Urban Farm School

I love this time of year! The garden is booming and the first real opportunities to save food for the winter are presenting themselves daily, berries for jam, jelly, syrups, and pie fillings, greens for freezing, cabbage for sauerkraut, broccoli for freezing and cauliflower for pickling and freezing. LOVE IT! The first potatoes are being dug and cured (and roasted on the BBQ) while the greens and herbs continue to make fresh, tender salads.

There is nothing better than the satisfaction of harvesting this time of year for fresh eating but even better is saving food for those dreary winter evenings when July-harvested broccoli livens a rice dish or bright red strawberry tops fresh-baked bread.

July is hopping with classes! We’re introducing our canning primers, an opportunity for people to take a small step towards greater food independence and an answer to that moment when you’re standing in the garden asking yourself “what am I going to do with all this food?” We are happy to provide safety, materials, and how-to education as well as a hands-on class where we will walk you step by step through the canning process and you will take home your work! We provide the jars, rings, lids, and fruit or vegetable for the class, all you do is show up with an apron and an eagerness to learn.

We are also offering our ever-popular “Extending the Harvest” class Thursday, July 16 where we discuss planting and maintenance of food for harvest during the fall and winter. We are pleased to be partnering with Five Star Farms in Battle Ground who have been gracious enough to host this class. And we’ve gone plain batty for bats with a local bat expert to guide us through the wonderful world of bats and their importance for the environment Thursday, July 30. This class will be held at Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge, Carty Unit, so bring your walking shoes and mosquito repellent it will be a great family outing!

We love the summer months and the bounty of the garden and the promise of food in January and February that have the flavor of summer, saved by our own hands from our own soil. Remember, that if you have an over abundance of food that you can’t keep up with the area food banks and pantries always welcome fresh produce!

We would like to say THANKS HEAPS! to Bethany Vineyard, BiZi Farms, and Storeytree Farm CSA for hosting a wonderful local food field trip June 14. We had a van full of rising foodies and explored part of the county’s bounty.

We had wonderful one on one attention from the owners of all the farms and great wine tasting on the terrace at Bethany with lunch courtesy of A Dinner Together. Kendra purchased a bottle of Bethany’s Plum Wine that is to die for and in 25 years or so will be part of balsamic vinaigrette; it really doesn’t get much better.

Bill Zimmerman gave us a great hay ride into the fields and gave us the low down on his hot weather plant tips and tricks for tomatoes, peppers, and squash. Beautiful weather, a tractor, and fields and fields of food ~ it’s a wonderful thing.

Anne and Nelson Lawrence let us wander through their wonderful CSA, meeting the goats and chickens, wandering through the gardens, nibbling as we went. Saw the green house action and the new field addition (it’s a doozy!) while learning about natural fertilizer mixes, potato projects, and how to keep plastic mulch down in wind storms.

It was a wonderful afternoon full of good food, great wine and generous farmers. We look forward to seeing you all on the next field trip!

It’s time to take a tour!

Join us Sunday, June 14 for our Local Food Field Trip. We will be visiting Storytree Farm CSA, Bi-Zi Farms farm stand, Bethany Vineyards Winery, and Toree’s backyard farm. We are so excited about this event and the opportunity to share a little of the bounty that Clark County offers. We will be driving so you can enjoy the afternoon and a glass of wine or two with no worries. At each stop we will be taking a tour and learning a little about the farm itself and what part it takes in the local food community straight from the farmer’s mouths. Bring along your appetite as we will have a local snack prepared for you to eat at Bethany Vineyards to accompany your wine and be sure to bring your shopping bag to pick up some goodies for the week. This is a great event to share with friends or family, a great way to celebrate a graduation, birthday, or wedding.

We are thankful to all the farms for having us and for providing such a unique experience for Urban Farm School. We look forward to spending the afternoon with you all! Please, contact us soon to register as this is a limited space event! 360-907-5814 or urbanfarmschool@gmail.com. $50/person. Fee includes: transportations, snack, education, and tours.

A little snippet of the farms ~

Bethany Vineyards (www.bethanyvineyards.com) 
Located in Ridgefield, Washington, Bethany Vineyard and Winery combines the best traditions of winemaking with the nearly perfect growing climate of southwest Washington to produce a wine with distinct flavor and character. Their wines represent a careful selection of grapes, grown in small blocks, hand picked, and skillfully produced.  Bethany Vineyards celebrated it’s 6th year in May 2009 and hosts a summer concert series “Music in the Vines.”  Visit their site for details.
 

BiZi Farms (www.bizifarms.com) 
Bi-Zi Farms is a family owned and operated farm originally established by Gabrial Zimmerman in 1872 when he purchased 180 acres from Gottlieb Wagonblast.  The current owners are the 4th and 5th generations on the farm.  The Farmstand is open year-round and offers Clark County and Pacific Northwest crops such as strawberries, asparagus, berries, lettuce, herbs, flowers, apples, squash, pumpkins,  bread, eggs and a bevy of other in-season crops.
   

Storytree Farm CSA (www.storytreefarm.com)
Storytree Farm is a locally-owned and family operated CSA farm in the Pleasant Highlands neighborhood of Vancouver, Washington. Their mission is to grow fresh, tasty chemical-free vegetables, fruits & herbs using natural methods. They reject the use of GMO seed.  All of their shares are sold out for the 2009 season but visit their site for information about their annual tour, classes, and other on-farm events.

Toree’s Urban Farm
Take a peak into Toree’s urban farm in the Fircrest Neighborhood and what can be done on a subdivision lot. Chickens, fruiting trees and shrubs, and prolific vegetable garden are all featured in this amazing backyard setting. See what hard work and vision can do in three short years.

Urban Farm School celebrated its’ one year anniversary May 1. We had a wonderful at our Plant Exchange and Sale, Sunday, with friends, family, and UFS faithfuls stopping by throughout the day. What better way to spend an afternoon than with plants, food, and friends?

We are looking forward to the 2009 and all that it will bring, as in all things, UFS is evolving as we learn what is needed in the community. We are excited about the doors and opportunities that have been opening for us in the past few months and are truly thankful for all your support.

We are keeping to our word and doing our best to “change the world, one gardener at a time!” Thanks everyone and we’ll see you soon at a class, workshop, or event!

Kendra and Toree

As we all know, everything changes whether we want it to or not. toree recently gave me copies of her garden before and after. she continually amazes me with her ability to see the possibility in all things ~ gardens, coffee, classes, and people. if you haven’t had a consult with toree and are stuck in a garden rut or are just looking for a new perspective give her a call, 360-907-5814; she will change your whole outlook. now if only i could get her to come to my garden . . .


see you all at the Home and Garden Idea Fair, April 24-25! We’re looking forward to chatting it up, putting names to faces and spreading the word of backyard food production. we will have our newly arrived t-shirts and bumper stickers for sale at the event and watch out world we now accept credit cards! shirts are 100% organic cotton sizes S-XL, $15. Bumper stickers are $2.

Thanks for your continued support and here is to a GREAT growing season my friends. The time has come! Get your greens, roots, brassicas, potatoes, and onions in the ground if you haven’t yet!

See you soon!

We at Urban Farm School love compost.  Backyard bins,  sheet mulching, from the chicken coop, worm bins, and bokashi; it doesn’t matter we love it all.  Saturday we got to share our love of compost with community members during our bokashi composting workshop.  A great group of willing hands, inquisitive questions, and a new group of bokashi composters were  born.  We are happy and proud to be able to further close the loop in the common kitchen, keeping food scraps out of our wastestream and into the garden where it adds nutrients, heals soils, and saves money.  We hope you can join us at our next bokashi workshop to learn about the wonderful world of fermentation composting for those hard to deal with kitchen scraps like bones, meat, oils, grease, and dairy. 

As our friend Erin Johnson tagged the phrase on Saturday, “it’s been bokashified!” We hope you get bokashified sometime soon too!

it has been one of those weeks. a week of doors opening, new connections, partnerships, and opportunities.
it has been overwhelming.
it has been exhilerating.
it has made us feel on the right path.
it has made us scared, sad, mad, grateful, humbled, and so incredibly excited about the upcoming year we can hardly sit still.

in the spirit of new opportunities we are introducing a new series of classes this summer called “Primers” that will focus on a small classroom environment, intensive instruction and lots of hands-on/take home activites for preserving in-season foods from your garden as well as local sources. these classes are a great opportunity for people to decrease their grocery bills while increasing good, healthy, local food for their families while supporting their local food community. we look forward to seeing you at a Primer!

we are also excited to re-establish our relationship with Sherian Wright, the local native bee lady. her website can be found at: http://www.mountainbugs.com and is a wealth of native bee information, box designs, easy how-to lessons and more.  we are also excited to form a new relationship with ecolutionnw, a local vancouver business that specializes in green building products, floors, countertops, insulation and more.  join us for our first chicken class of the year March 12 at their store.  visit their website at: http://www.ecolutionnw.com for store and product details.

for our second year we will be participating in the Marshall Center Earth Day Celebration, April 18.  We’ll be conducting two basic canning information classes as well as having a booth.  we’ll be available throughout the day to answer your questions and just talk gardening!  this is a great family event with lots of information for all ages.

for the first time we will be participating at the Home and Garden Idea Fair at the Clark County Fairgrounds April 24-26.  We will have an informational booth in the Exhibition Hall and will be conducting a “Food Gardening for Small Spaces” lecture Saturday at 1pm again this year.  we are excited to be exhibitors in this annual event; it’s one we always look forward to visiting as guests! 

it’s funny how things happen.  always in the order they need to be in, at the time they need to happen, to benefit everyone at the right time in the right space.  i look forward to watching this year unfold, the possiblities, trials, and opportunities!