A Narrative of the University of Oregon Urban Farm

Archives for food security

When COVID First Hit: Spring/Summer Harvest 2020

The bounty of summer: squash, tomatoes, plums, greens, and flowers!

In March of 2020, the whole world turned upside down. Everything was cancelled, and people were told to stay in their homes. This meant that the Urban Farm class, which is based almost exclusively in hands-on learning, was cancelled. Students had spent the previous fall and winter terms prepping for the spring: in the fall adding nutrients to the soil and putting the garden beds to rest, and in the winter getting starts ready to spread their roots in the ground. But without a class of a hundred students to do the important work of tending to a spring garden, how could everything on the two acre farm get done? And since there wouldn’t be students coming through twice a week to take home the fresh produce, where would the harvest go? 

A number of students, faculty, and community members took on the task of running the farm without the help of Urban Farm students. Twice a week, a harvest team (including myself) came to the farm to prepare produce for the Student Food Pantry. We pulled fava beans, plucked kale leaves, searched for summer squash, dug up beets, and collected every last ripe cherry tomato. We soaked, rinsed, and spun dry lettuce and bunched up collard greens. Every week, there was a bountiful harvest, full of color and variety. Along the way, we documented the harvest and at the end of the summer came up with quite an impressive data set of the growing season’s food production (see charts below!).

I feel really lucky to have been able to be a part of watching the farm change and grow from April through September. Every week there was more and more happening — more foliage bursting from the ground, more fruits dripping from the trees, more flowers decorating the landscape and making everything feel alive. When so much in the world felt complicated and confusing, the simplicity of working on the farm and harvesting produce was extremely grounding. 

Luckily, this spring Urban Farm class will be in session, and students will be able to do their part in working the land and collecting the harvest.

 

 

 

 

What’s Buzzing?

Walking around the Urban Farm, if you are observant and listen, you will hear the buzz of busy bees working hard to gather pollen and making our garden come alive with fruits and veggies.  Our friends the bees are an essential part of the garden ecosystem. Without them and our other pollinators, we would not have all of the delicious food that we have available to us. The importance of taking care of our pollinators cannot be understated. As gardeners, recognizing this fact and loving pollinators comes with the job.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is the term for the vanishing and dying off of bee colonies. This phenomenon is happening all across the world, even at the Urban Farm. Many theories have arose as to why colonies are dying off, but the likelihood that the cause is from one factor is doubtful. What is more probable is Colony Collapse Disorder is the result of a combination of different factors.

The main causes of CCD are:

  • Varroa destruct – a type of mite that attack bees externally.
  • Stress – from being transported from large farm to large farm and habitat change
  • Pesticides – poisoning from pesticides that are applied to the crops where the bees are pollinating
  • Virus – a new virus is attacking the bees

One of the first steps that we need to take to stop CCD we need to change our mindset towards bees and our agricultural system. In today’s agricultural world bees are thought of just as one of the many tools used to get the desired crop and enough yield to produce the amount of desired money. Bees are often not considered a living and essential organism. Changing our perspectives to view bees as more than just a tool used to make money and viewing them more in the light of a living organism that should be treated fairly will be the first step in stopping CCD.

Pollinators are vital to our lifestyle. Without them, the amount of food available to us would go down dramatically. The inter-workings of large scale agricultural production is still unknown to many. Educating the population on how crops are grown and knowing the implications of where your food is coming from will hopefully being to bring about change to our agricultural system.

New Farm Happenings

Hello to the University of Oregon blog community! My name is Ayla Ginger.

I am so happy to be placed here on this wooden bench, spilling out my first, long awaited post for the Urban Farm blog. I wish to bid the previous blog writer and urban farm friend, Kat, a loving hello and farewell. It has been over a year since she last posted on this blog, now living in Portland and partaking in many great gardening endeavors.

My goal here is to post weekly updates on the growing narrative that is the Urban Farm, similar to Kat. I took the Urban Farm class almost two years ago and fell in love with the place, the process and the people of the farm. New plants, topics and issues are constantly sprouting. Hundreds of students occupy the outdoor classroom a term; think about all the hands that have collectively dug into this dirt that have contributed to its healthy state today! Who are these hands? What is their experience on the farm?

From what I have gathered over time spent and conversations had; this place, this outdoor classroom, this cultivated open space, has affected, and continues to affect the lives of an innumerable amount of species. I aspire to bring light to the place, process and the people, and to share this narrative with any who may be interested to listen. Gardeners, urban farmers, nature lovers, academics, ecologists, poets, what have you, all welcome!

I wish I had photos to share, but I am having some technological difficulties in that area. Photos to come soon!

Not Rhubarb Pie!

Currently listening: Tom Waits- Rain Dogs

Recipe time!

I think during every class I get asked, or hear someone else asking “What do I do with this? / How do I cook or eat this vegetable?”

Today we harvested rhubarb, I wanted to make something else besides ‘strawberry-rhubarb pie, that if you add enough strawberries it’s almost as good as strawberry pie’ :]

Being a person born in the late 80’s I naturally turned to my cookbook’s first, but they only had dessert’s. I was hungry for a savory dinner, which lead me to internet searches. I found one on Vegetarian Times. We also harvested leeks, broccoli, and cilantro today, which I wanted to use in my dinner. (If you want to view our up-to-date harvest log, click here!)
Each term (or last term and this term) students are asked to complete an “Eat Local” assignment, in which they must eat local for two days. This recipe fulfills that requirement, which is always a personal goal of mine. Seriously, try eating with the seasons, your body will thank you.

How I revised the recipe, I started by cooking lentils and barley, then sautéed the leeks in the spices suggested, and added those to the lentils and barley. I did not use as much, since I did not have as much, duh! I also added dried cranberries from hummingbird wholesale and raisins that I had dehydrated last fall. Once the lentils were almost done I added chopped up rhubarb (1.5 cups/2 stalks) and steamed for about 10 mins, also added broccoli and cilantro in the last bit of time. I added more seasonings like cumin, ginger, mustard, nutritional yeast, braggs amino acid, and salt n pepper.

Just look how tasty eating local is!:

Rhubarb Meal

And what is an Urban Farm post without a picture of the activities today?

Dan’s group inspecting their turnip and carrot bed:

april 16 turnip carrot bed

april 16 covering turnip bed

Later Days

Kat B!

2010 Garden Harvest Tally

A common sight at the Urban Farm, among the compost heaps and tidy beds, is our baby scale. A baby scale? I know! But it turns out to be the perfect-sized scale to weigh all of the produce we harvest from the farm.

We keep monthly records of our harvests for a few reasons. People will make notes about certain pests, which helps us adapt for future plantings. And it tells us what worked well last year and how we might mix things up for the coming season. We might remember that we planted way too much zucchini and too little potatoes, so we adjust for the coming year.

This year we can celebrate 6,500 pounds of food grown from students and volunteers at the farm. Our goal is education, not to be the highest producing farm. Regardless, it was a good haul! Here is a brief look at the biggest producers:

  • Tomatoes – over 1,000 pounds
  • Summer squash – over 700 pounds
  • Beets, apples – over 500 pounds each
  • Onions – over 300 pounds
  • Lettuce, cabbage – about 300 pounds each
  • Potatoes, pears, pumpkins, swiss chard – about 200 pounds each
  • Broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, garlic, kale, leeks, shallots, spinach – all about 100-200 pounds each

Our produce goes home with volunteers and students in the class. When we have excess, we donate to local non-profits like Food for Lane County. It was a great year!

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