Over the Fence Urban Farm

Cooperatively farming small patches of Earth in Columbus, OH

Category Archives: In the Footsteps of a Farmer


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Phase One – City of Columbus Kitchen Composting!

While on sabbatical from farming last season, I joined in discussion with a growing group of folks launching CORC – The Central Ohio Reuse Coalition. I’ll have to write another post about that group and our mission. For now, here are our three main goals (and a logo draft by friend of the farm Melissa Freuh!):

  • Create public demand for circular policies & solutions to replace disposable
    “make-take-waste” packaging and food & drink container systems;
  • Push elected officials to enact policies/ordinances that encourage reusable
    solutions and reduce disposables;
  • Encourage and facilitate circular economy initiatives/businesses based on
    closed-loop, circular solutions that replace disposables with reusables.

Our group leader, and a good friend, Doug Calem is a citizen on a mission who has done a deep dive into reuse systems, worked hard to make connections with sustainable city groups throughout the region, and gotten a seat at the table with folks at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Group (MORPC) and City of Columbus.

I tagged along with him this past week for a meeting with Aryeh Alex, City of Columbus Sustainability Manager and Keep Columbus Beautiful Executive Director, about a plastic education grant we’re working on with his office. It was a great conversation – at one point Aryeh noted how unusual it is to find residents who geek out about waste management – that gave me a lot of hope for Columbus moving into the future.

Doug had to leave a few minutes early so I got to talk one-on-one with Aryeh. I asked about the possibility of city-supported food waste composting. Kitchen scraps and other organic, compostable materials are the ones that make your trash can stink. It’s also the stuff that generates methane, a powerful source of carbon emissions, into the atmosphere. According to SWACO (Solid Waste Management of Central Ohio), 15% of what goes into the landfill in our region is food waste. The more of these we can divert from the waste stream and put to new use the better. Some reading this might compost at home, but that’s not possible for everyone across the city.

I was shocked when Aryeh told me that a pilot program for food waste drop sites around the city was announced in the 2023 Columbus Budget Mayor Ginther introduced a few weeks ago. I found this recording and listened for my pet issue (jump to 15 minutes or listen to it in context of other waste management issues a few minutes earlier). I’ll admit this was the first time I listened to a city budget preview presentation. I’m sure folks have torn apart various points of it and feel some concerns are less represented or addressed differently than they might like, but I was impressed, even a little inspired, to hear more about how the city approaches its fiscal responsibilities and investments with regard to safety, affordability and vital city services.

I liked when the mayor said,”Budgets are more than just ledgers and line items – they are based on our values.” Again, I don’t know as much as I should about city initiatives but I know I’m hearing more often about our Climate Action Plan and programs linked to it. The goal is carbon neutrality by or (hopefully) before 2050.

So, here’s what we have to look forward to in Spring 2023.

Free kitchen compost drop-off sites in city parks and recreation centers! The mayor mentioned two but Aryeh said there would be five online the first year with ten more added in 2024. Sometime down the road there might be as many as 50 and/or some city-subsidized curbside pickup option. Details are still in the works but the food scraps would likely go to one or both of two sites while SWACO builds its new recycling facility that will include a bio-digester. The first, and one I heard most about, is at the London Correctional Institution that offers a job training program for inmates to work in waste management. The city is already working with the program to employee graduates of the program upon their release. How cool is that?!

Another goal Aryeh mentioned that I have heard urban farmers speak about in the past is changing city code that would allow community gardens and urban farmers to receive and compost on-site kitchen scraps from neighbors. Sounds like they are working through the red tape so stay tuned for more on that as well as when to expect the drop sites will be open, ready to receive food waste, and tips on getting your materials there.


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Farmer Field Trip: Dr. Neeraj’s Farm

For the past few years, many people have asked me if I heard about the doctor in Clintonville who started a farm. None of them knew him or could tell me his name. He was a mystery farmer. Over time, I came to learn he didn’t just live in the neighborhood, but one street over from us. I tried to figure out which house was his. I craned my neck to peek over and through hedges as I walked Thompson. And then, one recent Sunday morning I met him as he was walking his dog down the street in front of our house. We exchanged numbers and today, I got to visit with Dr. Neeraj Tayal. Who literally lives around the corner from me. Well two corners, but you get my point. Really close.

From the moment he greeted me on the driveway until I said goodbye to he and his wife Suzanne well over an hour later, Neeraj was smiling. Something told me he was always like that, not just on unseasonably warm and sunny Thursday afternoons in early November. It’s not everyday you meet someone with a resting smiley face.

When we met on the street, Neeraj briefly shared that he had been to Over the Fence for a tour which inspired him to start farming. Given my ongoing uncertainty about what OTFUF_2.0 will look like, that meant A LOT to me to hear. Today he and Suzanne recalled that tour and how Neeraj came reluctantly, dragging his feet down the block. But, once we was here, he began to envision new ways to engage his longtime love of plants. He picked up a brochure for the OSU Master Urban Farmer Workshop Series that was on display and signed up.

It wasn’t easy for him to find the time for the classes nor imagine how he would maintain a backyard farm. He is a practicing physician and Clinical Professor of Medicine and a father of four, after all. But somehow he and his family made it work. And now, five years later, they have a thriving community farm he tends with four other families.

These longtime homeschooling friends gather every Saturday for 2 hours. As I’ve done at OTFUF, Neeraj serves as the farmer-manager. He determines the jobs that need to be done, and directs his folks on how they can help. He has also reduced his hours at the medical center so he has time off during the week to work the land and spend more time with his family. In addition to their CSA work, Suzanne using the farm as a lab for a homeschool science club.

Once I got home, I read Neeraj’s professional bio and was blown away by how clearly the farm seems to manifest his medical mission. He wrote, “I am particularly aware of the benefits of preventive health care and chronic disease management and the care for acute illnesses. I’m passionate about developing new and innovative ways to improve patient experience…” Sounds a whole lot like Hippocrates call to “Let food to be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

Beyond the human aspects, Neeraj’s work as a medical professional show up in his approach to farming itself. While we spoke he drew comparisons between caring for plants and caring for people. In both cases, he observes and asks questions. Does a physical examination and makes assessments about maladies and treatments. What’s underlying this issue? Nutrition? Environmental factors? In the hospital and in the field, Dr. Neeraj makes diagnoses and administers prescriptions.

So it seemed to make perfect sense that Neeraj’s farm reads like a test case for Jean-Michel Fortier’s Market Gardenner methodology, which served as an early inspiration. The Dr.’s science background serves him well in this regard. I couldn’t help laughing as he displayed his math wizardry around irrigation and fertilizer calculations compared to my more expressive arts-based techniques. The results of his medical assessment and computations were evident in the rows of fall proudce ready for harvest, seedlings preparing to overwinter, and cover crops doing their magic.

Talking to Neeraj simultaneously helped me chill out about making plans for the future AND think about new ways to get my shit together. It was so great to meet him and hope we can keep our exchange going, inspiring one another to keep growing food and building community.


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Farmer Field Trip: Stratford Ecological Center

I’m not traveling as I’d hoped this summer, but the time is flying by. A few weekends ago, I took advantage of an invitation from OEFFA (Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association) to spend the day at Stratford Ecological Center in Delaware. If you haven’t been, you need to go. If you have, you probably need to go back.

Stratford was instrumental in my development as a farmer. I first learned about it when our older kids attended farm camp there, about 15 years ago. Despite its increasing popularity, the littlest was able to follow more recently. The drive up from Columbus isn’t short, about 30 minutes, but pleasant. About as closer to “a quick trip to the country” as you can get in Central Ohio without getting on the interstate. It used to be more quaint, but development has really changed to landscape between here and there over the past decade. In a way, all that building makes Stratford more special – 236 acres set aside to preserve nature and teach children (and their teachers and families) where food and fiber come from.

When you arrive, you enter through Stratford State Nature Preserve: 60-some-odd acres of woodland set aside to do what it will. Cruising through the narrow, winding road, you feel hugged by the trees and your blood pressure drops. After a few minutes, you emerge on the farm fields under big open sky. Depending on the year and the season, might be planted with hay, sunflowers, and other tall large field crops.

Walking around, you’ll meet the flock of chickens who live amidst the apple trees, pass through the high tunnel (the first I’d ever seen and still one of the prettiest) tasting greens, and pet sheep, llamas, pigs, and other mammalian livestock. Also on display are an edible rain garden, straw bale building, and . In the winter, the sugar shack is humming, converting countless gallons of sap into maple syrup.

The purpose of my visit this summer was to tour the farm with Jeff Dickinson, Farmscaper at Stratford since its founding in 1990, learn about the Agriculture Resilience Act (ARA) – a marker bill designed to get Congress thinking more about the connections between farming and climate, and help participants digest the lessons we learned through some creative activities leading up to contacting our legislators asking them to support the ARA.

“The Agriculture Resilience Act will expand resources for sustainable farmers working hard to build healthy soils and fight climate change, building on six key focus areas: increasing investment in agricultural research, improving soil health, supporting the transition to pasture-based livestock, ensuring farmland preservation and viability, promoting on-farm renewable energy production, and reducing food waste.” (OEFFA, April 22, 2022)

I learned a lot during the legislative briefing and participated in good conversations that got me energized to make some phone calls, send postcards to my representatives, and educate others about how sustainable farming can help mitigate climate change. I’ll post again with more specifics there. In the meantime, read up on the bill through the link above and consider picking an issue that resonates with you. Contact your legislator, talk to your neighbors about it, and write to your local newspaper editors.


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Farmer Field Trip: Wild Hare Prairie Native Nursery

When you love to grow things and see a new sign pop up in your neighborhood like this, you stop and take notice.

Christy Harris started Wild Hare Prairie Native Nursery as a pandemic project at her home on E Beaumont Road in Beechwold (aka northern Clintonville). I didn’t get a chance to stop by last season but took advantage of a free hour Friday afternoon to hop on my bike and make visit. Not only was it Earth Day, but I was just a few days out from hearing an inspirational talk about re-wilding private lands by Doug Tallamy through Sustainable Upper Arlington and the UA Libraries. (Thanks as always for the tip, Bernadett!) In addition to all that, it’s peak spring ephemeral season here in Central Ohio so you could say I have native plants on my mind…

I hopped off my bike and starting checking out the dozen or so varieties of plants Christy had on display in the driveway. They looked healthy, and while some seemed familiar, there were plenty of new things too and Christy was ready to tell me ALL about them! Latin names, growing habits, and more. I was impressed.

I followed Christy through the privacy fence across the driveway into the back yard. I was speechless; seedlings as far as the eye could see. Countless cultivars, literally as I asked Christy if she was keeping track and the answer was something like “not yet.” Even more remarkable, Christy is learning everything by doing. She has no formal education in horitculture and is so humble about her knowledge. She told me, “It all started with milkweed for the monarchs… Now I just try to grow as many plants as I can.”

The backyard nursery was like no place I have ever been before, and I’m no stranger to garden tours. In addition to thousands of seedlings (including some that she’s been nursing for three years – Hello, Compass Plant!) there were established beds in sun, shade, part shade and even a wetland habitat with blooming marsh marigold. I can’t wait to visit again later in the season. As I told Christy, I intend to spend a lot of money at her house this year as I work on diversifying what’s growing at our place.

Christy is a local plant shero and neighborhood treasure. Visit her throughout the season – her inventory will change as things mature – and tell her I sent you!

Wild Hare Prairie Native Nursery is open from “sign up to sign down.” You can also find Christy at farmer’s markets all over Central Ohio this season, including Bexley, Franklin Park, and Worthington where she’ll be May 7th, as well as Facebook and Instagram.


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Preserving Lessons from Our Semi-Wild Season

Fall on the farm is the time for preservation: collecting and saving seeds in the field, canning produce in the kitchen. This growing season has been like no other in our farm’s short history. We went from planning a sabbatical to planting a victory garden. We limited visitors on site while attempting to stay connected and relevant. We weathered another hot and dry summer as we tried a few new strategies for planting, tending, and letting things grow wild.

I’m sorry I didn’t share more. Not because I think I let readers down, but because this blog is my memory. For the last seven years it has served as a preservation space for my experiences and day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, and year-to-year observations. And I’m so glad I did the work to build that archive. I use it all the time.

A few weeks back, for example, our neighbor Leslie sent me this text:

Using the blog’s search function, I found a post from April 12, 2014 featuring a slide show of one of our first full work days on the farm. Included was this photo of Leslie and her son along with other neighbors and friends helping us plant four apple trees out front:

Here’s what our neighbor saw when she walked by last month:

Seeing these photos together is a gift. It’s amazing to see the change in the land that we created. Two of the four trees are loaded with fruit and the other two are offering us more than they ever have before. I’ve been excited to see this abundance appear this year as it aligns with the concept of shmita (sabbatical) as I intended to practice it. According to this ancient Jewish tradition, farmers are required to take every seventh season off to rest the land and themselves. We are allowed to eat wild and perennial crops and some Jewish farmers have suggested that it takes about seven years for such plants to get established. Our trees seem to prove that theory which has me excited about planning for year 14. Maybe by then I’ll be able to convince my mother-in-law, who lives in the farmhouse, to let me convert the rest of the front yard to edibles. (I know the resident deer herd would appreciate it!)

Which takes us to my first lesson from the wild season I want to preserve – living in harmony with our urban wildlife. This season we really embraced those living in our midst, even in the moments when they were destructive – to our bodies and our plants.

In the course of a few weeks, I shot this video of our passion fruit plants which have hosted an enormous collection of big fat beautiful bumble bees this year and then stuck my hand in a yellow jacket nest and suffered the consequences, as did the wasps.

We also tested an idea for keeping tomato thieves at bay, which worked reasonably well. The strategy came to me by way of Kate Hodges (Foraged & Sown). When weather is dry, animals go looking for water, as they should. When puddles and other sources are unavailable, they poke holes in tomatoes and suck out the liquid, leaving you with a perfectly good looking fruit, save for the hole. It’s a frustrating site for any grower but the past two years, as our local rat population has been displaced by road and sewer construction, we’ve seen a big rise on little farm. When Kate first proposed the idea I scoffed. Leaving water out for the very creatures who were robbing from me seemed like an invitation for further trouble. But, it seemed to work! I even caught one on the trail camera enjoying the oasis.

MOULTRIE DIGITAL GAME CAMERA

(Photo note: Time stamp should read am, not pm.)

Determining to only grow seeds already in our possession–once we decided to grow anything–we realized we were living in abundance we weren’t fully aware of; enough to grow a farm full of food.

A surprisingly good producer were Roma tomatoes grown from seeds we got through a MidOhio Food Bank grant program 2 years ago. In reflection, I probably didn’t grown them because I was being a snob. They game from one of the big seed companies (Burpee or Livingston) and the picture on the packet looked pretty basic. Like the uniform plum tomatoes you find in the grocery store that are pink inside and have no flavor. Turns out, they grew an incredible amount of delicious fruit, perfect roasted for Pasta Puttenesca (now on regular rotation. Yes, we are spoiled). I wish I had weighed the output of a single one of these plants. Lesson learned. Don’t shun the hand that feeds you. (And still, I will support smaller-scale seed farmers…)

My daughter and I also found a “wild” tomato plant growing between the curb and street in our neighborhood. After visiting it over a few weeks among its neighbors–“weeds” who were bound to be pulled or poisoned–we carefully rescued, transplanted, and labeled it with the name, “Fuzzy Wuzzy.” Like any good healthy tomato seedling, its stem was covered in a billion tiny hairs (aka trichomes. Super cool. Look them up. After you finish reading this.). We enjoyed a few nice big slicers care of this adoptee.

Which leads to the final lesson I wanted to record, for memory and further contemplation, and action, I hope. I had set an intention for shmita of learning more about wild edibles. Towards this end we went for a bunch of hikes with foraging friends. On one we found morels, on another boletes but overall, the hot dry weather prohibited this activity. I did harvest a ton of chanterelles over two weeks spent in the mountains of Georgia. Which was awesome. And I learned that the purslane and poke weed in the yard is edible and highly nutritious.

All in all, it was a very good season. I shouldn’t complain. (Note, I could but I won’t).

Shanah tovah to all the Jewish Farmers out there.


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Finding time…

Sunshine for cloudy days

This isn’t nearly close to the first time I’ve sat down in front of this screen and realized it has been a l- o-n-g while since I shared an update. My last one was over 2 months ago. I’m not sure where the time went. Like the rest of the world, we’re over here in a holding pattern waiting. We’re waiting for rain, waiting for back-to-school plans, waiting for election day, waiting for an invitation to a party, waiting for a lead on a job, waiting for a vaccine. You’d think the farm would be booming and this blog would be filled with updates with all the time I’ve had on my hands.

Big bulbs, bright spot

But time does not equal action. Action requires motivation.

One great thing about cultivating plants for food is that they need you. And they tell you want they want. Water me. Prune me. Pick bugs off me. Eat me. And those kinds of finite tasks are great when you can’t see the end of the tunnel your traveling through. Washing dishes and walking the dog helped me write my dissertation without going insane. (Thank you Thich Nhat Hanh!)

Mystery Squash

Creative and academic friends share they’re also having trouble doing work – making art, writing articles, designing rituals, wrestling around with an idea for more than 10 minutes at a time. I know this feeling. I had big quarantine plans to attend a printmaking workshop a colleague was teaching (two-week artist residency, sign me up!), to work through old writing notes that have been littering my desk literally for years, and to read some of the old professional journals collecting dust on the bookcase. None of that has happened. But there’s still time, right? We’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

Summertime views

Cultivating vegetable plants offers us multiple times to start over throughout the year. As a Jewish farmer I appreciate how this echoes our traditions of seeding, fertilizing, and pruning our life goals. We have just begun the countdown to our New calendar year, a period of time marked by deep reflection, reconnection, and redirection as we review time gone by and plan for the next round of living. It’s nice how this coincides with the time to plant fall gardens.

Seed(ling) bed

This fall I hope to have a better showing of greens than I did in the spring. Greens are usually my point of pride. But the weather is forever messing with our plans. Cold/hot/cold spring followed by dry/hot/dry/dry/dry/hot summer. It didn’t used to be like this. The climate is changing.

The fact that it was so hard to grow food in Columbus, OH this year, a year I planned to take for shmita – to give the land a rest according to Jewish tradition, it’s hard not to think I am being punished for not following through on taking a break. When the quarantine was announced, I raced to plant seeds as a sign of hope and resilience. Gardening is so powerful for us today in part because it is something tangible. It’s a multi-sensory experience that gets us out from behind these screens.

Another one lost to the garden theives

But racing to action isn’t always the best way to go about things. We know this and I think shmita is supposed to remind us of it too. As Rabbi Joshua Heschel taught,

Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time… Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of the year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals…

I have come to regret not leaning into this Shabbat on steroids. But next year is an official shmita year when Jews around the world will rest. Maybe I wound up growing this year so I can take off on cycle with others.

And, there’s still time to lean into this period of unknowing we are in. To embrace the uncertainty and cultivate values. And plants.

There. I wrote something.


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Spring Challenges, Maybe

I started farming again this season rather than follow through on my planned sabbatical to give myself something to do that I could feel good about. To have something to work on. To have healthy food on hand to feed my family, friends, and extended community. Sadly, it’s been the hardest start to a season I can remember us ever having.

A late freeze killed dozens of tomato and tomatillo plants early on the morning of May 9th. This was just days after we donated plants to food access programs so we had minimal backups on hand. Last week we got 4.88 inches of rain in five days (May 18-22) followed by temperatures in the upper 80s, at least 10 degrees hotter than normal. This caused major crop failure in our spring greens, just as we were getting ready to distribute them. These are the crops I usually feel the most proud of, so their loss really hurt.

The day after the freeze I was texting with my friend Bernadett (Bernadett’s Farmacy). We’d been swapping weather forecasts and plans for protecting our seedlings for days leading up to the big chill. When I told her we lost a bunch of plants despite all my efforts, she sent me a link to the story of the Taoist farmer.

The story follows a farmer who suffers a series of what most people would deem unfortunate events ending with something most would consider a lucky break. Regardless, the farmer is always hesitant to label anything lucky or unlucky. “Maybe,” is his constant reply.

After sitting on this story for a few weeks, working through more and more of what I would consider bad luck, hunting for the silver linings, today things started to click.

I had grown only three types of tomato seedlings – following my revised sabbatical plans of using only the seed I happened to have in the basement, not allowing myself to buy anything new. Upon hearing we’d lost all our tomatoes, friends, including Bernadett, offered us extra seedlings they had. Now we have a much larger variety than originally planned. It makes me think a seedling swap could be fun in the future. Like a next level seed swap. So maybe things worked out in the end. At least for that chapter of the story.

The verdict’s still out on the others. I’ll be sure to report back as I find them.


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UPDATE: Victory-Over-the-Virus Farm Report

The farm waking up. (Spring 2020)

Turns out, time flies when you’re living in quarantine, or as my friend Doug refers to it, “the Covidian era.”

It’s been six weeks since my last post. I’ve tried to write at least a dozen times, but I just can’t seem to focus. I hear that a lot these days from friends who write for a living.

While I haven’t been blogging, I have been busy. My daughter and I have led another 5 lunch and learn sessions for kids (you can see them all archived on our new YouTube channel). The farm appeared in two local news stories about increased interest in local foods and gardening in response to the pandemic. We also wrapped up another successful Pollinator Lovers’ Plant Sale, gave away tomato and pepper seedlings to families in need, and got 2 dozen Victory-Over-the-Virus Garden boxes out into the world along with video tutorials to those gardeners with advice on planting, fertilizing, and harvesting.

All of this has helped keep me distracted, feeling like I’ve been doing “something,” at a time when so many of us, don’t know what to do. But I don’t feel the same sustained energy I usually do from my efforts. I still wake wondering how long the virus will plague us and how our society will look, feel, and operate once when and if we get it under control. How will this experience change us long term? So, I’m pretty much back where I was when, filled with eco-anxiety and exhausted from years of juggling too many obligations, I decided to take the season off and reflect on the past and plan for the future.

I’m back to thinking the work I do on the farm is important and making a difference (in some small way) in my community but wondering, is it enough? Is there more I can do? What more could this project be if I focused on it full-time? Or at least more of the time? What would I have to give up in order to make that happen? What might I gain? And would that be worth the trade-offs?

I’ve read Ram Dass and know that, at least for now, all we can do is focus on today. And in some ways that’s the lesson the garden always teaches us. Over and over in lots of different ways. But it also requires planning, because it takes time to grow things. Like change takes time. And our lives are going to be changed as a result of this pandemic. They already have. So I need to make time to process that, along with all the other sh*t I planned to process this summer through my shimta (sabbatical).

While I’m glad to have the farm to focus on when focusing is so hard, I also need to find ways to let me mind wander, to slow down and work through some of the questions I have been harboring, along with the new ones we are all facing. I need to make time to face my fears, rather than distractedly hide from them among the plants. Right?

I hope you are all finding something to focus on, short and longer term. Something that gives you pleasure and feeds you, literally and figuratively. If not, at least we have flowers.

Apple blossoms. (May 2020)


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Victory-Over-the-Virus Farming Report: April 3

Morning on the farm.

Well, we’re another week into the Covid-19 pandemic response in the United States and my email is overflowing with requests from individuals to join the CSA, purchase seedlings, and come work on the farm, as well as from organizations (including Green Columbus, Local Matters, and Ohio History Connection) interested in partnering on Victory-Over-the-Virus programming. I’m literally overwhelmed by the response.

As I wrote last week, one silver lining of this horrible disaster seems to be that people are becoming more aware of where their food comes from and increasing their desire to grow more of their own and/or find local sources to purchase from. Environmental, spiritual, and culinary reasons aside, a friend sent me this image which appeals to our growing awareness of how many hands touch the things we touch and, in this case, eat.

I tried to find attribution for this but can’t. If anyone knows, please update me!

Last night, on a call with the Jewish Farmers’ Network (JFN), I learned of a national initiative to get more people planting food gardens in response to the virus. Cooperative Gardens Commission (#coopgardens) was started by a JFN member, Nate Kleinman of the totally amazing Experimental Farm Network and a veteran of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The initiative started with an Instagram post, moved to a Google Form, and within a week had 1,000 participants assigned to different teams to help convert supplies and expertise into action. The New York Times and Civil Eats have already reported on the project. I was thrilled to learn about it and I’m excited to see how our Victory-Over-the-Virus Garden initiatives might fit in.

This past Wednesday, I piloted “Live from the Farm!” a lunchtime program on Facebook, geared mostly for kids but also appealing to grown-ups who have watched and given me feedback. The first week’s theme was Seeds (click here to watch the recording), and next week we’ll be talking about Worms followed by chickens, bees, water, and compost.

Preliminary plans are also in the works for a sister series, “Happy Hour on the Farm,” in which I will answer questions from folks who purchased Victory-Over-the-Virus seedlings and others who are getting new and existing gardens going this season. Follow the farm on Facebook for more on that.

Over the Fence is quickly getting cleaned up and we have more than half the beds seeded or filled with transplants plus a few germinating spring cover crops (fava and cow peas). We moved most of an enormous pile of woodchips, but still need to clean the chicken coop which keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the list. (Sorry ladies! Totally unfair since you have been doing your part to supply us and the extended family with tons of beautiful eggs.)

Hope all’s okay where you are and that if you haven’t already, you find a spot where you can grow something to feed not just your stomach, but also your soul.


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Victory-Over-the-Virus Gardening: Sabbatical in the Time of COVID-19

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.”
from In Flanders Field, by John McCrae (WWI solider)

Well, like everything else in the world at the moment, our plans on the farm have been evolving day-by-day. As a reminder for readers who don’t regularly follow this blog, I was supposed to be taking a year off from farming this season. (Go back to Embracing Persephone for more on that.) I was going to give myself, and the land, a much needed rest. I was going to travel, read more books, take more walks in the woods and learn to hunt mushrooms and other wild edibles, do more yoga…

I’m taking more walks and doing more yoga, and I was reading more books until the world shut down and now I’m back to the basement starting seeds and the backyard prepping beds. 

The worldwide COVID-19 outbreak has made the mission of our little farm more clear. We need to increase food sovereignty, our power to grow our own healthy, delicious, safe food. In the spirit of the Victory Gardens of WWI and II, I am stepping back into production and trying some new strategies to promote Victory-Over-the-Virus Gardens this year, to keep our community stocked with healthy, delicious, and safe produce. [Shout out to Ed Fallon in Iowa, via local friend of the farm “Jimmy Christmas,” for introducing the term which he shared on his blog last week.]

While addressing this moment of crisis as a window of opporutnity to get more people growing, I am also trying to maintain a sabbatical mindset. As scholars use their “year of release” from teaching to pursue research, I’m testing out a few ideas I’ve been thinking about but hadn’t gotten around to. Here are a few I’m playing with.

I) Working through my seed stash
One of my shmita plans was to “clean out the pantries.” In other words, I wanted to pay more attention to the abundance I already possessed rather than buying more, more, more. Towards that end, 99% of the seeds I’m growing were already in my seed library. I will miss the things I’m out of and would have purchased – especially the wide variety of tomatoes – but missing them is kinda the point. Sabbatical time, like crisis time, needs to be marked by some difference in order to make a lasting impact on our mindset.

II) Farm stand
I have been wanting to try a weekly farm stand for a long time. I hope this will attract more folks in my neighborhood to the work we are doing. Columbus is currently working on new zoning regulations to allow on-site sales for urban agriculture, so the time seems right to give this a shot. (With social distancing and hand sanitizing enforced, of course.)

III) Victory-over-the-virus Garden-in-a-Box
Finally, after a few years of successful perennial flower and herb plant sales, aimed at increasing pollinator habitat, we will be offering a series of plant collections to get more people growing, and growing more, this season. Ongoing conversations about climate change and research on bionutrient density loss through travel have promoted sourcing greens locally for awhile, but COVID-19 crisis has brought a new sense of urgency to that work. Faced with empty grocery shelves and halts to distribution, Americans are quickly waking up to the notion that food sovereignty is something we should all be concerned with.

And now, enough with the typing, I have work to do…