Over the Fence Urban Farm

Cooperatively farming small patches of Earth in Columbus, OH


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CSA Workday Round-up

This just about sums up yesterday afternoon.

Via Facebook:
E.B. – “I woke up this morning feeling crummy, grumpy and anxious. I just got home from two hours at Over the Fence Urban Farm for a CSA work day and now I’m feeling energized, peaceful and content. I just needed a little garden therapy!”
M. F. “Oh my goodness I brought the same feeling home with me! We came with a tired girl and an unhappy tummy. And left happy and well. . . It’s good therapy“

We had seven folks turn out with was just enough to get a huge amount of work accomplished and not too many to manage at once.
Ready for the troops to roll in.

Ready for the troops to roll in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lesley and Emily cleared the pea bed while Pam tended (her) tomatoes.

Lesley and Emily cleared the pea bed while Pam tended (her) tomatoes.

Maya taking her turn for the "Kids with Carrots" series.

Maya took her turn for the “Kids with Carrots” series.

Elizabeth, Maya, and Cora helped clear the carrots.

Elizabeth, Maya, and Cora helped clear the carrots.

 

 

 

 

 

Melissa and Jessie moving mulch...

Melissa and Jessie moved mulch…

Romaine starts read to go where carrots once were...

Romaine starts ready to go where carrots once were…

Kathy, Emily, and, Elizabeth trimming and grading garlic by size and condition.

Kathy, Emily, and, Elizabeth trimmed and graded garlic by size and condition.

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Jessie cleaning carrots.

Jessie cleaned carrots.

And, of course, the busy were as busy as we were.

And, of course, the busy were as busy as we were.

 


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Growing (Great) Garlic

This all started when we planted our garlic back in November. Today that initial gesture came full circle as Melissa and I pulled hundreds of bulbs of garlic from the ground to cure. (We’ll have to go back and count them one of these days…)

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The bulbs vary in size from super-sized to puny. Add grading by size and appearance to the to do list.

While we harvested the bulbs today, we’ve already been enjoying garlic goodness for a few weeks. When a restaurant sale fell through, we found ourselves rich in short-season scapes and tried them in a variety of recipes – pesto with pistachios, guacamole, compound butters. (Check our Pinterest recipes board for details.) Not only were they delicious to eat, the were great to have around the house. DSC_0016

Our 4th of July fresh garlic and garden parsley chimichurri disappeared too quickly. Next time it will be even better as the garlic flavor matures and deepens over the curing process, which will take a couple of weeks. We’ll be sure to post some updates on that. For now, the gals are resting in the garage. Hope to get some braided in the next few days for our CSA members!

 

DSC_0067Postscript shout out for Ron L. Engeland’s Growing Great Garlic (1991).

 


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What’s in Your Basket: Fruta Feia

Back in May, I read a great article in The New York Times  (Minder, 2014) about a movement in Europe called Fruta Feia, or Ugly Fruit. It is an example of food politics at its finest. One part economic, one part environmentalist, one part social justice. “It has taken off with hard-pressed consumers, won applause from advocates outraged by Europe’s skyrocketing food waste, and provided a backhanded slap to overweening European Union rule makers. In its own way, it has even quietly subverted fixed notions of what is beautiful, or at least edible.”

One of the founders declared her mission, ““to break the dictatorship of aesthetics, because it has really helped increase food wastage.”  Or sense of beauty is not based solely on how we experience things through our senses – a detailed mosaic, a rich chocolate cake, an earthy perfume. It’s about our knowledge of how those things came to be.

This is all coming to mind as we harvest our carrots. We’re getting some nice straight ones, but we’re also getting a whole bunch that look like DSC_0038this.

None of them are going to be going to waste.

I’m imagining a platter of them roasted with herbed butter or something like that.


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Edible Columbus – Summer 2014

We are over the moon to have been included in the Summer 2014 issue of Edible Columbus. Click here for the online edition. We’re on page 59.photo

 

Chatting with writer Nancy McKibben gave us a great opportunity to reflect on who we are in relation to this project. Dan and I have a lot more to reminisce about – from both our individual and shared memory stores. (We’ll be sure to share some of that with you soon.)  And hanging out with photographer Catherine Murray during one of our CSA workshare days was a pleasure. We were excited to see what she saw through her lens.

When the magazine came out I read our article first, of course. It was thrilling to see our efforts recognized. Even more meaningful, however, was reading through the rest of the magazine and seeing who else was included. It gives our work context. So proud to be a part of the local foods movement here in Central Ohio and to share ink with the likes of Moo, Cluck, Four Strings Brewery (Dan’s former bandmate’s latest gig), Clintonville Community Market and Flying Horse Farms’ learning gardens.

Finally, thanks to Sarah Lagrotteria for letting Edible in on our little venture.

Scenes from the Field: Vol. 1, No. 3

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This gallery contains 11 photos


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Tomato Fingers

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If you’ve ever grown tomatoes you know where this is going. You know that smell they leave on your fingers when you’re pruning and training them. It’s nothing I can describe in words. All I know is I’m happy to be smelling it again.

This year’s tomato plants are extra special since we grew them from seed. The fact that some are now standing over two feet tall in the ground is nothing less than amazing. And they are just starting to show their first signs of fruiting.

DSC_0150We’re mostly growing cherry tomatoes this year (see “What We’re Growing 2014” for a full list) to try to avoid some of the worst plagues of any backyard tomato grower – early blight, blossom end rot, splitting and cracking… These are all indeterminate varieties, which means they will, in theory, continue to grow and set fruit until they die from frost, so we’re training them up a line of twine.

This video explains the process pretty clearly. Hoping our CSA members will take a look to learn how to help care for the plants here as well as those they took home. Of course, if you have the space, you can just let them run wild. We’re going with this option to keep the plants from becoming a mess of vines. This should ensure good air circulation and an easier harvest.

Now get out there and get yourself some sweet smelling tomato fingers.