Stories from the Opportunity Gardens Program

By Trish Woolbright

The last few weeks have been really exciting, as CCUA’s Opportunity Gardens Staff has finally been able to get back outside to help families in Columbia build their gardens and kick off the growing season.  It’s our busiest time of the year, and we love every minute! To celebrate, we thought we would share two stories about our gardeners.

N. is a 50 yr old transgender veteran who applied to Opportunity Gardens after learning about the program in the newspaper. When N. came to us, they were living on just $1.50 in food stamps every day and could not cook with an oven or a stove because of PTSD. They needed help with fresh foods that could be easily cooked with a crock pot or microwave and could be stored easily. At the same time, N. was anxious about meeting new people, being outside the house for very long, or being “a failure”. In fact, N’s world had become very small and reclusive. We started N. with one small garden bed, and over the next three years N. worked really hard to learn everything they could.  Those three years made all the difference in the world! N. was shocked to discover just how abundant a garden could be. It was overwhelming! Now N. spends more time outside, has gotten to know their neighbors, and shares garden tips with fellow gardeners. N. learned how to plan the garden to grow the specific varieties of food they liked, and also practiced freezing and drying the produce to make it last longer. N. is proud of losing 20 lbs. Because of their improved diet and more active lifestyle, and can now touch their toes. As N’s confidence in their gardening skills grew, we installed two more raised beds and fruit perennials. We are so proud of them for all the accomplishments and the positive results gardening has had in their life. We know we have helped someone find their passion in gardening for life.

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T. is a mother of 4 who was once homeless and unable to find work. She had found help through another agency, even gaining an internship so that she could in turn help others, and was working hard to build a better life for her family. One day, Opportunity Gardens staff came to that agency to share information about the Opportunity Gardens Program.  T. was intrigued, but she also had a really hard time believing that she herself could garden. The more we talked about helping her clients, though, the more she wanted it for herself too.

She was scared, and had a lot of questions. “Will there be snakes?! What about getting sick from the food if I do it wrong? What happens if I get dirt all over me, won’t I get some disease or a bug will bite me? What if I do it wrong and it looks bad and the neighbors get upset? How am I going to find the time, I have kids, and school and this internship!? It’s already all too much, but my kids and I need to eat more vegetables and fruits! We need this, but I’m scared!”

All of these concerns come up often for new gardeners. Taking risks means you have a safety net or a back up plan, but living on the edge of homelessness or with the experience of trauma can mean that these risks are HUGE – too big for someone to consider taking. For example, getting sick can mean time off work, the loss of a job or a home, and medical bills that you can’t afford. Opportunity Gardens helps take the risk out by giving you that safety net while you learn. We come with the right equipment, bring the right plants which you have chosen for yourself, do reminders, and share tips all along the way as we guide people towards independently growing and eating whole foods they grew from seeds or small plants.

T. decided to take the risk with our help. We started her with a pretty small garden, encouraging the the whole family to help with the work. By mid-summer, though, the challenges of a busy – and changing – family schedule had led the family to abandon their garden. T. felt bad and was going to give up, telling us, “I told you I couldn’t do it!” We asked her, “Did you eat from the garden?” She said, “Well yes, those were the best salads of my life, the greens were amazing, and the kids loved it! We just lost track of it and couldn’t keep up.” We responded with, “Well then let’s find the veggies under these weeds together and we will start over! It’s never too late!”

T. did not believe us, but we got to work anyway. What we found shocked even us!  Under all of the weeds abundance was waiting. T’s garden was growing in spite of the neglect, and we had to have 2 giant bowls and a grocery bag to haul the bounty back to her kitchen! She was grateful we didn’t give up and said, “I can see how it’s like this in the rest of my life. I might give up before I get the abundance, but I shouldn’t quit. It might still be ok.”

We made a plan to help keep this from happening in the future, working around the difficulties and challenges of T.’s very busy schedule. The kids manage watering and harvesting from some of the plants, we put down more mulch to keep the weeds at bay, and we made a less complicated garden plan. So far there have been no bugs we can’t handle…and there have  definitely been no snakes in the garden!

 

Bugs!

By Carrie Hargrove

We’re bringing you another article from the archives of Carrie’s Farm Your Yard series with KBIA.  We hope you enjoy!

By the time this airs, Halloween will have just passed. ..but I am not ready to let go of telling spooky scary stories, so I’ve got one for you today.

To most people, the spookiest thing about organic gardening are those weird, bloodless, six legged, multi-eyed creatures who go creeping around your cherry tomatoes all season long. I am talking about bugs. (It’s true: they don’t have blood: look it up online, you’ll learn something amazing.)

But…

I love bugs. Like I really love bugs. I have been known to spend whole summer evenings sitting under a porch light so that I can watch an orb spider catch it’s pray and tend to its web. (I know spiders aren’t bugs, but I think you get my point.) I honestly don’t understand why science fiction buffs spend so much time dreaming up alien civilizations in outer space, when for most of us, there are alien civilizations all around us: insects-under our feet, crawling up a tree truck, living in that crack in your driveway. Most people don’t know anything about the amazing and strange life of the insects that share our homes and our gardens. What they could learn would shock them.

Today, we are going to talk about ants, and how in some incredible ways they aren’t so very different from us humans.

I am going to say two words and want you to pay attention to the first thing you think of. Ready? Ant farm. I bet you came up with one of two images: 1) if you are my age of older a little plastic cage where you can keep some ants and watch their activities or 2) if you are currently a pre-teen, a show on the Disney Channel (that I didn’t even know existed until I Googled “Ant Farm” to see what Google thought I meant). Well, there is a secret option number three: an ant farm. Meaning, a farm where the farmers are ants.

Different ants have different kinds of farms, but the farmer ants I see are shepherds. Yes, ants at my farm have their own livestock! They feed, protect, and herd other bugs like aphids. For whatever reason, the fact that they herd tiny livestock is really mind boggling to me. I have seen this every single year that I have worked at the Urban Farm. Sometimes these tiny livestock farms have come at a detriment to me, but mostly I just think they are really cool. The reason why ant farmers can be unwanted in a vegetable garden is because the livestock they are tending, while nutritious and delicious to the ants, are insects that cause damage to the plants I am trying to grow. Talk about turf wars. Fortunately, this farmer vs. farmer problem usually doesn’t flair up, because there is something else- another bug, alas- on my side.

Just as human shepherds curse the lonely coyote for sneaking away with a member of their flock, ant shepherds experience the same headaches. Except instead of wolves or coyotes, an ant’s worst farming enemy is the ladybug. Ladybugs love the sweet taste of aphids just as much as ants do. Ladybugs are also essentially little tanks that more or less get what they way in the insect world. Ants have yet to invent anything like a fence to keep these cute red and black varmints out of their aphid herds, which is all for the better for me and my own selfish agricultural endeavors.

I have seen ants tending their aphid herds on pole beans, on my milkweed plants, and in our Virginia creeper vine. This past year, I saw lots of ants and their livestock on the sunflowers that we planted for the bees. Ladybugs are never far away.

Even more amazing than the fact that ants actively farm for the benefit of their colonies, is how long they have been doing it. It is estimated that some species of ants that practice agriculture have been doing so for over 5 million years. Humans, by contrast, have only been farming for about 10,000 years.

Its things like this that make me wonder: when humans finally hit upon the series of tasks and patterns that transforms a seed into a plant and then began to recreate those patterns, everything about human civilization changed. We could stay in one place, we no longer had to be nomadic. Agriculture is more efficient than hunting and gathering, so overall, farming saves a group of people lots of time. Art was impossible before farming, there was no time for that kind of self-expression. Herein is where my wonderment lies: did that same cultural evolution happen for ants 5 million years ago when they realized that the secretions from an aphid’s rear tasted sweet, and that they could save a lot of trouble by just exploiting that knowledge? I mean, if ants farm, what else are they doing there under the wood chips at my farm? It is like bizzaro world, it sounds like the plot of a science fiction novel.  If Alfred Hitchcock were privy to this information, he probably would have written a clever psychological thriller about the chilling similarities between ant civilization and that of humans.

Of course, I knew none of this until I started gardening and paying attention to the whole world that a healthy, robust garden becomes every spring, summer and fall. And I’m still a gardening newbie: I am excited to learn more about the natural world with every gardening season. For someone like me, a backyard garden becomes a classroom, a classroom where natural history really comes alive. Literally, it comes alive, and I witness amazing things first hand. Maybe that’s why insects and spiders don’t scare or intimidate me anymore, through gardening, I have come to know and understand them. And only the unknown is scary.  I know that I started this episode promising a scary tale, I guess it’s not so much scary as downright amazing. It is amazing that I worry about the safety of my chickens, when there are a whole host of hungry things that want to eat them, and sometimes do. And that same concern for the wellbeing for my livestock is felt by something 500 times smaller than me. It makes you realize that all things are a lot more similar than you might have initially thought. And that is one heck of a life lesson that gardening has taught me.

originally aired November of 2015

Planting for the Pantry

As we prepare for the 2018 growing season, I want to tell you about one of our favorite volunteers, Nona, who has a unique perspective because she is not only involved with CCUA’s Planting for the Pantry Program as a volunteer, but is also a recipient of the food we grow.

 
Nona loves vegetables. In fact, if you ask her what her favorite vegetable is, she will smile and say, “I just like all of them!” She joined CCUA as a volunteer after being introduced to the Urban Farm by her son, who knew how much she would love the work that we do. Nona is outgoing and easy to talk to, and as a part of the harvesting and washing team which prepares produce for the pantry, she quickly became known for her ability to entertain and lift the spirits of the entire crew.
Nona grew up in the country, part of a hard-working but poor community where gardening was a necessary part of everyday life. As a child, she loved helping in the garden, and has fond memories of working with her family and eating tomatoes right off the vine. Her early experiences led to a lifelong appreciation of vegetables, and as she raised her four children she made sure that fresh produce was an important part of her family’s diet as well.

When she reached her 40’s, Nona started paying closer attention to her body and her health, and it wasn’t long before she realized that she didn’t like the way she felt. She also noticed that many of her friends and family members were fighting illnesses like diabetes and heart disease, and she worried that she would end up with the same problems if she didn’t make some changes to her diet and lifestyle.

 
Nona took action. She began walking, increased the amount of fresh vegetables and fruits she was eating, eliminated sugar from her diet, and worked to learn as much as she could about nutrition. In the years since, she has become quite the expert, and will happily talk about the health benefits she’s seen from vegetables. “I didn’t go to school to study this,” she says, “I researched and experimented on myself!” Nona truly believes that health comes first from what you put in your body, and she believes that vegetables are the key to keeping her immune system functioning well. Nona will tell you, “I’m a believer that you can heal yourself with good food.” She enjoys vibrant health, rarely gets sick, and works to take care of herself so that she can better face any challenge that comes her way.

As many people discover when they switch to a healthier diet, though, it’s not always
easy to get access to fresh, healthy produce. Now retired, Nona lives with a limited
income, and she sometimes needs to go to the food pantry to get nutritious food.
She’s glad that she’s able to get fresh CCUA-grown produce there, and will bring
home as much as possible, freezing the extra to use later. The fact that she helped
grow the food makes it taste particularly good!

Here at CCUA, we are committed to helping our community gain access to fresh,
healthy produce. Through Planting for the Pantry, we can donate the food grown on
our Urban Farm directly to local hunger relief agencies.

How does it work? You, your service/social club, church, workplace, or business can
sponsor a row or partial row for the season at the Urban Farm. Sponsorship for an
entire row is $1,200, and you can sponsor any portion of a row down to a single
square foot for $5. Each dollar of your sponsorship brings fresh food to families in
need, supports CCUA’s educational programs, and builds an endowment for CCUA’s
future.

 
In 2017, families facing hunger took home over 17,000 pounds of healthy vegetables
thanks to Planting for the Pantry. This spring we need your help to meet our goal
of securing sponsorship for all 50 rows at the Urban Farm. We’ve had a great
start already, with 24 of 50 rows sponsored!

 
Will you sponsor a row or a partial row? With your gift, we can reach our goal
and fill the shelves of local food pantries with top quality fresh fruits and vegetables.
You can help people in Columbia, just like our friend Nona, improve their diets
and their health.  If you would like to help, please visit our Planting for the Pantry page.

 
This winter Nona has been on a cabbage kick. “I don’t know what it is about cabbage,
but I’m hooked on it,” she tells me with a smile. Experience has shown Nona that
when she craves specific vegetables it’s because there are nutrients in them that she
needs, and so she’s happy to give in to those cravings.

 
“You’ve got to listen to your body. Your body will tell you what it needs.”

 

Plant Today, Eat Tomorrow!

Leslie Meyer, Build This Town Steering Committee

Guilty!  Yes, I am guilty of feeding my kids hot dogs and boxed mac and cheese during those rushed years when we were hustling from soccer, to violin lessons, to swimming.  Easy, attractive meals that I realized years later, were not providing my kids with essential nutrients.  The diet changed during their high school years.  I introduced whole grains (brown rice replacing white rice), more veggies, leafy greens.  The transition was necessary, but it was not peaceful.  In the end, I prevailed!  Today my adult kids all make it a priority to consume healthy foods –  a couple of them even turned pescatarian.  They learned that food is what fuels your body and brain.  Thankfully, current new parents are much more informed and make better choices for their kids.  However, healthy food can be expensive.  Good quality fruit and vegetables can only come from soil rich with nutrients that will be passed on to the plants we eat; and it can be pricey and out of reach for many.  

Fast forward to 2013 when I was thrilled to discover a terrific organization, right here in Columbia, that was growing fruit and vegetables and donating to the local food pantries.  The Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture (CCUA), founded in 2009 by a visionary team who believed we could grow top quality produce within our city to increase accessibility of healthy food.  CCUA’s Urban Farm on Smith street is also a center of education for our elementary schools.  In addition, their Opportunity Gardens Program provides the tools and know-how to low income Columbia residents so they can grow wholesome food in their own backyard.

And guess what?  CCUA is partnering with Columbia Farmers Market and the city to build an Agriculture Park!  The park will expand CCUA’s reach and improve its educational facilities, including an industrial teaching kitchen.  The project on Clary-Shy Park, the land adjacent to the ARC, is breaking ground this spring thanks to many generous supporters who helped raise the initial funds.  Now we need YOU!  We need your financial support, AND we need your wisdom and input as we formulate the programming that will take place at the Agriculture Park.

Let’s plant a legacy today so that many can eat tomorrow.

 

Living Room Seed Starting

By Carrie Hargrove

Over the last three years, CCUA’s Carrie Hargrove has shared gardening stories and information with our community through KBIA’s Farm Your Yard.  We’re reaching into our archives to share them again through the Beet!

This time of year is especially exciting to everyone- gardeners and non-gardeners alike. That’s because we’ve more or less been cooped up inside all winter, and are as ready as ever to bust out of the back door and do something, anything outside. It is nice days like today: sunny, warm late winter days that I get the most calls from folks asking me to come out and help them dust off their own backyard gardens, in preparation for what is sure to be a wonderful gardening season. Columbians are brimming over with excitement at the thought of seeding carrots, getting dirty, and I know that there are hundreds, or even thousands of folks who eagerly await the opening day of the Columbia Farmer’s Market outdoor season.  Spring is almost here. And we are ready!

Something that is fun to do right now, when it is still just a bit too cool to be planting outside (assuming that this is a normal warm spell after which we will experience another, ugly cold snap) is get some plants started inside your house. That way, when the mid-March planting craze is here some of your plants will already be a few weeks old, and you will get to eat that homegrown salad that much earlier. Also, it’s just fun. I might be a vegetable gardener by trade, but I am a houseplant enthusiast at heart. To me, this blending of my two usually separate horticultural endeavors is an exciting time. My terrarium of exotic mosses and ferns just has to be scooted over to make way for little cups of soil that will soon sprout swiss chard, kale, and sweet alyssum.

Many people buy their vegetable starts from gardening centers, but if you want to watch the slow but steady transformation from a green onion seed to tiny green onion plant, to some green onions that you sprinkle over your omelet, then you should just start your own. At least do it once, just so you can watch the tiny spectacle. It’s pretty cool, and if you have kids, it is a great way to make science real for them. Also, if I can stay on my soapbox for a second, it teaches patience. Yeah, that concept of delayed satisfaction, as opposed to our ever increasing need for the instant variety. Patience was an unintended trait I gained when I started gardening. You want to teach your child patience in a fun and fascinating way? Well, start some lettuce seeds in your house with your kids. Once the plants are big enough to eat, you can make a meal together with the food that you grew, and will find that the kids will love that salad in a way you never knew was possible. It is so true. I could talk your ear off about how growing vegetables makes you want to eat them. But that is for a different day.

To get back onto a more practical tract: let’s discuss how to get vegetable plants growing inside your house. I have tinkered with this for years, and while everyone’s situation will be different because every house is different, I can give you some things to think about.

First: think ahead. For the purposes of getting a small head start on the spring season, you want to start the plants inside your house a few week to a month before you plant them outside. So plan a little bit. You can start some things inside this week, and intend to plant them outside around mid-March.

Second: find the right environmental conditions inside your house for seed starting. Seeds need warmth (but not too much), moisture (again, not too much), and as much sunlight as you can give them. In my experience, the sunlight is the limiting factoring in my living room greenhouse operation. In any case, setting the seeds on the sunniest windowsill of your house should do the trick. In a nutshell, the sunnier, the better.

Third: find the right vessel to hold your seed starting activities. Even a small terra cotta pot will not work for this activity for a few reasons, mostly that they are too big, and they make it hard to pull the plants out of for transplanting. The best containers are small plastic ones. Ideally, they size of individual yogurt cups or something like that. All you need to do with the yogurt cups is to poke a couple of holes in the bottom for drainage. As far as what to fill your container with, I would recommend getting potting mix from a gardening store, soil from the ground won’t work well for this activity.

Fourth: moisture control. You don’t want to keep the soil mix that holds your seeds and seedling too wet, just slightly damp to the touch. If you check them every day, you will quickly figure out how much watering is too much or too little.

Fifth: Read your seed packets! Really: most seed companies put good information on each packet that tells you how deep to plant the seed, how warm to keep the soil, and how long to expect the germinating to take. Just follow the planting directions on the seed packet and you should be good.

And finally: Be patient! It is rare when seeds sprout in just a few days, it is normally closer to a week, and often it takes longer than that. When you see the baby plant peeping out of the soil for the first time, you will be so excited that all the waiting pays off.

Now, go home a find somewhere to get started! Or, if you have any gardening questions, visit CCUA’s website at columbiaurbanag.org, where you can contact us with any and all vegetable gardening questions. Or follow us on Facebook, where we are always posting new and interesting gardening content. Happy gardening!

(Originally published – February of 2016)

Helping to Build This Town: The Community Food Assessment

By Heather Gillich, Evaluator

Food is good, and it’s also personal… and complicated! The food we have to eat, how we get it, and the ways we choose to eat it are ways we interact with food every day. Our food environment shapes how we eat, and is shaped by what we eat. With such an amazing opportunity to enhance our food environment (the new Agriculture Park at Clary Shy!), this is a perfect time to talk about food.

To ensure that the Agriculture Park is a space where everyone is inspired to engage with their food, we are conducting a community food assessment focused on learning more about food in Columbia and its surrounding communities. This project is funded by the Missouri Foundation for Health to help the awesome folks coordinating the Agriculture Park project make informed decisions about creating a park space that is reflective of the most positive possible food environment in Columbia! We are exploring what food is available through an inventory of food items in grocery stores, convenience stores, food pantries, farmers markets, and restaurants around town. We are also learning about access to all types of food by taking a look at locations in our neighborhoods, transportation, wheelchair accessibility, and food culture. With all this variety of food to eat, we are investigating how everyone is utilizing food by investigating diet and nutrition priorities, cooking and gardening habits, and selection of food sources.

If you haven’t yet heard, focus groups are currently being conducted and our community health survey is open through March 15^th .  Anyone who buys and/or eats food in Columbia is welcome and encouraged to participate in both! We appreciate your willingness to help us honor and amplify perspectives from diverse community groups in Columbia. Your unique voice and contribution of time and ideas is of great value to this effort!

Find out more, take the survey, or sign up for a focus group at www.buildthistown.org/cfa!

How to Start a Farm From a Soccer Field

By Carrie Hargrove

In the summer of 2015 my boss (and husband), Billy Polansky, asked me if the name Clary Shy meant anything to me. “Who is she?” I asked. He was not referring to a person, but to the grassy field that lies just west of the ARC, near the Columbia Farmer’s Market. That grassy field is a city park: Clary Shy Park, named by Ron and Vicki (Clary) Shy, who generously donated the land to the city. Until then, I hadn’t even realized that it was a formalized city park, I guess I really never thought of it at all.

Fast forward to early 2018, and I think about Clary Shy multiple times a day. Clary Shy is the site which will be the home of the future agriculture park, and CCUA’s base of operations. There is a lot of excitement in starting a new farm; you can build on the lessons learned from setting up other systems, and through this sort of trial and error you can create a better system than the one that preceded it.  While this site has a history that is very different than that of the area that we currently grow on, we are making sure to put the hard won lessons of the past 9 years at our Urban Farm into consideration when designing this new agriculture park.

In some form or fashion, I have been associated with CCUA’s current Urban Farm since its inception in the winter of 2009. We designed the Urban Farm to mirror a small scale vegetable farm in Arkansas called Foundation Farm. The foundation (if you will) of this vegetable production system is establishing permanent beds that are not tilled, and that are separated by permanent grassy walkways.  Anyone who has ever been to the Urban Farm has seen this layout. This is a very labor intensive production model that relies heavily on regular and timely hand weeding, to keep the walkways from totally taking over the vegetable beds. Because of the massive amount of human labor involved in a system such as this, it is a rather unconventional farm layout. The permanent, no till beds have done splendidly at the Urban Farm, they have yielded many tons of produce in the past growing season alone, but this boon in harvest yields has not come without difficult lessons: most notably perennial weed control.

Something that we didn’t know when designing the Urban Farm is that certain perennial weeds flourish in a no till vegetable production system such as the one that we laid out. Bermuda grass and field bindweed have been two troublesome weeds that seem to spread every year no matter our diligence in weeding. The goal is to learn from this lesson and create a system at the new agriculture park that keeps weeds like these in check. Field bindweed and Bermuda grass already enjoy strongholds in the area of the park where we will be establishing a vegetable farm, and in order to quickly get them under control, we need to come out of the gate swinging.

For the past quarter century, Clary Shy park has been a grassy lot that serves as a practice sports field. The high amount of foot traffic has caused a considerable amount of compaction to the soil- something that will take years of diligence on our part to correct.  This is one of the reasons why these troublesome perennial weeds are present: they are hardy plants that can thrive in challenging environments such as compacted soils, hot, dry weather, and trampling from soccer practices. They also do well in clayey soil- which is the major type of soil present at this site.

In dreaming about the future agriculture park, we have identified 3 issues that we want our production system to address: perennial weed pressure, compacted soil, and clay soils with low organic matter.   Unfortunately, the current production system that we utilize at Urban Farm with the permanent, no till beds does not adequately address these issues, so we need to tweak our practices and come up with a new game plan.  Luckily, I do believe that we have crafted a production plan for the new agriculture park that addresses all of the known issues simultaneously.

Our goal is to move to the agriculture park fully in the spring of 2019. That gives us one growing season to do some important prep work on the soil in hopes of making the early years at the agriculture park that much smoother. This spring we will be doing some tractor work in order to prepare our first acre for planting. In 2018, we will be growing plants out at the agriculture park, just not food producing plants. This year, we are going to focus exclusively on intensely managed cover crops.

Cover crops are plants that will provide some sort of benefit to the soil and the food crops that are planted after it. In our case, we are choosing to plant a grass called sudangrass. We chose this cover crop because it has an extensive root system that will help break up soil compaction. Sudangrass is also a very large plant, it can grow several feet tall, and being a grass, it can also be planted very close together. This should provide deep shade for the perennial weeds that are shorter than the cover crop. Because the two perennial weeds that we want to get under control don’t tolerate shade, we are hoping that a year of growing sudangrass will weaken the stand of bindweed and bermudagrass present out there. We plan on featuring extensive cover cropping at the agriculture park at all times as a way to out-compete weeds, break up soil compaction, and add organic matter back into the soil. In 2019 and on, we plan on devoting half of all available vegetable production space to cover crops; as a way to improve the soil sustainably. Cover cropping will be key to our success in establishing a productive and lovely urban vegetable farm.

In addition to extensive use of cover crops, we plan on adding tons-actual tons- of compost over the area to kick start soil health. Way back in 2008, CCUA was created in a steamy pile of compost (with help from a grant that diverted food scraps to compost piles in community gardens around Columbia), and we have no intentions to stray from these roots. This spring, we will be looking for a group of excited volunteers to spread the first semi-truck load of compost over the field. We will repeat this process a couple of times during the summer and fall as well. In addition to volunteer workdays spreading compost over our new site, we will be doing many other capital improvements like installing fence, setting up an underground irrigation system, and putting up a greenhouse!

If there is something that I believe with all of my heart, it is that it takes a village to raise up an urban farm. So, just as we did when we created the first Urban Farm- we will be looking to our neighbors, family, and friends in Columbia to help us on this wild rollercoaster of urban farming. In 2017, we did a lot of planning about what the agriculture park will look like, and in 2018 we will start to put all of those plans in place- and we are looking to you to help us turn this soccer field into a glorious edible park.

 

When the Weather Outside is Frightful…

We busily plan for the next growing season to be more delightful!

by Tony Minnick

Oftentimes, friends of CCUA’s Urban Farm are perplexed in pondering, “What might farmers possibly have going on to fill their winter work weeks when the weather’s oh-so cold and the soil’s oh-so frozen solid?” To which I’ve often got a lot of answers to respond with, even if they’re relayed from the toasty, temperature-controlled confines of a farmer’s winter office. While the occasional opportunities present themselves to vacation, to spend more time with family and friends, and to throw on the ice skates for a little, all-too-rare Stephens Lake Park session, these winter weeks are more so filled with seed spreadsheet creation than surfing! We’re busily hunkered down, and we’re organizing, tidying, fixing the broken, and meeting together in discussion of this season’s successes and our next season’s expected improvements – and it’s fun!

Winter presented itself with killing frosts in the transition from October to November this fall, marking the end of annual plants’ cycles and the beginning of downtime dormancy for perennials (it becomes a great time to prune them!). Zinnias and marigolds could be seen shriveling to all but seeds, while perennial blackberries and asparagus browned out above ground, sending their shoot energies back down to become root energies. Annual-plant survivors include only the few, most-hardy veggies. At the Urban Farm these are Winter Bloomsdale Spinach and Evergreen Hardy White Green Onions. True to their titles, these tough cookies are planted as transplants each fall, ideally by mid-September, and overwinter through the sleet and snow with minimal season extension support to become our first harvests of spring. They offer welcome mid-Winter relief from office work and screen-staring, with the need for occasional weeding and the maintenance of floating row covers we use for added warmth and protection.

With the verdant abundance of summer growth comes a never-ending list of laborious tasks in maintaining vegetables’ health and beauty, and there’s much less time to get into the nitty gritty planning of crop rotations, seed and transplant quantities, harvest dates, and delivery dates. It is in taking caring of these tasks that we replace the winter doldrums with winter productivity. What crop varieties proved most successful last season? And in which succession of crops per grow space did we see highest yields, least pests, quickest crops to harvest? As urban gardeners, limited space meets limited time as the greatest barriers to producing more food for our homes and communities. We have to make most use of every square foot of green space we’ve got. We plan seeding and transplants dates with efficiency in mind, so that as soon as one full bed of lettuces is harvested, the tomatoes or peppers are ready and waiting to replace them. Whether you’re under the fluorescent tubes of a farmer’s winter office or under the covers reading by cell phone light, the colored pages of seed catalogs, rich in detail and the makings of any gardener’s dreams, are welcome reads in making this winter plan a summer reality.

Additionally, we take time to address the maintenance and tidying of our spaces and equipment. Dust the cobwebs and wipe down the germination tables. Time to put a little TLC into that dysfunctional lawnmower. And sharpen those hoes, harvest knives, and pruners!  And organize those sheds so your garden help can actually find the right tool for the job! And…whoops… forgot about that mouse trap there… And wow I’ve been looking for thisratchet piece for four months…

You get the picture. Maybe in greater detail than you desired.

Trees are bare now. And farms and gardens seem most restful. As busy as our routines can stay, anytime and all the time, it’s worthwhile to take a cue from nature in this season. Relax and listen. Sleep a little more. Live in your long underwear.

In our office, we take this time to gather for more meetings than ever, to touch base between our diverse projects and to put details to dreams for the upcoming year. We connect in these chilly times to strengthen our relationships and build systems of communication that we’ll depend on during the frenzy of plantings and weedings and harvests and potlucks in future warmth! Days are short this time of year, and they’re also numbered. Before buds break and weeds shoot forth, there’s plenty to do (and not do) to make the most of them!

Rooted and Rising, Another Perspective

By Matthew Dollan

In November 2017, the Opportunity Gardens team attended Rooted and Rising, the 7^th annual Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference in Atlanta Georgia. In Opportunity Gardens, we work with a diverse group of participants, including many from the black community. (As an illustration –  we currently have speakers of 15 different languages in our program.) We wanted to get some different points of view and perspectives to help us interact more effectively with people in our program who hail from different backgrounds.

Rooted and Rising was attended by many black people from around the US and Canada who are involved in agriculture in one way or another. There were farmers, non-profit workers, people looking to get into farming and gardening, producers of value-added goods, and others working in multiple industries linked to agriculture. The conference focused as much on racial justice as agriculture, covering many topics such as historic and present-day barriers to black people acquiring land to use in agriculture, the low quality of food available to many black people living in metropolitan areas, dietary challenges facing many black people, and the less-than-welcoming environment black people experience when moving into rural areas to begin farming.

The name of the conference reflects the two major themes that we discussed. “Rooted” refers to the often-overlooked rich history of black people in agriculture prior to slavery and how that legacy can be an inspiration for people returning to farming and gardening. For example, Eugene Alala from the Grow Where You Are community garden talked about how many enslaved Africans were intentionally chosen for their skilled agriculture ability. Their techniques of growing rice and draining swamp land for agriculture are still used today in the South.  “Rising” is reflected in the triumphal and inspiring stories of black people surmounting institutional and individual racism to obtain and retain land, to take control of their own food supply, and to produce healthy food for themselves despite huge obstacles. We explored many resourceful ideas for urban agriculture and learned of the role of black Americans in developing beloved innovations.  Examples included Pick Your Own and the CSA model, developed and popularized by Booker T. Watley, and the Community Land Trust model, which keynote speaker Shirley Sherrod helped develop in the 1960s, and on which thousands of programs across the US are now modeled – including Columbia’s own CLT.

The first day of the conference was composed of a tour of seven different urban farms and gardens around Atlanta, and on the second day we attended workshops covering many topics related to farming, urban gardening and racial justice in the US.

Each urban farm and garden we visited is working to bring fresh healthy vegetables at affordable prices to communities which are often located in food deserts. They are spaces where community members are welcomed to participate and learn how to grow vegetables themselves, and they are often hubs where community gatherings take place and the arts are celebrated. The people we met are taking food production power back into their own hands, raising food in their own neighborhoods and communities and reducing dependency on massive corporations producing low-quality food far away. As we visited each garden it really hit me how important it is that these physical places exist in neighborhoods where they can serve as real-life examples of how it is possible to live. Many people have at least a little space to raise vegetables – even if they do live in town – and these urban agriculture operations serve as inspiration for everyone who sees them.

Abiodun Henderson told us the powerful story of Westview Community Garden, which she helped found, and which now serves as an important source of fresh vegetables and community revitalization. In addition to gardening activities, it provides creative and worthwhile activities and learning opportunities for youth, such as hosting part of the neighborhood’s annual STEAM empowerment summer camp.  This camp is geared toward many of the underprivileged kids between the ages of 7 and 17 who call Westview home. The community almost lost the garden to developers in 2015 after the bank that was leasing the area to them collapsed and the land was turned over to the FDIC, who advised the community that the land would be up for sale in a few months. During this time, a large new trail connecting much of Atlanta was constructed close to their neighborhood, making the value of the land go up. The Westview Community Organization made it clear to the FDIC that they wanted to purchase the land, and were assured they could keep gardening there. Without warning, a bulldozer arrived at the garden one day and began demolishing the garden shed and the raised beds, uprooting vegetables, and overturning years of hard work put into the garden. The FDIC was preparing the land for sale, presumably to another buyer, despite the neighborhood’s expressed intention to purchase it. Abi and the rest of the community were heartbroken by the destruction of their garden, but they organized and created a gofundme page. As a community, they raised the necessary funds to purchase the land! This is an amazing example of a community Rooted together and Rising above the obstacles of bank collapse and gentrification to organize and chip in and maintain something dear and vital to them.

Abi also spoke about how gardens like their own are a part of a necessary movement to survive and improve life in inner-city areas like hers where employment and access to healthy, fresh food are scarce. The stakes are high. Diabetes, obesity-related health problems, and poor nutrition decrease quality of life and are killing our friends. One way to directly address the large scope of the problem is through collaborations.  For example, Grow Where You Are and Truly Living Well, two of the other urban agriculture organizations we visited, partner with another nonprofit Abi runs – Ganstas to Growers – which connects previously incarcerated people to agriculture.

Throughout the conference, one theme that was emphasized was the power that gardening has to foster community. Our guide Eugene Alala from the Grow Where You Are community garden talked about how their work helps to bridge gaps separating different demographics and brings people together from all over the community who wouldn’t otherwise spend time together. Several of the gardens we visited recognize the importance of people gathering and enjoying communal time not only while gardening but also after the day’s work is done. Urban Sprouts, for example, has a large bonfire area and is constructing a stage which will enhance their ability to host movie nights, spoken-word events, and concerts. Jerry Ra of Urban Green University who partners with homeowners to raise vegetables and fish in gardens and tanks in their backyards, also emphasized the importance of creating strong personal relationships with participants in his program. This was especially good advice for me in my work with Trish and almost one hundred participants in Opportunity Gardens.

Another theme that came up in various discussions was the differences in legislation pertaining to urban agriculture across the nation. Some cities allow people to sell vegetables raised on public land and others do not. Atlanta is very friendly towards urban agriculture and in 2009 established a city-wide plan which included “launching a childhood obesity and local food initiative, passing new farmers’ market and community garden ordinances, committing to bringing local food within ten minutes of 75 percent of all residents by 2020, and committing to building community garden and urban agriculture plots in all city parks.” It made me realize how important it is for individuals to organize and support legislation and political movements which enable urban agriculture.

As I heard stories of black peoples’ long history in agriculture, I thought about how I – as a white person whose two sets of grandparents were both farmers – have not given enough thought to how slavery may affect current views of agriculture held by and about black people in a society where negative news about black people is intentionally and disproportionately over-publicized or about how important it is to give voice to the countless positive stories of black people in agriculture. We need to educate ourselves about how black people and other minorities in the USA are facing an uphill battle much steeper than white people are. We need to take action, including providing funding and resources to support organizations such as those that we visited during the conference. Supporting black-run organizations helps empower them with the resources they need to improve their own communities in the ways they see fit. I also appreciate even more, the importance of bringing people of color onto CCUA’s staff because they would be better able to relate to the unique challenges and obstacles preventing people of color from gardening.

The themes and information I learned at the conference impacted me deeply and opened my eyes to many obstacles facing people of color in our agriculture and food system. The innovations and strategies being developed to dismantle racist structures and thrive despite barriers are inspiring and I come away from the conference informed, convicted and with the hope that comes with knowing what can be done to help.

 

Rooted and Rising: Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference, November 10-12, 2017, Atlanta GA

By Tricia Woolbright

Part 2: The Conference

The conference opened with the keynote presentation by Shirley Sherrod (https://goo.gl/tU7xkg) and Rukia Lumbumba  (Please look at their presentation notes, which can be found at the links.)

Both speakers were very passionate and made me tear up a little as they discussed social justice and the struggles which they have had to endure. It was shocking to learn that they’ve had to face down law enforcement and armed members of the kkk blocking them from land they legally purchased. Through legal battles, they eventually were able to get the land they owned turned over to them. It really hit home how hard it is to obtain and keep land, and how systemic racism has kept people from owning land or having equity in farming. They urged people to find strategies of cooperation and to seek training in business and communication. They also advocate for the honoring of and healing from the trauma of oppression, even as people struggle with serious ongoing issues.

One topic of interest to me during Shirley’s remarks was the fact that often black farmers do not get credit for the agricultural ideas they develop.  I believe it’s important to pay attention and honor their legacy. If we don’t know our roots, we can’t grow.

Rukia ended the presentation by leading everyone in the New African Creed: 

We then moved into our workshops. By far, my favorite was a workshop by Jerry Ra called: Cooperative Urban Farming: Turning Your Home into an Asset. 

Jerry has been doing urban ag for 15 years. Having started in community gardens, he feels they are disaster for new urban gardeners. He emphasized that the distance from the home was the biggest problem. (I, too, have found a distinct difference between community gardens and home gardens. Our surveys also reflect that the distance to a community garden can be a serious hurdle.) He also found that selling plots didn’t work, there were problems with equitable resource distribution, and many community gardens were started with no focus or communication with other organizations.

Jerry took on this program by coordinating gardens.  One would grow herbs, another greens, etc, and they would split the proceeds at market. He then started Ants Cooperative. Intended as a CSA, Ants was landless and relied on small private plots at homes. These back-yard Liberation Gardens are farmed and managed by Jerry and his crew. The homeowner or renter provides the space and pays ¼ the water bill. The gardens use wicking beds and Kilimanjaro Mounds (same principle as Hugelkulture, but with a name reflecting African heritage) and utilize rain catchment. Liberation Gardens have both aquaponics and mixed crop vegetables, and they can be set up for $100. Once the garden is producing, Jerry’s crew takes ½ the produce and fish and leaves the rest for the host family. They then take their ½ to market and bulk sell it. ½ of the proceeds go back to the family. The family ends up with half the food, and some money for allowing this program to farm at their house.  It’s a win-win for everyone.

Currently, Jerry is working on building beautiful living walls and is developing income generating projects. His work is inspiring, his perspective was refreshing, and I really admire him.

I also attended a workshop on Uplifting Urban Youth through Urban Ag. Led by Atiba Jones, of Risala Gardens and Director of Greening Youth Foundation:  He had many good points about urban youth and the positives of engaging them in urban farming. I enjoyed learning about some really great urban youth led programs, some exchange programs, and ways to teach business in farming.  

After the workshops, there were two closing speakers: Leni Sorenson 

And Matthew Raiford

These two speakers were funny, passionate, and real. I really appreciated their outlook and how they teach. I would like to follow Leni and learn more from her as she teaches homesteading, provisions prep, and different techniques for living off your garden. She always asks a farmer at the market, “is this what you have after all your family and friends and you are taken care of for the year?” because she believes farmers need to first feed themselves and the immediate community, and she has met a lot who sell first and take the leftovers only. Matthew Raiford was comical and passionate, and had a lot of stories of failure.  His land story was harrowing.  In fact, both had huge struggles with land acquisition. Access to and holding on to land was at the forefront of this entire conference, and it was a strong note to end on.  

I am very grateful for the opportunity to attend this conference.  My heart and mind are forever changed and improved by what I learned. I encourage everyone to follow and learn from these and other leaders in black farming, and I believe we should honor the legacy and rich culture of black agriculture in the US.

If you would like to learn more, the following books were recommended:

1. We Will Shoot Back, Akinyele Omowale Umoja
   
2. Booker T. Whatley’s book: How to Make 100,000 Farming in a Year
3. The Cooking Gene:, Michael W. Twitty