A Narrative of the University of Oregon Urban Farm

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A Testimony for the Urban Farm: A Wealth of Skills and Wonder

This post is part of a series of testimonies of students’ experiences with the Urban Farm. The series is meant to demonstrate the farm’s immense value to people personally and for the community as a whole. As the University of Oregon continues to develop its north campus in the area surrounding the farm, we want to recognize the farm’s qualities and attributes that can be brought into the overall vision for the future of the university.

“My name is Ilse, and I’m a sophomore at the University of Oregon. I’m actually currently taking the Urban Farm class right now, and since I’ll be in Eugene over the summer I plan on helping out around the farm as much as I can! The Urban Farm has saved my soul as a student during Covid-19. I heard about it through upperclassmen that I respected and always had the class on my bucket list [of courses] to take. It has not disappointed.

I have made better friends in seven weeks of the Urban Farm course than I have in many online courses. I have learned about subjects I previously hated (such as biology) with wonder, and have discovered a deeper level ofconnection with food systems than I thought possible. I have learned about valuable food access resources, such as the double your SNAP dollar program at our local farmers’ market.

The Urban Farm course has also given me hard skills to apply to my internship this summer with the organic garden organization Huerto de la Familia. I know many other Environmental Studies majors who have a similar experience applying the practical learning they get from their internship requirement to the Urban Farm and vice versa.

The Urban Farm has fed my love of and hunger for agroecological research as part of my thesis, and has nurtured ideas in me that I will carry along on my study abroad journey this next year. The Urban Farm is a place of practical skills trainings that engages in feed the flock programming, provides valuable food security, nurtures a love of the world around us, provides knowledge that students in this academic world are unlikely to find anywhere else, and really deeply contributes to UO’s renowned architecture program as well.”

It is valuable to protect and expand the Urban Farm for future generations “and the many many people that the farm feeds–both directly and through the creation of knowledge to power future urban farms. It’s time for UO to invest in what it already has, not more shiny, new-money infrastructure. The Urban Farm is loved and has real student support.”

Edible Flowers

Did you know there are some flowers you can eat? And they are delicious! As summer approaches at the Urban Farm, there are a variety of tasty flowers in bloom. Keep your eye out for these unassuming treats as you meander through the farm.

Borage: This is a flower you might be familiar with by now if you have spent much time in the garden. It grows and spreads profusely after being introduced to a garden. The little indigo blooms are edible and have a mildly sweet taste. Make sure to only eat the petals and avoid the stem, which is rough and fuzzy.

Daylily: These are some of the best edible flowers, in my humble opinion. The petals are large and fleshy, and they taste super sweet! Tear off one petal for a taste, or eat the whole flower for a great snack.

Nasturtium: This annual flower is not sweet, as you might expect it to be. It is instead deliciously peppery. The soft crunch is oh so satisfying.

A Testimony for the Urban Farm: Learning Beyond Classtime

This post is part of a series of testimonies of students’ experiences with the Urban Farm. The series is meant to demonstrate the farm’s immense value to people personally and for the community as a whole. As the University of Oregon continues to develop its north campus in the area surrounding the farm, we want to recognize the farm’s qualities and attributes that can be brought into the overall vision for the future of the university.

I have never even taken the Urban Farm class, but I have learned so much just from being at the farm and helping out on volunteer days. I had no agricultural experience or knowledge prior to meeting Harper and the other wonderful people that help maintain that facility. I had never tried gardening before COVID, and had the farm not provided me with a seemingly-bottomless pool of wisdom, resources, and inspiration, I doubt that I’d still have interest in growing food today, let alone feeling as autonomous as I now do in the refiguration of what little land I have access to. The urban farm showed me, and continues to show me, that all land is valuable and viable soil in one way or another, capable and deserving of thoughtful stewardship. It has shown me that even in the shadow of unending development-for-development’s sake, even in patches of dirt alongside parking lots and construction zones, delicious, healthy food can be grown, habitat can manifest, and insight can be passed down from one generation to the next. I worry already about how the new science building on the southern edge of the farm (built, ironically, for the sake of better understanding the earth) will drastically decrease the amount of sunlight hitting an enormous portion of the Urban Farm’s “protected” areas.

Agriculture, as the UO teaches legions of students each year, is the foundation of organized society, and food sovereignty is by all means a matter of social justice, of civil rights, and of basic wellbeing. The Farm helped me to truly grasp the importance of self-sufficiency, agricultural skills, and access to nutrition. I really appreciate the farm’s model of land stewardship and ecologically-based, hands-on, food sovereignty education in an era of climate catastrophes.

-Bryce Cumpston

 

Time for Corn!

It’s easing into June, the weather is getting more consistently warm, and it’s time to start planting corn! For the past couple years, the Urban Farm has partnered with some research departments to grow a cornfield across the street from the north end of the farm. As a significantly large and desirable plant, a plot of land nearly half the size of the main Urban Farm is designated just for corn production. The soil is tilled annually to prepare for hundreds of corn plants. Although this model of planting doesn’t follow the typical diversity-based ethos of the Urban Farm, it is both efficient and beautiful. Once the corn grows to full size, it’s lovely to walk through halls of green. And there’s nothing like eating fresh corn right off the stalk!

A Day At Columbia Street Garden

As a student who has demonstrated commitment to the Urban Farm, showing up time and time again since I arrived at the university, I (alongside my fellow urban farmer Grace) was so kindly given some plots at the Columbia Street Garden. Grace and I have now been taking care of the three plots in the southwest corner of the garden for more than a year, and it is as lively as ever. I recently took some photos of the garden’s intricate beauty that I thought I would share here. A healthy garden is always so full of life!

A ladybug on a mystery green–perhaps a hybrid of chard and spinach? It’s been thriving since the fall, and it is now almost as tall as I am!

California poppies! Pro tip: listen to the song Poppies by Nina Simone, and every time you see a poppy thereafter you will hear that song play in your head.

Artichokes growing! Did you know that the part of the artichoke plant we eat is the flower bud? Make sure to harvest them before they turn into vibrant purple flowers. If you harvest them when they’re too far along in their development, the stringy flowers taste like hair.

This lil dragonfly buddy was perched on the fence–perhaps injured? It was incredible to look so closely at its intricate detail.

A Testimony for the Urban Farm: A Source of Happiness and Meaning

This post is part of a series of testimonies of students’ experiences with the Urban Farm. The series is meant to demonstrate the farm’s immense value to people personally and for the community as a whole. As the University of Oregon continues to develop its north campus in the area surrounding the farm, we want to recognize the farm’s qualities and attributes that can be brought into the overall vision for the future of the university.

Hello!

I recently saw that the U of O is currently in talks to keep expanding campus around the area inhabited by the Urban Farm, and that sharing what the urban farm means to those who have taken the class could be of assistance in helping keep the Urban Farm [a significant element in this ever-changing landscape]. 

I had the pleasure of taking the class in the spring of 2019. I originally took the class as a way to enjoy the Eugene springtime and as a way to catch a break from my accounting classes (that was my major), but I soon learned that the Urban Farm was much more than an excuse to get outside a bit. The people I met, the experiences I had, and the skills I learned would come to play a big role in my life after college.

This class sparked my love for gardening and gave me the resources to learn more about food sustainability, which was a topic I already thought a lot about. Even being outside made me feel happier about myself and my soon changing life. Graduation was coming up and I knew my life was going to change drastically. I would no longer see the same people everyday and the freedom of being a college student would soon be replaced with an office job. While I was excited for the future, I was also sad to leave, and the Urban Farm made my last months in Eugene some of the best months of my life. Getting to work with my hands and being sent home everyday with fresh food were some of the highlights of my week. I knew that everytime I showed up to class I was going to talk to meaningful people and help do my small part in keeping the wonderful farm functioning. 

I hope that as the U of O makes decisions to expand that they think about the lesser known gems of their own university. While having a new science center is nice, and giving the town of Eugene a football team that many love is great, it is often easy for them to chase prestige and notoriety and forget about the lesser known things that make the university truly amazing. [Let’s integrate the farm’s special qualities into the new development!]

All the best,

Stephen Fleischman

 

Comfrey: A Compost Companion

It’s mid-May and comfrey is blooming in the garden, bringing our attention to this wonderful plant. The flowers are unexpected–sweet, bell shaped purple blooms drooping in umbles. Comfrey is a gem of the garden, providing many uses and benefits. At the Urban Farm, we like to add them to nearly every batch of compost because their leaves contain lots of nitrogen, phosphorus, AND potassium–the agricultural nutrient trifecta, NPK. 

NPK are the primary elements of every fertilizer. They are the basis of what you need to grow plants. You can make your own fertilizer out of just comfrey leaves and water. All you have to do is fill a bucket with about a quart of comfrey leaves and 4-5 gallons of water. Let it sit for a month or so, and you’ll have a stinky brown liquid to fertilize your crops. You can add comfrey with any method of adding nutrients to the soil/plants, like mulching, leaf mould heaps, or simply the bottom of a pot or hole you’re growing vegetables in. 

Comfrey is a wonderful plant to have growing in every garden. The nutrient-dense, prolific perennial not only acts as fertilizer but also attracts pollinators with their sweet purple blooms and has medicinal properties. Comfrey has soothing, anti-inflammatory properties and can be made into an herbal salve for skin conditions like dryness, rashes, and abrasions. It grows back rapidly after each harvest, making it a great plant to use throughout the season. Grow comfrey to serve a multitude of needs and add vibrant health to your garden!

 

Farm Weekly Update: Baby Fruits and Bees!

A day at the Urban Farm is certainly full of surprises. Throughout the three hours I spent working at the farm on this calm Saturday morning in May, a flock of chimney swifts flew around overhead, a swarm of bees moved into a hive, and geese passed by on their way to the river. The farm is always abundant with wildlife. It is a home to all kinds of creatures.

The farm task of the day was thinning out young apples so ensure that they have adequate space and nutrients to mature into healthy fruits. The particular tree we were working on hadn’t been thinned out last year, and many of the apples ended up rotting or getting too buggy. Thinning the young fruits on apple trees allows the apples to grow large, full, and healthy. It also helps prevent the apples from bearing too much weight on the trees and potentially breaking off the limbs. So, a group of folks and I spent a couple hours pinching off the young fruits so that there were only one or two at each bud, rather than the four to eight that grow naturally.

Tasks like this allow you to get a closer look at the intricate processes of nature that you might not notice from afar. I had never seen apples at this phase between flower and fruit–just a little fuzzy bulb with the remnants of petals closing in on the tip. It’s incredible to think that the little bulb will grow into something so nourishing and delicious! 

The Urban Farm abounds beauty and amazement at every scale. Walking into the space there is a bounty of color–purple borage, white arugula flowers, yellow brassica flowers, and bright green foliage all around. But if you look closer at any one thing (especially during spring), you’ll find flowers turning to fruit, new leafy growth emerging from stems, and maybe even a honey bee sipping on some nectar.

Speaking of honey bees, a whole swarm just moved into a bee box today! Apparently, one bee from a faraway hive was sent to scout out a new home. Harper explained that “wherever they were living, they ran out of space.” So a lone bee was sent out in search for a new place for their community to live. They likely stumbled upon the Urban Farm bee box and decided it was a perfect place (the Urban Farm is a pollinator’s dream, right?!) and went back to tell their community about it. Then they all flew over to the farm and swarmed around the bee box, eventually all making their way into their new home.

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.

 

 

 

 

Winter Blooms at the Urban Farm

Eugene winters are often dark and gloomy. Days can go by without the sun peeking out to remind us of light and the energy it brings. But the winter rain is what introduces life to the landscape, keeping things green and providing enough water for spring growth. Throughout the months of sporadic showers, flowers begin to emerge, signifying that a lively spring is coming.

In mid-February–what seems like the peak of wet winter gloom–pops of color persist at the Urban Farm.

 

Crocus (Crocus spp.) flowers spring up from the ground in the most unexpected places. They are one of the very first flowers of the year. The cluster pictured here is under a cherry tree in the orchard near the clubhouse at the farm.

 

 

 

 

The Red-Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum), my personal favorite, is another signifier that spring is on the way. It is a large shrub native to the Pacific Northwest. It abounds lovely clusters of pinkish-red flowers that slowly emerge from the buds. They smell faintly sweet and are a favorite of hummingbirds. This plant lines the south entrance to the farm.

 

 

 

There are often Calendula officinalis (also known as Pot Marigold) flowers blooming throughout most of the year at the farm. They are annuals that reproduce readily and aggressively, but adds nothing but goodness to the garden. Calendula is a great pollinator plant as well as a multi-use herb. People make tinctures, lotions, and dyes out of the flowers in addition to using them culinarily for floral flavor and bright color. Calendula is intermixed with veggies and other herbs throughout the farm.

 

 

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) can be in constant bloom in temperate climates like that of Eugene. The sweet little purple flowers add to the already potent fragrance of rosemary.

 

 

 

 

A couple tasty, edible blooms are popping off right now at the Urban Farm. Pictured here are bok choy and kale flowers. This is what happens when these plants bolt in late winter/early spring. The plants are sending out their seeds for the next generation. It is a sign that the plant has overwintered and survived into spring.

 

 

 

 

The same goes for arugula. The flowers carry the same peppery flavor as the leaves, and they are lovely to munch straight from the garden or cook down with butter and eggs. They also add a much needed pop of color in the often sparse-looking February garden.

 

 

Finally, a large vibrant pop of color at the farm comes with the Camellia (Camellia japonica) shrub. This is a popular ornamental plant that produces large, vibrant flowers in the midst of winter. This one is by the outdoor classroom area at the Urban Farm.

 

 

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