In the Footsteps of a Farmer | Over the Fence Urban Farm

April 11, 2021
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Like a Perennial, We Rise

[Basement-born seedlings chilling in a cold frame, in the high tunnel. (left to right clockwise – chamomile, nigella, malva, poppy, calendula, larkspur, snapdragon, celery, blanket flower, bee balm).]

Late winter and early spring have been so much richer since I started growing seedlings a decade ago. Indoor seed starting gives me months more pleasure watching things germinate and tending to plant babies in the nursery. This year was no different. I started right around New Year’s and now the basement seeding station and high tunnel are packed with product for our 5th Annual Pollinator Lovers’ Plant Sale with Bernadett’s Farmacy and starts for our CSA.

I feel at once like the soundtrack for my life in this moment could be Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle Again” and The Beatles “Here Comes the Sun’.” This time of year is really busy on the farm and it’s also a time of rising up from winter’s slumber. We’re savoring the last days of “soup season” and enjoying the bright fresh herbs and greens. I’m working on this idea of holding conflicting ideas in my head at once. It’s a theme that seems to keep popping up for me.

All that to say that I’m happy it’s spring. Very happy. And I’m finding it harder than usual to dust off the tools and get to work.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been out back every day since mid-February tinkering, seeding, propagating, turning, pruning, spraying, moving. I am so grateful, once again, to have the privilege to work the patch of land we are currently stewarding. And, I’m really starting to feel my age – physically and mentally. I move a little slower and with more creaks than when we got this started and I’m more hesitant to put my ideas out in the world. Not quite sure whom I want to commit to being at the moment.

We are all coming out of our Covid-chrysalides and figuring out who we will be now. It’s an incredible opportunity, and incredibly terrifying.

One thing that’s helping me build inspiration for the growing season is visiting friends’ farms. Last year was really isolating. Farming is already pretty isolating but I really missed farm visits. I didn’t realize how much.

Last week I got to visit Rachel Tayse at Harmonious Homestead and Bernadett Szabo at the new location of Bernadett’s Farmacy. It was so energizing. If you have the chance, go visit a local farm or gardening friend in the next few weeks. Share your plans, ask questions, just look. Here are a few of my highlights.

Rachel is just across the highway, but it feels like another world. I’m envious of her mix of wild and cultivated spaces. She’s been on her farm for a decade (give or take) and you can see the history of her work on the land. The garlic beds immersed in the orchard surrounded by willow, the bee hives parked beside the blooming cherry tree, the shitake logs – and their fruits (!), and the solar-power protected chicken habitat. And this is just the backyard. If she opens her place for an open house this summer, don’t miss the chance to check out her urban oasis.

Visiting Bernadett was – I realize now as I process images and ideas- an opposite sort of experience. Not only is she about 30 minutes outside the city surrounded by farmland, she is just starting a new homestead after many years at her old place. She and her family got settled there last fall and got to work immediately building a new home for their chickens (including a rooster so gigantic you can’t help but giggle when you see him strutting around wagging his waddle) and erecting a great new high tunnel. She is learning about all the bounty that was already there including a collection of mature fruit trees in the front yard and a colony of ramps in the ravine out back. I aspire to collect as much rain water as she does and envy the big sloping hill she plans to use to move it to her beds from its collection spot an acre away. So when she caught me taking a photo of her empty barrels awaiting installation and asked, “Why are you taking pictures of my garbage,” I had to laugh.

Where are you finding inspiration? I can always use more.

August 26, 2018
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July and August Review

This season has been rough. I was under a lot of stress in the spring in various other aspects of my life and like Tita’s emotion-infused cooking in Like Water for Chocolate, I believe it had an impact on the farm. The erratic weather (a week in the high 80s, rounds of 2-3 inches of rain over two days followed by 7 dry days…) and an influx of animal pests displaced by road and sewer constructions throughout our neighborhood didn’t help either. And so, it isn’t surprising that I haven’t posted much in this space. I didn’t feel like I had much to celebrate.

Thankfully my friends and loyal CSA supporters have assured me, repeatedly, that they’ll support our work when times are good and when they’re not so good. They understand that that’s what community supported agriculture means. When the harvest is good, it’s great, and when it’s ain’t, it ain’t.

I suppose you could say part of what members received in their share this season was emails from me outlining the challenges we faced, as we faced them. I like to think of this as the “get to know your farmer” bonus CSAs and farmers’ markets provide.

With all this going on, I had no idea two months had gone by since I posted here! And, in retrospect, it wasn’t all bad. Here are some highlights.

The Clintonville Farmers’ Market Kids’ Garden Club continued their meetings, field trips (Franklinton Farms and Rock Dove Farm), and had two great sales at the farmers market. They raked in over $100 which we’ll split between their harvest party and a donation to a yet to be determined local nonprofit.

We grew popcorn for the first time this year – in the kids garden and on the farm. Visitors who stopped by for the Clintonville Midsummer Garden Tour were surprised to see it. Thanks to our early planting, it was way more than “knee high by the fourth of July!”

Screen Shot 2018-08-25 at 7.46.16 AM

Edible Columbus featured me in the Local Hero column. It was great to run into people throughout the summer who saw the article. Made me feel almost famous. And appreciated.

We have a bunch of events coming up in September including the Simply Living Sustainable Living and Garden Tour – an answer to the wish my friends and I had for such an event in the spring after visiting the mainstream H&G show at the fairgrounds (see Follow-up on The Columbus Dispatch Home and Garden Show). We’ll also be celebrating the beauty of small scale agriculture at Global Gallery September 14th for a reception celebrating “In the Footsteps of a Farmer: Fleeting Beauty,” a photo exhibition sponsored by an Greater Columbus Arts Council Artists in the Community grant.

Thanks for sticking with us in the good times, and the not so good times.

July 1, 2017
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Field Notes: 7.1.2017

Here are some shots from the farm this past week.

Back in March or April, I planted a row of radicchio seeds I got through a swap. There were a taller variety than I usually grow. They leafed out just fine, but the early hot weather we got seems like it doomed them. This is one of the last ones I kept around, in the hopes it would form a head. It’s too bitter for the hens so it’s off to the compost pile for it. Bummer.

On a more positive note, this bed yielded a bounty of tight purple Leonardo radicchio alongside Red Russian kale. The kale is still producing – though it is slowing down – and has been joined by ginger and a few small heads of Sparx romaine which as on their way out already.

The tomatoes are stretching towards the sun and beginning to produce a few small field snacks.

The apple trees out front received their solstice pruning. I mulched them yesterday (after this photo was taken) before the rain came. They seem to be liking the companion plants I introduced this year – borage, yarrow, and chives – as the leaf rust has kept away and I don’t see any of the aphids which a neighbor has been complaining about.

Lima beans are sprouting.

Garlic is curing in the garage….

…Leaving fresh spaces for the fall crops. I have some brussels sprout seedlings ready, I’m just a little worried about how they will do in the heat. Lemme know if you have any advice there…

Meanwhile, over at the Carolyn Ave. annex, the potatoes and sweet potatoes are coming up really nicely. And our hosts have some space to grow their own crops beside them.

April 22, 2017
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Field Report: Earth Day 2017

Happy Earth Day. Thanks for making this visit to the farm part of your celebrations. It’s cloudy today in Columbus. These photos were taken yesterday afternoon when it was a perfect combination of sunny and cool. The way spring ought to be.

This is a post dedicated to local greens geeks everywhere.