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roosters, and the piles of compost. Ableman had to continually defend the farm's right to operate, as the landscape around it shifted from rural to urban. Though the farm grew local, convenient, organic, fresh food, it was at odds with the new residents’ ideas of what an urban space should look, smell, and sound like. There were cease-and-desist orders filed over the farm's composting, and the roosters’ daily dawn ruckus prompted public nuisance complaints, which in turn sparked a media storm as supporters and naysayers clashed. Ableman was spending a lot of time and energy just trying to keep his farm operating as it had been for decades in the face of the juggernaut of suburban sprawl.
    Fairview Gardens produced one hundred different types of fruits and vegetables, employed thirty people, and fed some five hundred families through on-farm sales and farmers’ markets. The farm was grossing close to one million dollars in sales at its peak. 5 It was a viable economic entity,standing on its own two feet without any municipal or community concessions, though it was being treated as less than one in so many ways.
    The farm's land had already been rezoned as residential, with the potential for fifty-two condominium homes. Developers were salivating, while the family that owned the farm had mixed feelings about the land's legacy for the community and also the potential payday for its inheritors. It was a fight that Ableman surely would have lost if not for the fact that Cornelia Chapman, the family's matriarch, obviously harbored an emotional connection to the land as a farm. Ableman ultimately convinced the family that the land should be left as farmland in a trust to give future generations the ability to see where and how food is produced. He also knew that it was important for the family to get a reasonable value for their land. In the end, a compromise was miraculously reached in the gulf between the then current value of the tract as agricultural land and the unthinkable price it would bring as residential properties. Cornelia Chapman eventually pushed a note under Ableman's door with her final figure. The terms were “Seven Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars Firm and No Bickering!” spelled out in handwriting. 6
    Ableman managed to raise the asking price and promptly set up a nonprofit corporation, with a board of directors and bylaws, that would steer the future of the land. The Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens became one of the first agricultural protected zones in the United States in 1997. A precedent-setting case had been made for urban agriculture. But in the end, it was all a very gentlemanly agreement over land use, the selling price, and the future of a suburban part of Santa Barbara. Now the farm functions as a working enterprise with a produce stand and a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, an educational center, and a national model of urban agriculture and urban farmland preservation.
    Every minute in the United States, over an acre of agricultural land is lost to commercial and residential development. 7 We have built our cities next to good farmland for the obvious reasons, but those flat, well-drainedopen spaces make for easy sprawl. Land is always more valuable as a future shopping mall, because food can be obtained so cheaply from elsewhere. Clearly the odds are never in favor of the small farm, let alone an urban one.
    The story of Michael Ableman and Fairview Gardens is a rare example of success in the face of slim odds. But Ableman had the support of a community—wealthy donors, foundation grants, and regular farm customers—and was able to raise the money he needed. He was also lucky that the Chapman family wanted to cash out and get out of the landlord farming business—but didn't want to gouge. I'm sure it didn't feel like it to Ableman at the time, but it was a fairly straightforward transaction among relative social and economic equals.
    A group of