OUR LENS | Exceptional work by the St. Petersburg Times staff

Farming a home landscape

11 June

When Matt Fahy’s family moved to Largo six years ago from St. Louis, there was nothing but clumps of weedy grass in the center of their circular driveway. Three years ago he put in a flower bed and started a compost pile. Then trees: Jamaican cherry, moringa, key lime. He brought in piles of composted manure from a local stable and ordered free mulch from the city. He piled it two feet thick. With a background in construction, it was simple enough for Fahy to build raised beds and a greenhouse out of old dock wood, pier posts and windows. Most of the materials came from dumpsters. He planted sweet potatoes to hold the dirt in place.

Soon the family was eating home grown brussels sprouts, long beans, watermelon and yellow squash. About 60 percent of his family’s diet comes from the gardens that surround his home. Not just the back yard, but side yards, and yes, the front. Sunflowers stretch skyward under the bedroom window. Backyard beds hold cabbage, tomatillos, peppers, sweet potatoes, Okinawa spinach, a plum tree.

Wife Cindi Hetz helps with some tasks, such as using a paintbrush to manually pollinate from male flower to female flower. Daughter Max helps as only a 5-year-old can. Matt will garden late into the night. He’ll tap on the window and tell his wife to turn on the light. “I feel a need to blend in with my environment,” he says. “I don’t just live here. This is a home for the birds and the bugs, and I’m supposed to be sharing this place.”

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Sitting amongst the bounty of the edible landscape in their front yard is (from left) Matt Fahy, his wife Cindi Hetz, and daughter Maxine Fahy, 5, on Thursday, May 13. "This is the easiest, cheapest way for me to start my own green movement," says Fahy. "I can't afford solar panels, or an electric car or a solar water heater. I can get a whole lot of free mulch, trade with my friends, dumpster dive." ... Read more