Rich Hoban's Page

Your business or organization:

Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities/Stanard Farm

Your website:

http://www.ccbmrdd.org

Your e-mail (if you want to share):

Hoban.Richard@CuyahogaBDD.org (work) richardhoban@sbcglobal.net (home)

Tell us about yourself:

We help adults with developmental disabilities to become successfully employed. As a new employment and training venture, we are developing an urban farm on the 1.1 acre site of the old Stanard School at E.53rd and Stanard in the St.Clair Superior neighborhood. We are working collaboratively with the city of Cleveland, most closely with Councilman Joe Cimperman, Morgan Taggart of the OSU Extension and Jamie Baker of the St.Clair Superior Development Corp. The city is currently finishing preparation of the site, and we hope to take possession soon and to begin preparing it for planting in the spring.

What gifts can you give to Cleveland's local food community?

Meeting space, as we make plans to acquire 1.1 acres, we will have three 2,000 incubator sites on which OSU extension will assist new farmers in learning to grow, we will arrange to share machinery/equipment as we acquire it

What knowledge and practices do you want to learn?

I want to learn what it's like as we fumble our way through our first year of getting started. And then do a better job and learn more each successive year.

What about local food makes you most excited?

The local food movement can help transform the city of Cleveland one farm at a time.