’t kept the group together and kept people participating,” she asserts. And participate they have; since that meeting in January, they’ve built a seed-starting station in Julia’s kitchen so everyone could get their plants off to a running start, and a greenhouse down the street to move them to as they got bigger. “I’ve never started tomatoes from seeds before,” says Kate. Now her plants are getting bigger every day in the greenhouse at the neighbour’s. The group is also building a community compost station, which will allow folks without space for a bin to compost their kitchen scraps, and provides finished compost for the groups’ projects. Sharing the responsibilities (and the fun!) is the key; “We work together because we like each other,” explains Kate, “and then we get to know each other better through working together, and we like each other even more.” Several work parties have rotated through the neighbourhood, clearing out disused plots for landless gardeners to use, and amazing their busy owners—even moving one work-party hostess to tears. “She was crying, she was so happy at how much work we got done in just a couple of hours,” says Julia.

It has also amazed longtime gardener and neighbourhood resident Catherine Shapiro. “Everywhere I go in the city, I’ve always pictured gardens. I’ve been trying to promote something like this for forty years.” So what’s so special about now? Catherine thinks it has something to do with people realizing that the bigger picture of our food system—and our whole society—has gotten out of our hands. “It seems like it’s all too big for us. I’d like to be wrong on that one, but it sure seems that way. One thing we can really control in our lives is growing our food. Maybe if we start with food, we can get it all back.”

And that’s what’s so special about the Two Block Diet. “The whole point is to show people that we can do it, without pushing paper and spending tons of money. We can cut out the middleman and the bureaucracy,” says Julia. “It’s just you, and your hands in the dirt.” It’s also about learning how to keep it all organized, and building a group rapport that makes people feel comfortable to participate. All three agree that it’s about people doing what they say they’ll do, but also making it possible for folks to get involved without feeling like they’ll be asked to do more than they can. “What makes it so special is that it’s very low-entry,” says Kate. “It’s not like a community garden, which is an amazing project, but it’s a lot bigger than this and there’s a lot to do. With this model, three people could do it, two people could do it. You just get together and help each other grow more food. That clarity of purpose makes it easy for people to get involved.” Julia asserts that it’s also about recognizing that this could happen in any neighbourhood, anywhere, because everyone has something valuable to contribute. “We keep coming back to the fact that we already have everything we need. We don’t need to ask permission or buy a bunch of stuff, we just need to do it.”

That’s what’s kept Catherine coming back, too. “I could tell right away that this was a group that was really going to do something,” she says. “People do what they say they’ll do. People still came, even in the snow!” Having it focussed on the neighbourhood helps because it’s close enough for people to get to. Catherine also credits the farmers’ market for reintroducing people to what real food looks, smells, and tastes like. She points out that there’s a connection between food, poverty, and the recession that’s drawing people to get together and do for themselves and for each other. In her work as a visual artist, Catherine explores themes around the ways in which food and agriculture knit our communities together across centuries and cultures. She points out that sharing food has always been a part of how people interact and build relationships, but this has become invisible within our urban cultural context. The Two Block Diet is illuminating and celebrating that sharing, and bringing it back into the consciousness of its members and their neighbours.

It looks like it’s going to be a busy summer in the gardens around Main and King Edward. Plans are in the works for a food garden on the property of a church in the neighbourhood, where folks will share both the work and the crops. Shared beehives are also on the list, and if all goes well at city hall, chickens. Again, everyone will take a share of the responsibility and reap a share of the honey and eggs, as well as benefiting from the pollinating and bug-eating services of these important garden critters. The group will be holding a plant sale soon to raise funds for seeds and supplies, as well as to get the word out about the project so that others can learn. “The biggest thing is that anyone can do this,” says Julia. “This is 50% doing it for ourselves, and 50% doing it so other people see that they can do it, too.”

To keep up with The Two Block Diet, follow the blog at www.twoblockdiet.blogspot.com

Erin Innes is a Permaculture designer and urban farmer in the Sunset neighbourhood of South Vancouver. She grows vegetables in her back yard and delivers them on her bike, and blogs at www.farmhousefarm.wordpress.com