Over the Fence Urban Farm

Cooperatively farming small patches of Earth in Columbus, OH

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CSA 2024!

As its collection of push pin holes suggest, this note has been pinned to the bulletin board above my desk for the past, oh, I don’t know how how many years. It’s a reference to something I learned in graduate school from Wayne Lawson, then Executive Director of the Ohio Arts Council. The idea was, arts experiences shouldn’t just be about checking boxes (transactional) – about paying to see or hear something so you could brag about it at a cocktail party. Rather, seeing an exhibition in a museum or attending a concert should transform you in some way. At the time I first heard it, this idea spoke to me as an educator interested in experiential, real-life learning. And it’s part of my vision for Over the Fence Urban Farm.

This is International CSA Sign-Up Week. As we embark on our 11th season, we’ve returning to our community-supported agriculture roots after a two-year sabbatical. Trying something new this year, we’ll be offering a series of short, six-week CSA options to encourage new folks to join us and find out what we’re all about. (Of course we’ll happily welcome old familiar faces too! Either way…) Space is limited to just 10 shares per option so act quickly! You can read more about our plans for Spring and Fall Greens & Herbs and U-Pick Flower shares on the CSA page of our website. Ready to sign-up for the spring? Click here!

I’m trying to be intentional in approaching this reboot. I’m focusing on things I love to grow and I’ve been good at co-producing with Mother Nature. (We all know how how fickle she’s been lately…) Greens have always been one of my favorite things to grow, eat, and teach people to incorporate into their diets. And while ten years ago I only planted flowers to lure pollinators around to do their job, research (and personal experience) has convinced me that gazing at them in the field, bringing them into our home, and sharing them with others boosts my mood. I’m excited to share all these things with more folks this year.

Looking back through reflections on our first season, I’m reminded of everyone who supported us and this dream. While there have been many times I feel like we could be doing more, after a decade in the Columbus urban farming community, I know we’ve made ripples that inspired other farmers in the city and those who visited our site for educational programs and tours (see Happenings). I’ll never tire of witnessing someone step into the farm for the first time. The surprise on their faces reminds me our place is special.

As we commit ourselves to a new decade, it’s also been useful to remember why we founded the farm using a CSA model. On the one hand, a CSA is always about money. It grants farmers access to funds when we need them, before we plant much of anything, when we are racking up bills for seeds, soil, compost, tools and other supplies. On the other hand, the CSA movement is rooted in principles of mutual thriving and modeling an alternative form of economy – small, local, transformative.

I hope you’ll join us this season by joining a CSA, planning a visit with a group of friends, or attending an open house. Subscribe to get updates from this blog sent to your email and follow us on Facebook or Instagram to hear about upcoming opportunities.


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July 2023 Catch-Up

It’s been seven weeks since my last post. A post in which I promised myself I would try to post more regularly to help me keep track of what’s happening on the farm and in my mind about what’s coming next out there. That hasn’t happened. So, today I’m going to record seven vignettes, one for each week I missed; reflections on what’s happened in that time. I’m feeling kind of stuck so hoping this might help move me along a bit.

1. June 9: 9:13AM

I had to go back to the weather history to remember just how fucking awful this was, and continues to be. In mid-May there was so much amazing flower set on all the perennial berries. I took a series of photos but I guess I deleted them. Trust me. The raspberries, gooseberries, currants, and blueberries were all exploding with flowers. And then it stopped raining. For weeks.

Check out the middle row below. Bear in mind, to keep plants healthy and thriving, they need an average of one inch of water EVERY week. This isn’t a cumulative thing. Imagine you were doing hard work outside for a month. You’re out shoveling, hoeing, weeding… How would you feel if you got only one, albeit tall, drink of water that month.

Things weren’t much better into early June.

Yeah. So, by the middle of June, all the berry bushes started to look like the blueberries above. Full of fruit that was desiccating before my eyes. I’m not in the habit of watering perennial bushes. That’s the beauty of them. You set them and (basically aside from pruning and harvesting) forget them. Reluctantly I brought over the hoses. I was upset and feeling hopeless as one plan I had for the future of the farm was converting more beds to perennial berries that wouldn’t demand much time and effort.

2. Jun 17 – 2:14 PM

In mid-June, The Spurgeon General and I took the young one to Colorado for a week. We did a lot of hiking in the mountains. We played disc golf on courses nothing like what you see in Ohio. And we spent a day in Boulder where we stumbled on an exhibition at the contemporary art museum – agriCULTRE, a collaboration between artists and farmers. All of a sudden, the distance between my day job as an art educator and my hobby farm work seemed a little smaller. You can find information about the show here (after you finish reading this post!). Below are a couple of my favorite moments.

Anthony Garcia Sr. with Laura Allard-Antelmi & Richard Pecocaro – “Masa Seed Foundation harvests, distributes, and archives bio-regional, climate-adapted, open-pollinated heirloom seeds, each with a unique history…This seed shelf, a small cross-section of Masa’s massive library, educates us on how plant kinship exits throughout the world.”

Esther Hz with Erin Dreistadt & Jason Griffith – “Interdisciplinary artist and former urban farmer Esther Hz revisited her research in biodynamic farming through her collaboration with Aspen Moon Farm.” She furthers Steiner’s ideas by exploring through play with image and text – “replacing ‘soul’ with ‘soil’. in famous quotes. To compound this idea, she constructed two zoetropes (a pre-film animation device) to emulate the ‘wheel of life…” (quotations here and above from text by Guest Lead Curator, Jaime Kopke)

3. June 21 – 3:35PM

Somehow they made it through. When we got back from Colorado, the berries were booming. Friends who were farm-sitting got most of the red raspberries, and I was happy to share. I never grew berries for the CSA. They were always a selfish endeavor. A few times, towards the end, folks got some raspberries, ironically from those red ones that came under the fence from the neighbor’s yard or elderberries from an abundant bush that succumbed to fusarium wilt this year. But there wasn’t really enough of the rest to share broadly.

This mid- to late-June was all about the berries. As I watched the tomatoes and marveled again about just how long it takes them to set fruit and ripen, I spent many hours carefully plucking currants (red and black), raspberries (mostly black), and gooseberries along with a few blueberries and last gasp strawberries. The gooseberries and black raspberries require long pants and sleeves to protect against thorns. It’s hot and ouchy work. But when you’re inhaling bowl of mixed berries topped with whipped cream, that all fades away. I made black raspberry jam from a bag I froze last season (yikes!) and froze tons more to eat throughout the year.

4. July 2 – 2:49PM

One day I noticed something strange looking on the poppy heads I was drying in situ to use in bouquets. Upon closer examination, I noticed something had accessed the seed chambers. A little information on the architecture of a poppy this will help it make more sense. Basically, after the flower falls, which happens maddeningly quick with poppies, the head starts to bulge. As the seeds take shape and start to dry out, the head forms vertical cavities around the center point. Something was working its way down these, one by one, gobbling up all the seeds. Who was it? Was it poisoning them? I had never seen this before.

For a few days after my discovery I noticed the poppies swaying when I’d approach the farm gate, as if something had just flown away. I was dying to catch the little opium fiends in the act! One day it finally happened. A gold finch landed in the poppy bed and had its fill. Mystery solved and thanks to Google, I now know they peel the pod open and the seeds help aid their nutrition and digestion!

Overall, the garden was a jungle at this point. The spring cool flowers were giving way to hardier summer blooms and native volunteers that joined the party. There was (and still is) Spiderwort everywhere! The paths between beds were growing over with red clover and wild sorrel. I enjoyed and was complimented on how lush things looked but I was feeling claustrophobic and annoyed with myself for letting things go all Big Anthony’s garden again. (See Strega Nona’s Harvest – an all-time favorite picturebook about gardening.)The upside, lots of gorgeous flowers to share with family and friends.

5. July 9 – 5:59PM

For the first time in ages, we have summer squash in abundance! This is largely due to diligent squash bug and egg picking work aided by our friend Katey. I’m not holding my breath that it will last, but we’ve been trying tons of new recipes while it does! A few favorites – Zucchini, Quinoa, Mint, and Pistachio salad; Zuchinni Chocolate Layer Cake; and Zucchini Szabi.

6. July 12 – 6:29 PM

The first and only peach we’ve gotten to eat from our tree. This spring, for the first in memory it was loaded with fruits. Then the June drop followed by the drought left the ground littered with immature fruits the chickens and raccoons took great pleasure in making disappear. Completely.

While I’m on the subject of raccoons… They are the worst! After a few mornings finding the work table and storage tossed like a cat burglar had come around, I set up the trail cam. Sure enough, it was a raccoon. I cleaned up as best I could including some seeds and things that were out and no doubt tempting. This helped. With the supplies. But then they moved on to a few dozen newly planted basil seedlings which they dug up and left for dead. #thisiswhatthefuckersdo

7. July 20: 7:28PM

The tomatoes are finally coming in. Sun Gold, Berkeley Tie Dye, San Marzano, Purple Cherokee, and a few more I can’t remember. Feels later and later every year but I’m happy to finally be binging on their fruit. Last year we had a lot of issues with the tomatoes and have been back to diligently watering and fertilizing. The plants, overall, look much happier and healthier. But stay tuned. I just found mosaic virus (above) which looks an awful lot like a tie dye to me…


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June 2023 – Catch Up Brain Dump

Well, it’s been six months since I wrote in this space.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve sat down and typed an opening line like this. Usually I delete them. It’s boring. Who wants to hear a writer lament about their inability to make time to write? Just write something already. But sometimes marking that time has passed you by is important.

Not because I feel guilty for not writing. Not because I think I owe anyone an apology. But because I’m sorry I haven’t been making time for it. Not because I think you, dear readers, are having trouble sleeping as you await my next offering. But because keeping this blog has been good for me.

It has given me space to document and reflect on starting and maintaining OTFUF for the past ten years.

It’s given me a place to store memories. To track the seasons. To track tasks. A space to return to when memory fails and I can’t remember what I did or how well (or poorly) something grew last season.

This blog has given me a platform to record, to share, and dare I say, to inspire.

Releasing myself from writing, from feeling self- or social media culture-imposed pressure to post, was part of my shmitah practice last year. And as a wise friend helped me realize, when you give yourself a sabbatical, when you truly take a break, you can’t expect to hit the ground running the next year. This aligns well with contemporary Jewish thought leaders advocating consideration of a shmita cycle, of a focus for each year in the seven year cycle. Something like: Dreaming and scheming, iteration, reflection, recalibration, reiteration, reflection, rest, repeat.

One thing I really let go of last year was the need to make plans. I spent time on the farm as time and energy allowed. I watched what came up from the soil on its own as much as, if not more than, I willed things to come up. And so I entered this season unsure what I was doing.

I did spend some of my leave reflecting on what I did not want to do anymore; what I was grateful to have a break from as well. as what I missed. Figuring out what comes next is slowly coming in to focus. Bit by bit.

The first decision I made was to suspend our CSA program indefinitely.

Starting the farm on a community supported agriculture model allowed OTFUF to get up and running without having to spend much of our own money for infrastructure or supplies. It would take me a minute to count how many truckloads of compost, water bills, seeds, gloves, and bags of chicken feed we’ve bought over the past 9 years. It’s been a lot, and nearly all of it was covered with funds from the CSA.

The first few years those who joined not only trusted us with their financial contributions, they gave us their time. In many ways that was more important, and more valuable, than cash. We built this place with all of you. And we grew an incredible amount of food those first few years because we did it together.

Over time, however, our original members started their own gardens and stopped coming around as often. New members didn’t have the same interest or commitment to the collective or the work. This impacted both my enthusiasm for filling CSA orders – I was always in it for the transformational potential, not the transactions – and my ability to do so. Working with fewer helping hands, the farm wasn’t as productive as it once was.

So no more CSA. At least for now. If I hear from some substantial number of people reading this far that you’d be excited to be part of something like that again, I’ll reconsider. I’ll rededicate myself to scheduling work sessions, making chore lists, and assigning tasks. For now, I’m enjoying the freedom to just watch the flowers grow and I’m thinking about investing more in perennial crops like berries that provide year-round pleasure.

The increasing unpredictability of the weather also contributed to my frustrations around the CSA. Heat at the wrong time. Never enough rain when we need it and too much when we don’t. The drought we’re experiencing now makes me grateful not to be beholden to anyone. At the same time as it makes me wish I had money in the bank to pay the water bills when they come due.

All this has me wondering whether the farm is still a farm.

Along with suspending the CSA and absolving myself of the pressure to post regularly to social media channels, I entered this season with no established plan or efforts to bring visitors to the farm. Given that, would it be better to think of myself again as a gardener, or homesteader? Is that all I want? For myself? For the space?

Rereading what I wrote in 2016 when I first embraced the title Urban Farmer, I guess most of it still fits. I’m growing more food than the average home gardener and our yard looks even less like our neighbors’ now than it did back then. But I’m not feeding others like I was back then. And I haven’t been invited to share the farm on any tours or actively recruited scouts and school groups to come visit. Then again, while it feels and looks like August, given the lack of rain over the past month and recent heat wave, the season’s just getting started.

Watch our social media streams for “flash farm sales” which we’ll host whenever we have an abundance. Sales will take place on site so folx who come by can see where the produce they purchase is being grown.

I’m also in conversation with Dr. Neraj Tayal about an Edible and Sustainable Backyards Hop here in Beechwold. If you or someone you know has a space that would make a good addition, please reach out!

Visiting Neraj’s space last season and hearing how much our work inspired his own is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. It demonstrates the power of having places like OTFUF in the community and the importance of inviting people in to see it. Over the Fence has always operated in a liminal space between community farm and private garden. We aren’t inherently public facing – not visible from the street or occupying a public space. People are always welcome, but you do need to request or have an invitation to visit.

I’m also continuing my work with the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA) on the Agriculture Resiliency Act. This marker bill for the 2023 Farm Bill draws attention to issues and efforts that can help make agriculture more sustainable, for people and the planet. This includes the promotion of soil health, increased investments in local regional food systems, addressing consolidation that is driving up prices and contributing to waste, and funding investments to support organic research and beginning and BIPOC farmers. You can learn more about OEFFA’s 2023 Farm Bill platform, hear from proud organic Ohio growers, and take action here.

So, I’ll try to get back to posting here a bit more regularly; to reflect and to share. I’m open to hearing what kind of content you’re most interested in – Reports from the Field, Tips You Can Use, Farmer Field Trips, Farming Advocacy… And I also reserve the right to post, or not post, whatever inspires me.

XO, Thanks for reading this far.
Jodi


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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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Cultivating a Love of Flowers

I came to flowers later in my gardening life. I cut my teeth growing edibles. As a new gardener, I had a set of self-proclaimed black thumbs, little knowledge, a limited amount of resources, and couldn’t fathom why anyone would spend time cultivating plants that couldn’t be eaten. What was the point of flowers, really?

I soon learned how important flowers are to a healthy vegetable garden – and which ones can be eaten! As Lisa Mason Ziegler teaches, Vegetables Love Flowers. And so do bees and birds and other bugs that help our ecosystems thrive.

The year we started the farm, following a lesson on pollinators during the OSU Master Urban Farmer training program, I planted a bee highway in two beds that stretched across the farm east to west. Many of the plants were native perennials I purchased through the Worthington Gardening Club – Aster, Coneflower, Bee Balm, Sedum. Over time I added more; Yarrow and Columbine, Chives, Coreopsis and Black-Eyed Susan to name a few.  

When those plants outgrew themselves, I started dividing them and selling the offspring to generate additional funds for our work. At our first sale in 2017, I sold maybe 100 plants.

Fast forward five years and we have over 40 different types of seedlings for sale and have partnered with our fabulous friend Bernadett Szabo who grows mostly medicinal and culinary herbs. I’ve expanded my offerings beyond native and perennial flowering plants to annuals as well.

(Some of the flowers we’ll have for sale May 1st!)

Over my time on the farm I’ve come to realize flowers have lots of purposes. In addition to supporting pollinators and adding color to the landscape, people love to give and receive flowers. Flowers bring people joy. They make an occasion feel special. Our CSA members enjoy receiving bouquets alongside their edibles, and the community has supporting the farm and other nonprofits through additional sales.

At a sale I had last fall – “Buy the flowers before the frost kills them!” – a women who purchased a bouquet turned me onto Lisa Mason Ziegler’s work. In addition to her treatise on companion planting mentioned above, she has a ton of resources on extending the flower growing season. She even partnered with Johnny’s Seeds, like Eliot Coleman before her, to offer tutorials and recommendations on seeds and other supplies for growing Cool Flowers.

This season we’re trying some of Ziegler’s methods for jump-starting the flower season, and following some of her recommendations on varieties to grow. Some of these will be available at our 5th Annual Pollinator Lovers’ Plant Sale and Open House on May 1st.

I’m not ready to give up growing greens and tomatoes for flowers, but I have found found my love for them. And I look forward to sharing with you.


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Checking In: First Tertile Shimta Report

[Quick a first note on the title. Did you know “tertile” is the name for a third of a year? Or a third of any whole for that matter. I didn’t. Now we do.]

Dormant fig tree surrounded by rosemary bushes.
Pearlstone Retreat Center( Reisterstown, MD)

Well, a lot’s happened since my last post in which I announced that I was taking this season off from growing for our CSA. Click here to go back and read all about that announcement. In short, this is the seventh season for our little farm and, according to ancient Jewish wisdom tradition, we, and the land, are entitled to a sabbatical year. Back in November, I determined to take the break, since then I have gained a lot more clarity around why, and what the year off will look like.

As I said, we’re taking the year off from the CSA. Thus far that’s meant no member signups to manage and no crop planning to fill those orders. It also means no money coming into the farm account and mounting fears that I won’t remember what I’m doing when I get back to farming next year. But I’m also enjoying getting to know myself again and in new ways – reading lots of books, practicing yoga more regularly, and working to be more present in my interactions with people. The hope, of course, is that I will make these new habits that I can carry out of the year with me into the future.

I spent a good chunk of this first tertile studying about shmita and setting the parameters for my year. Since I am not mandated to observe the practice — Jews outside of Israel are exempt per Torah — and since I’m actively Reconstructing Judaism to fit my life, needs, and desires, I figure it’s my choice how I want to mark the year. I am also finding that some of the lines I initially drew for myself are fuzzier than others. I’m erasing and replacing them as time goes on. It’s a work in progress. Which feels right.

A sabbatical is about release, but not complete rest. As the academic is freed from teaching in order to pursue research, I am free from the cultivation of food in order to cultivate values. It’s time to think about what’s really important to me in the work I’ve been doing here, where I am, and where I want to go in the future.

So far I’ve re-learned that community is key to my project. The following are a few examples.

This past tertile I shared teachings on shmita with my Jewish community here in Columbus and at an international gathering of Jewish Famers. Ironically the conference, the first for the Jewish Farmer Network, was called “Cultivating Culture.” Through these talks, I was building myself a community of support for the break.

For a few reasons, I decided to hold my annual spring plant sale. The sale brings a lot of people to the farm to see our growing space and get inspiration. The plants we send out into the word are nearly all grown to support pollinators in our community. That’s important work that can’t take a break. The bees and their friends need us. In addition, while growing seedlings requires me a bit of work, it’s not much and it’s indoors which means our soil is still getting the reset it deserves.

I also decided to have the sale because I’ve come to realize I have become addicted to having something to tend. The winter gets long, even a mild one like we had this year, and by January I was itching to put seeds in soil and watch them grow. I’m sure this says something also about my inability to be still, I’m more a walking/moving meditator than a sitting Buddha, and perhaps I should have forced myself to feel the absence of seedling season, but I didn’t. Maybe in 2027. (Incidentally, I wrote about my seedling growing practice recently for Mother Earth News.)

I will be hosting the Clintonville Farmers’ Market Kids Garden Club. For many of the same reasons as the sale. I’m happy to have the kids and their parents around and look forward to the field trips we’ll be taking as they fit nicely with my shimta goal of getting out and seeing other operations while I have the time.

And finally, I will be growing some food for me and my family and a few close friends and long-time CSA members. This was my latest decision and one I didn’t make lightly. Keeping our farm community going was part of the decision as was the COVID-19 virus which has me thinking about food security. With the threat of ongoing disruptions to all sorts of distribution channels, I just can’t justify not making plans to take care of ourselves. Just as I’m stockpiling coffee and toilet paper, I’m prepping produce for harvest. One could argue we should relaunch the CSA, echoing more loudly than ever the legacy of the Victory Garden movement. If things continue to go downhill perhaps we will. But in the meantime, if you have a patch of earth you can plant, do it. Then tend it as closely as you do your hand-washing routine.


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Embracing Persephone: My Shmita Year

Today is the start of Persephone Days in Central Ohio; we are about to dip below ten hours of sunlight per day, the darkest time of the year. Many of us feel this darkness deep within ourselves as we head towards the Winter Solstice. (For more on Persephone as she relates to farming practices and Greek Mythology, go back and read Preparing for Persephone.).

This time for slowing down seems as appropriate as any to publicly announce that Over the Fence Urban Farm’s CSA program will be on hiatus for the 2020 season. I have declared this year my shmita year.

Shmita is rooted in Jewish wisdom tradition. Various times the Torah makes mention of this as a sabbath for the land. Just as Shabbat (the seventh day of each week) offers us a day for complete rest and reflection, shmita offers year of release.  

The practice is outlined in the book of Exodus when, before Moses led the Jews into the land of Israel after their forty years of wandering, he agreed to a covenant with YHVH (aka G?d, aka the divine presence in the universe that exists within and between all things, aka you fill in the blank): after six years of growing on and harvesting from the land, farmers would be required to let their fields go fallow. It was an agreement made in recognition of the importance of the land and with reverence for its power and potential.

Questions abound as to whether or not shmita was ever observed as outlined in the Torah. Along with the year off for the land, Jews were called upon to relieve debts and release slaves. Humans, being the self-serving animals that we are – even those of us with the best of intentions – find it hard to let go of material possessions once we have them. And so, early on work-arounds were created to protect assets and income, for example transferring land possession to non-Jews for the shmita year.

Historically, Shmita was required only of Jews living in the land of Israel. (Even there, only the most Orthodox observe it.) It was deemed an undue burden on those living elsewhere and according to Orthodoxy, such requirements are forbidden. However, 21st century Jewish environmentalists in Israel and around the world are finding inspiration in shmita. As we face the challenges of climate crisis and related issues of social justice, we ask what can shmita teach us? How can it help guide us to live our lives in respect and appreciation for the land and all it provides?

For me, as a part-time urban farmer who often finds herself juggling a one million and one responsibilities, I was drawn to shmita as an excuse to take a break. After six years of racing around balancing my work as an art educator, homeschooler, non-profit board member, and urban farmer running a community-supported agriculture project out of my backyard, I am exhausted. I am ready for a sabbatical and grateful to Jewish wisdom tradition for offering me permission to take a break. I need time to reflect on where I’ve been and where I want to go next.

I am also convinced that the land needs a rest. The kind of intensive agriculture I practice—in which a single bed may host as many as 4 rotations of crops per season—is taxing on the soil. This past season was so dry the land really suffered. I hope a year off, a year in which I feed the soil with deep layers of mulch rather than demand produce from it, might pay off in the years that follow. If what the Torah says is true we’ll be set for two years if we take this one off. If not set in food to eat, re-set mentally, spiritually.

2020 is not an official shmita year. But it is my seventh season on the farm and so I’m making it my sabbatical year. Some might not find this kosher, but they’re not in charge around here. I am.

In my shmita year, I would like to explore (without working too hard and ruining the whole point of my break) the possibility of sharing shmita with others. I’ll be sure to share ways to stay connected with this project in this space as it unfolds. Feel free to also leave comments below or email me with your comments and questions.

Peace out. Namaste. Shalom.

jodiK


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Recognition of our Indigenous Past

With each year that passes we become a bit more aware of the painful truths that make up our collective national history. Last year, our mayor announced that Columbus, OH would no longer celebrate Columbus Day. Sadly, the change didn’t go so far as to adopt the name Indigenous People’s Day. We hope that in the future, the Columbus will consider such a move; honoring those whose ways of life were cut short by European colonization.

As we try to live in harmony with the Earth here on the farm, we work to reestablish a connection with the land which pays it respect as the native peoples did. And today we offer this land acknowledgement:

We, Over the Fence Urban Farm wish to acknowledge and honor the indigenous communities native to this region, and recognize that our host city, Columbus, OH and Clintonville neighborhood were built on indigenous homelands and resources. Today we recognize and pay our humble respect to the Wyandot, Shawnee, and Delaware, who stewarded this land for generations.


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OTFUF Supports Local Matters

Five years ago, The Spurgeon General and I attended our first Local Matters Harvest Ball. We bought tickets to the event to force ourselves out of the house to which we’d been tethered for some years by our love children – one human, the other agricultural.

That night we learned about the organization behind the bumper stickers as we wined, dined, and danced. Each year since we have become more invested in the mission of this organization that partners with so many central Ohio organizations working on issues of food security, health and wellness.

This year, we donated $1,000, about 1/4 of our CSA proceeds, and challenged our friends and followers on Facebook to match us. While we didn’t meet our goal of $1,000 in a weekend, we got pretty darn close. Check one more box in the “Hope for Future” column. (Click through the link for another example from OTFUF history.)


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Scenes from the Field: June 11, 2019

What a week. The weather here in central Ohio has been off the charts. It’s currently 56 degrees and raining. That’s downright nasty for this time of year. But in the grand scheme of things, we’re lucky.

Large scale farmers in the region have been struggling with too much rain, combined with unseasonably cool temperatures that have prevented evaporation, and have abandoned the idea of planting their fields this year. Too bad those folks are so big into corn and soy that they can’t imagine how to shift gears to something else. There’s still SO much time left in the season.

Here’s a few shots from the field I took earlier in the week.

Welcome to the jungle.

There’s a lot growing out back at this point. The spring crops are just about gone and the summer stuff is taking over, slowly. Will be interesting to see if there are long term implications of tonight’s 50 degree dip.

The hens are driving me nuts. They refuse to stay on their side of the fence. In good moments I imagine they are eating the squash bug larve. But most of the time, when they’re scratching indiscriminately (uprooting seedlings) and eating the kale, I just want them out!

Cora’s poppies are doing great! She and I harvested seed for these from a neighbor’s yard last year and she set them in soil in the basement over the winter one day (on her own!). We sold a bunch at our plant sale in April and I’m hearing good reports from friends who took them home. I’m a proud (human and plant) momma.