Young Farmers

Check out the Young Farmers interview on WNYC.

Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture’s second annual Young Farmers Conference is December 3-4. Fred Kirschenmann,Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, discusses his advocacy of a new “50 year Farm Bill” in Washington, and about his work helping to energize the burgeoning young farmers movement in the United States. He’s joined by Zach Wolfe and Emma Hoyt, two young farmers. Stone Barns Center’s Board President and Distinguished Fellow at the

It’s going to be very important in the coming years to support the education of a new wave of young farmers.  Like the Zach Wolfe says in the interview, the old paradigm of investing in a piece of land, borrowing money, building barns, buying equipment and so forth may not be available to the new young farmers.  The cost of the traditional farm is prohibitive.  The new farmers will need to be creative and find new ways to make farming work for them.  Emma Hoyt suggested that there are ways of accessing land without having to buy it.  We’ve seen much of this land sharing and urban farming happening here in Portland for a few years now.  These creative, young urban farmers have carved out an early niche in the urban farming movement.  I’m sure we’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg that will be urban farming in Portland.

Here is just a short list of creative urban farmers in Portland:

47th Avenue Farms

Your Backyard Farmer

Sunroots Gardens

Sellwood Garden Club

Edible Skylines

Ingredients

Ingredients - Portland Premier

Make sure you go to see the opening of Ingredients on Friday, September 25th at 7pm at the Bagdad Theater.  This is sure to be a great movie.  The movie will be followed by a panel discussion with local farmers, foodies and film makers.

From the Ingredients blog…

Ingredients, a feature length documentary film narrated by Actress Bebe Neuwirth and Directed by Robert Bates, captures the journey of the dynamic people behind the movement to bring good food back to the table, and health back to our communities. This captivating film illustrates how people around the country are working to revitalize the connection between food and the land, while celebrating the farm to table movement with vibrant cinematography and exploring solutions for creating a community based on the earth and seasonal food. Ingredients takes the viewer on a journey across the United States from the diversified farms of the Hudson River, to the urban food deserts of Harlem, to the inner labyrinths of celebrity kitchens of Greg Higgins, Alice Waters and Peter Hoffman.

County CROPS farm yields 3000 lbs of produce

Dan in the field with some volunteers at the event. Harvesting eggplant.

So far this year POP Farmer Dan Bravin along with an army of volunteers and supporters have turned a long forgotten patch of county land into a thriving 2 acre vegetable farm.  From wall-to-wall blackberry brambles on June 1st to wall-to-wall vegetables just 3 months later.  This week marked 3000 lbs of vegetables donated to the Oregon Food Bank.  CROPS got a little press coverage this week.  You can see some of the video coverage in the links below.

County CROPS on kgw.com.

More video on KOIN.

Dan Bravin speaking at CROPS media event. (Also shown: County Commissioner Diane McKeel and Troutdale Mayor Jim Knight)

Intern Wanted for County CROPS Farm

In previous posts you may have read about the County CROPS program. If you were saying to yourself, “I’d like to do that!”, then this is your chance. Farmer Dan is looking for a regular volunteer to help out on the farm a few days per week. See the the description below to see if this is something you want to do.

Project Title: Grow Fresh, Local Vegetables for Hunger Relief (County CROPS)

Description: Learn to grow vegetables using small plot intensive methods with urban farmer Dan Bravin (of City Garden Farms and POP Farming). You’ll learn and explore intensive vegetable gardening/farming while providing fresh vegetables to the Oregon Food Bank. This is a volunteer position. No monetary compensation is available. This is an opportunity to learn more and get hands on experience in small scale, intensive agriculture.

You will have the opportunity to learn:

• Organic gardening and small scale agriculture techniques
• Soil management for intensive growing
• Relay cropping and succession planting methods
• Season extension techniques
• Specialty tool use (collinear hoe, Earthway seeder, broadfork, etc)
• Many other on-farm skills

Your tasks will include:

• Assist with regular maintenance of the larger 2 acre plot through the end of the season (Nov ‘09).
• Material sourcing/acquisition for the farm. (i.e. asking for donations).
• Maintain a 2500 sq ft Small Plot INtensive (SPIN) style area located within the 2 acre site through the end of the season (Nov ‘09) under the guidance of an experienced SPIN grower. Documentation of input and output will be closely monitored and documented to show the productivity of a very small plot.
• Documentation of all work done on the farm (spreadsheets, handwritten logs, photographs, etc).

Time commitment:

• You must be able to commit to 3 to 4 hour shifts twice per week for a total of 6 to 8 hrs per week. This commitment will last through November 2009. Days are flexible. However, a regular schedule will be required.

Requirements:

• You must be at least 18 years of age to apply. Students in agriculture/sustainability studies/environmental studies are encouraged to apply.
• able to lift 65lbs
• be willing to work physically hard
• be detail oriented and be able to follow complex instructions independently
• have skills sufficient to maintain communication with an audience through social networking (facebook, twitter, blog)
• have skills sufficient to create, update and maintain spreadsheets and other documents in Microsoft Office and/or OpenOffice
• supply your own heavy duty boots, gloves and appropriate dress for the tasks of farming

Brief description of the project:

County CROPS is an emergency food garden grown on underutilized Multnomah County surplus property that will be farmed to grow fresh, local, organically grown produce for hungry Oregon families. Our produce will be distributed through hunger relief organizations like the Oregon Food Bank network to provide hunger relief to our local community during the current economic crisis. We are maintaining this two-acre plot across the street from McMenamins Edgefield on the site of the old poor farm (“The Pig Farm”) for the next 2 years. Come help us make the first year of this project a huge success.

Contact Farmer Dan if you are interested in this opportunity.

Put in your fall and winter garden now!

Plant your fall and winter garden now. Portland is a great place to grow well into the winter. You can do it with the help of POP Farming.

It’s still not too late to have a great garden this year.  Planting beets, turnips and carrots from seed right now will give you a wonderful late summer harvest.  Planting broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower will bring an abundant harvest come fall and early winter.  Contact POP Farming for help planning and planting your late season crops.  We can help you plant a garden for harvest at Thanksgiving.  How great it would be to offer your family and friends an ultra-local holiday meal.  Contact POP Farming to help get your late season garden in before it’s too late!

On a related note…The COUNTY Crops project is planting all of these crops over the next 2 weeks.  We expect that we’ll be harvesting through early November for the Oregon Food Bank.  Speaking of County CROPS, we are in need of some mid-season donations to keep those veggies moving into the hands of hungry families through the fall and early winter.  Concentrates is accepting donations for us for our fertilizer needs right now.  If you would like to help out with an organic fertilizer donation to the CROPS project please call (503.234.7501) or stop by Concentrates to make a donation now.  They can take a donation over the phone, by check in the mail or by just stopping in to the store.  While you’re there, talk to Naomi about your garden amendment needs.  She’ll let you know how to fertilize and amend to make your garden POP through the end of the season!  Donate just one bag or a few bags of organic fertilizer or lime.  You can be assured that all of your donation will be helping needy families through donations of fresh, ultra-local, organically grown vegetables to the Oregon Food Bank.

Here are the items we are looking to have donated:

• Fish Bone Meal  -  50 lb bag  -  $26  (we need 10 bags)
• Lime – 50 lb bag  -  $10  (we need 30 bags)
• Feather Meal – 50 lb bag  -  $37  (we need 10 bags)

San Francisco Follows Multnomah County’s Urban Farming Efforts

Today San Francisco mayor, Gavin Newsom announced an executive directive to change the way San Francisco thinks about food.  One of the more important pieces of this move is the mandate to have all city departments conduct an audit of all unused and underutilized land in the city.  They have 6 months to evaluate potential land for new urban farming efforts.  This includes “empty lots, rooftops, windowsills and median strips” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Portland, ahead of it’s time…as usual, completed an audit of urban land a number of years ago in a study performed by a group of Portland State University students.  The study was called “The Diggable City” and can be found on the website of Portland’s Office of Planning and Sustainability.  While many sites were identified as potential urban agriculture sites, nearly none of them were available for a variety of reasons…future development plans, parks department space was seen as to be used for “recreation” only and a host of other reasons.

One effort that has moved forward in the local government in Portland is the County DIGS project to:

“promote opportunities for urban agriculture throughout Multnomah County by providing unused or surplus County property to individuals or organizations for use in growing food or agriculture products”.

Full disclosure…POP Farmer Dan Bravin is currently managing one of the County DIGS projects outlined in the previous blog entry.

The Multnomah County board of commissioners is making urban farming a reality in the Portland area with real tangible projects like County CROPS and County DIGS.  Hopefully San Francisco will be able to act on their audit of city land.  Urban farming is a hot topic right now.  If it doesn’t happen now, it is not going to happen.

POP Farming: Making Farming History

This photo from long ago show the exact field where the current County CROPS farm is located. What a wonderful project to use the old poor farm to once again feed the hungry.

Well, more specifically, farming on an historic farming site just on the edge of Portland, OR  in Troutdale…

Dan Bravin of POP Farming has been hired to be the farm manager for Multnomah County’s CROPS program.  This entails farming 2 acres of surplus county land to grow vegetables for distribution through the Oregon Food Bank (OFB).  This groundbreaking project is the brainchild of Marissa Madrigal, Chief of Staff for Multnomah County Commissioner, Jeff Cogan.  Despite the many nay sayers and skeptics, Marissa and Jeff have prevailed in making this incredible pr0ject a reality.   Since early 2009 they have been working to develop the idea and were finally were able to push through a vote on the project at the beginning of June.   While it was a bit of a late start for the gardening season, much progress has been made.  Soon there will be a steady supply of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, summer and winter squash flowing to the Oregon Food Bank.  This is significant for a couple of reasons.  First, Oregon is a state with one of the highest hunger rates.  Hopefully this program will help put a dent in that statistic.  Second, food banks traditionally get lots of non-perishable food, but not much fresh produce that is of decent quality.  They often receive produce that is near spoilage or beyond (i.e. compost).  This program will pick and deliver fresh vegetables to the OFB the same day offering OFB clients the same, high quality, organically grown food you might find at supermarkets like New Seasons.  Third, the project brings together many different parts of the local community to address the  serious issue of hunger.  County government, AmeriCorps volunteers, private businesses, individual community members, social service agencies are all part of making this project a huge success.

POP Farming offering micro-sized salad garden

Micro-garden example

Do you think you don’t have room for a vegetable garden?  Think again.  POP Farming is now offering micro-sized salad garden installation for as little as $75 (depending on the size).  Your micro-garden can be as small as 2′x6′ in a sunny corner of your yard.  Installation includes recycled wood raised bed, plenty of compost, initial organic fertilizer application and seeds planted to get you started.  We encourage you to watch while we plant in order to learn the technique.  This is nothing fancy but it will produce abundant amounts of salad for you through the growing season.  We can also teach you how to keep growing well into early winter.  Just think… lettuce, radishes, baby carrots, scallions, spinach, arugula and more all season long.  With POP’s advice and your appetite for fresh salad you can see return on your investment by the end of this season.  Do you want to dip your toes in what seems like the ocean of knowledge needed for growing vegetables?  Start with the micro-sized salad garden.

Contact us to get started gardening this year.  Now is the time to get started!

Dan Bravin Will Destroy Your Lawn*

*and replace it with tasty vegetables.

Check out the great Q&A with POP Farming in the Willamette Week today.

The Scoop

Willamette Week picks up on Portland's city hall food garden.

Last week the Willamette Week picked up on POP Farming’s efforts to help out on the Portland city hall food garden.    “It was great fun being able to work with so many dedicated volunteers who have spent months planning this effort.” Said Dan Bravin of POP Farming.  POP along with many other volunteers were able to transform the lawn in to an edible landscape in just a few days.All of the produce will be donated to Loaves and Fishes.  The OSU Extension Master Gardener Program will be involved in the ongoing up keep of the garden.  There are too many people to mention, but here are af few of the many contributors to the project:

Dave Barmon and Mark Parisien of Fiddlehead Landscapes LLC, Mary Bedard of Portland’s Food Policy Council,  Steve Cohen of the City of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainablility …and many, many more.

Thanks everyone!  POP Farming couldn’t be more honored to be invited to work with such wonderful and dedicated people.