A vegetable garden flourishes at Woodland and 22nd street in west Louisville. Eggplant, tomatoes, rosemary, basil, parsley, green beans, new peas, beets and cantaloupes grow in raised beds. The garden is open on two sides to the sidewalk and a parking lot for a day care center; bounded on the other two sides by an old factory and an elevated railroad track.

Just behind the garden, huge heaps of wood chips, coffee grinds and used distillery grains are composting into soil. Overlooking it is a venerable and many-stemmed hackberry tree that suggests a century of hard city living and that this vacant lot was once inhabited. Indeed, there were two houses on the lot, but both had collapsed into their cellars, said Tomese Buthod, head of the garden committee for Breaking New Grounds foundation, which has big plans for its new, rough-edged city site.

It is just the right kind of place to envision MacArthur "genius" grantee, Will Allen, at his happiest.

Allen, who is likely the most famous urban farmer in America, is CEO of the visionary Growing Power, a non-profit complex of greenhouses and community farming in one of the poorest sections of Milwaukee. A former professional basketball player and sales and marketing expert for Procter & Gamble, Allen will be in Louisville Friday to lead composting and aquaculture workshops and help erect a hoop house for Breaking New Grounds. This foundation is an outgrowth of the vermiculture, or worm composting outlet that the Heine Brothers' Coffee business in Louisville has employed for nearly five years, turning its 50 tons of spent coffee grinds into nutrient-rich compost sold at the coffee houses. Buying the urban farm

Now comes the next step, said executive director Sarah Fritschner. The goal of Breaking New Grounds is to make good food and good jobs through a neighborhood-based, community food system that is, also, based on the notion of turning waste into wealth. 

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