Natural Home Interviews Truck Farm Filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Ian Cheney (left) and Curt Ellis prove food can be grown just about anywhere—including the back of a pickup truck. Photo By Taylor Gentry

In their Peabody Award-winning documentary King Corn, Brooklyn-based filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney traveled to Iowa and planted a bumper crop of corn on 1 square acre of land. The pair's newest project, Truck Farm—a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program and forthcoming film—sprouted from one unlikely question: How do you grow your own food in the big city if you don’t have any land?

What sparked the idea to plant a farm in the back of a pickup truck? 

Ian: We wanted to grow some of our own food. But where to do it in New York City? The back of my granddad’s old 1986 Dodge pickup truck was the only land we had.

How much did it cost?

Ian: About two hundred bucks. Paul Mankiewicz, this brilliant, quirky scientist, has developed this awesome lightweight soil called GaiaSoil (gaiasoil.com). It cost a hundred bucks to buy enough to cover about 20 cubic feet. We also bought about 50 dollars’ worth of compost and potting soil. Another 50 dollars bought the seeds.

Curt: And a friend of mine gave us a big thing full of worms.

Did anyone help you out?

Ian: We have neighbors who are savvy community gardeners, and they have not only taught us how to weed, but also simply done the weeding themselves on the way to work. And when July became hot and we realized we needed to water the truck at least twice a day, Fulvio, the owner of Red Hook’s new Italian restaurant, O’Barone  let us hook up our hose to the front of his restaurant. He also gave us wine.

Who told you to drill the holes in the bottom?

Ian: My brother. He used to be a green-roof advocate, so he walked us through how it would work and explained that we needed to have some way of getting rid of the excess water. But it was my brilliant idea to drill...

Curt: ...a hole in the gas tank.

Did you really drill a hole in the gas tank?

Ian: No, but I thought I did.

How did you know how many holes to drill?

Ian: I made it up. You get to know your pickup truck and where the water collects; I just put like ten holes in those corners. We have these videos on the Internet that show people how we made this thing. I wish we could’ve made the back of the truck transparent, though, so you could see a cross section of how it works. Because a lot of people ask what’s underneath.