Urban Farm (1-year auto-renewal)

I like magazine overall. Great articles teaching you how to make hybrid trees and bee keeping for example. There a few articles that seemed a bit contrived community action. I get the social aspect, but I would rather have more focus on the techniques, how-tos, and learning than the social aspects. I would recommend this magazine to people living in urban areas.

I ordered this magazine on a whim during a promotion and both my husband and I are fans. My husband has previously remarked he would like to try keeping chickens and bees, and this magazine gives practical information and stories of those as well as on topics like container and community gardens. The content focuses on sustainable living without being preachy, with beautiful pictures. The magazine arrived quickly, within 2-3 weeks of placing my order. Most of the ads are in the back of the magazine, except when related to article content. Overall, the magazine is informative, a little quirky and fun.

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`Green' magazines often preach instead of teach with a finger-wagging attitude that makes reading a chore. Urban Farm makes sustainable living a fun, informative read.

The clean, easy-to-read design blends nicely with beautiful, full-color photographs and how-to illustrations that appear cover-to-cover.

This edition included 12 feature stories, four columns Backyard Coop, Curbside Tools, Green Thumb and Urban Feast and a handful of other pieces. Here are Urban Farm's five cover teasers in the July/August 2011 edition:

* Grow Hot Peppers on a windowsill or a balcony

* Street Smarts: Forage for Urban Edibles

* 4 Easy Steps to Freezer Jam

* Simple Bio-Retention: Incorporate a Rain Garden into Your Landscape

* Sweet Corn Season Arrives! Details and recipes inside

The most interesting feature is Debbie Moors' story `Not Just Window Dressing.' The story features the Windowfarms Project and introduces home-hydroponic systems that are built from the contents of a recycling bin.

I can't say enough about the photography. Sure, there are some stock photos but the main features nicely balance all the elements. Rhoda Peacher's freezer jam photos are simply mouth-watering (Yum! Brambleberry!) There are eight step-by-step color photos accompanying Michael Locke's instructions on how to build a kitchen table from a salvaged pre-hung door (each photo is given enough real estate that you won't need to rummage through a junk drawer for a magnifying glass).

In summary, Urban Farm is my best, new magazine subscription in recent memory. I'm pleasantly surprised by the use of color, quality content and the friendly tone. I used to find myself flipping through Better Homes and Gardens and Good Housekeeping, looking for something interesting to pop out but more often disappointed in the results. I didn't bother to renew Real Simple, which is chock full of pricey gadgets and so bereft of utilitarian advice it should be classified as a home show catalog instead of a magazine. If you subscribe to these other magazines and find them unfulfilling then I recommend Urban Farm.

Rating: Five stars.

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I received the first issue of this magazine and I like it. It has a lot of good articles that are applicable to gardening such as raising rabbits and chickens. Some of the articles tend to be a bit too left-wing envirnomentalist for me, but overall I still like the magazine.

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I live in the suburbs with about a half acre of back yard to work with. I have a large garden, chickens, bees, and dreams for future projects. I also like Hobby Farm and thought this would be some of the same with the town dweller in mind. Unfortunately, I have not been excited by my subscription. I don't find anything I can't find in Mother Earth News and I'm not especially motivated to take many of the articles a step further. I have no problem with any ideological slant that might be present but I don't find myself inspired by it either. I honestly wished I liked it more but I'm sure I can get my backyard farmer fix filled by other sources.

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