Update-us Maximus

Operation: Salsa Garden is underway! We have tomatoes, onions, peppers and cilantro in the ground! Next week, we'll add the grafted tomatoes, which are currently being started in Southwood's greenhouses on Delaware Ave. All of the wind we've had so far hasn't helped the plants already in the ground, which include the starts we're evaluating for OSU. We've had to run the water quite a bit, and the onions and cilantro are struggling from being whipped around by the wind.

Here is the garden in its planted glory, being inspected by my daughters. I accidentally erased the pictures Joe and I took the day we planted. Which is a shame, because there was a really fantastic candid shot of me discovering that I had put my hand in a pool of fresh neon orange nursery paint. Oops.)

Another big announcement: the Southwood Salsa Party is officially set for July 28! It's earlier than we originally thought, but spring came so early this year, everything else is apparently going to follow suit. As you may recall, last year on that date the temperature was a balmy 118. Hopefully that will not be the case this year. If it is, we might have to get creative with the party, which I vote will happen whether we grow anything or not.

The Farmer's Almanac says it's going to be an intermittently hot and stormy summer, but it doesn't say scorching, blazing hot like last year's did. The Farmer's Almanac claims to be surprisingly accurate, having also predicted the 2011 "Snowmageddon" storm we all remember so fondly. The link above describes their process. I'm going to start reading it, like a good farmer, and I'll report back on my findings.

The next crop to go in the ground will be watermelons, followed later by pumpkins, at the farm garden. As it turns out, we have a ton of watermelon seeds, due to some confusion in our last meeting with OSU's Dr. Brandenberger. Hey, if a double order of watermelon seeds is the biggest goof we make this year, I'm going to consider it an overwhelming success.

Ready for its watermelons, with a lovely new gravel road and water line.

This weekend was the Jenks Herb Festival, which is a very well-attended event. For the past several years, Southwood has partnered with RARC/The Bridges Foundation to sell hanging baskets and patio pots, with part of the proceeds going to that organization. (I'm going to write a blog post soon about cause marketing.) By this time next year, we would like to have the market building built for people to walk through. I'm pretty confident that there's some overlap between the people at that event and our future customers.

As the final update, here is a picture of Emmie's Pallet Garden. Southwood's vegetable guru Emmie Sherry demonstrated this unique and inexpensive method at our Plant a Row for the Hungry event in March. As you can see, it is currently thriving in a sunny spot outside of the office trailers at Southwood. Yes, office trailers. We're nothing if not resourceful. Happy gardening!

It's not the best picture in the world, but the tomatoes are flowing at the bottom, and there are tons of tiny peppers and tomatoes growing all over it. The kale at the top is doing well, too. This would be so easy for a balcony or patio!
Just don't forget to water it!

Role Playing

After a couple of rain delays and a bit of impatience on my part, we will be planting the Salsa Garden at the Southwood Market House this week! I'm looking forward to posting pictures of the planting process and finished bed, because that'll mean it's really happened. I will have started the process of becoming a farmer. Or something like a farmer, anyway.

I wonder sometimes if it's a role I'm going to be able to pull off. Despite being the daughter of garden center owners, I've never been much of a gardener (although I certainly did marry one). I'm not entirely sure what being a farmer actually entails. It was never a particular aspiration of mine. So why am I doing it?

My stock answer to the "what do you want to be" inquiries we all endure as children was "a writer." I kept it purposely vague, since I had no idea what I wanted to write about. I only knew that stringing words together came easily to me and I liked doing it. I studied journalism in college, worked as a copyeditor, and then toiled for a year as a high school newspaper advisor.

By that time I had been married a couple of years, and lacking any particular enthusiasm toward either of those careers, I launched into the only role I absolutely knew I wanted: motherhood. Politically, there's a lot of talk these days about moms working in the home or out of the home. The bottom line of it is that you have to do what's best for your family and your situation. For me and my family, I had to get out of the house.

So I went to work part time as an administrative assistant for my dad at Southwood. It was perfect for what I needed, a flexible and laid-back job that would allow me to interact with adults and let me contribute financially to our household. It didn't necessarily fit with the journalism career I envisioned for myself, but it would give me more freedom to personally attend to my kids' needs.

Fast forward 10 years to today, and I wonder why I ever wanted to go anywhere besides Southwood. I love being a part of my family's business, and I feel a genuine ownership for what we do, who we are, and our place in this community. With my sister back in town, things are falling into place nicely for us to develop and expand the company.

Which brings me to Southwood Farm & Market, and planting a Salsa Garden. I feel like I'm merging a series of  roles in my life. Business owner seeking opportunity. Citizen of Tulsa/Jenks seeking a way to give back. Concerned mother seeking a sustainable lifestyle for my children. Woman seeking better health awareness. Human seeking connection to the Earth. It's kind of exciting, not knowing what I'm going to find.

A Need for Ag-vocacy

As I mentioned at the end of my prior post, there is very real cause for concern for America's small farmers right now. It isn't all bad news, because a lot of amazing people are advocating at federal, state and local levels to ease the burdens of farm families. Ag-vocacy (yes, it is a real thing) is a growing grassroots movement that is making good use of social media.  But there is a long way to go - unfortunately, it is still very difficult in this country to make a living producing real food on a scale that's manageable for one family. 

Farmers' livelihoods are affected by many kinds of laws (food safety, environmental, immigration, education) made at every level of government. I'll try not to get overly political, because that's not the point of this blog. But how these laws are framed - who gets over- or under-regulated, who gets the money, who gets the laws in their favor - they all affect American industry in a very big way. And of course, those decisions are very partisan, because in this country right now, every decision is very partisan.

The top level of farmers' "rules to live by" comes courtesy of the federal Farm Bill. It is an omnibus bill, which basically means it's a bunch of laws rolled into one bill that all get passed together, and it happens every 5 years. State and local laws affect farmers, too - in your daily life, you're far more likely to encounter a city, county or state mandate than a federal one - but the tone of the big guy trickles down to the little guys. Even if economics don't always trickle down, other stuff does.

Luckily for us, Oklahoma's Department of Agriculture has a very good ag-vocate in Sec. of Ag. Jim Reese. I've had the pleasure of meeting him twice - the second time at the state capitol this week - and he is very engaged with the needs of small farmers in this state. He even wants to come to our Salsa Party in September!

The current federal farm bill, the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, expires in September of this year. The prior farm bill expired in 2007 and it took 8 months of wrangling to pass it. Considering the political environment in this country right now, we won't see the next version until the dust settles after the election, because nobody's touching energy during a lame duck session.

And honestly, that's about as much as I know about the Farm Bill. I am not a policy expert, so I couldn't tell you what the thing says, or what any of it means. But as a news junkie, I CAN tell you that it means the ag sector is going to be in flux for awhile.  I can also tell you that as far as what's going to be in the next Farm Bill, which will likely come out sometime in mid-to-late 2013, all bets are off. I'm sure there are analysts who have a pretty good idea of what it will look like, but until after the election, we won't know who's voting on it.

I predict that next summer, every pundit in this country will be solemnly spouting polls and digestible factoids about food and energy policy. With absolutely nothing electoral to talk about, unless something crazy happens, we'll hear about the Farm Bill. Because it really does affect a lot, considering that you're talking about little topics like Food, Conservation and Energy.

The question is - how far can the ag-vocates get in spreading information about the need for the Farm Bill to support small farmers in America? Or will the huge corporations like Syngenta and Monsanto use their huge lobbying power to write the bill in their favor, sacrificing programs like "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" to pay for their subsidies?

I guess you could say I'm a newly minted ag-vocate.

Trials and Errors

Ladies and gents (or possibly just gent - hi Sam) planting season has arrived! The plasticulture is down, the beds are prepared, and the vegetables will be in place very soon. And so, with no further ado, I bring you the official unveiling of the first ever crop to be planted at Southwood Farm & Market!

Well, maybe a little bit of further ado: first I have to acknowledge there is a possibility that this entire crop will die. We're pretty good growers, so we have that going for us. But last summer in Oklahoma was brutally hot, and if that happens again, our crops, along with everybody else's, will suffer. This is the reality for all small farmers. I'm going to get back to that in a minute, though.

The Market
106 E. Apache (now called Aquarium Place) in Jenks

Audrey wields the shovel while Micah lays the plasticulture from the tractor.
The rig on the back lays an irrigation drip line and the plastic at the same time.

Being the more public of the two locations, this garden is more for show. The farm garden, which is bigger (market = 360 linear feet of plasticulture; farm = 2,800 linear feet) will be the more functional producer. So our fun market garden will be a salsa garden: tomatoes, onions, peppers and herbs. The working plan is that after we harvest, we'll throw a Salsa Party at Southwood. We'll give people a basket of our Southwood grown ingredients and have a salsa contest, bring in a guest chef to cook a Mexican dinner using local ingredients, and invite a group of salsa dancers to perform. We are all about excuses to have a party, and harvests are historically just that. Ole!

The Farm
Jenks, just south of Creek Turnpike and east of Elm

The plasticulture beds. This is the view looking north, toward the Creek Turnpike.

The farm house, mid-remodel. The farm foreman or caretaker will live here.

So, while the market garden produces party supplies, the farm garden will be participating in educational research.  We are working with Oklahoma State University Professor Dr. Lynn Brandenberger to perform a tomato trial through their department.  Working with one of Dr. B's colleagues, we'll grow several varieties of heirloom tomatoes. We will be comparing plants grown from traditional "seed saver" seeds, started in the OSU greenhouses in Stillwater, to the same varieties grafted onto hardy root stock, started by one of suppliers. We will receive all of the plants as plugs, about the size of a test tube, and plant them all in about a week or two.

The trial itself will be performed at harvest time. This is my first vegetable trial, but essentially we'll be separating the fruits into marketable and unmarketable, performing various weights and measures and noting why we culled what we did. And of course, unmarketable does not mean inedible, though there will be those as well, so we'll be cooking up or donating what we can't sell but can still eat.

This is going to be a lot of work, so cross your fingers for us! If it works out as we hope, you're all invited to the Southwood Salsa Party. If not, we'll wash our hands, sharpen our tools and plant the next crop.

Which brings me back to the small farmer topic for a second - The more I read and write and tweet and live and breathe this project, the more I'm becoming aware of what life is like for small farmers in the 21st century. Farming in America has reached a critical point. Our food supply in this country is held hostage by huge corporations like Monsanto. Two of the best documentaries I'm aware of are Food Inc. and The World According to Monsanto (which is actually available to watch free online, if you'll follow the link). Both of these are well worth two hours of your time, if you eat.

I'll write more about this subject next week, because this Monday, April 9, 2012, Joe and I will be participating in the first ever Local Food Day at the Oklahoma State Capitol. I'm sure it's going to be a very informative and interesting day!

I'll finish the post with my farmer Joe, being himself.