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Seedling Sale at Little River Market Garden

Posted in events, farm, farmer/grower, market, photo, tagged , on October 16, 2010| 2 Comments »

Sunday, October 17th Rain or Shine
From 10am-3pm
at the Little River Market Garden
8290 NE 4th Ave.
Street parking all along our block

 

Heirloom tomato seedling ready for transplanting into your garden. Photo by Muriel Olivares.

 

We’ve prepared a really nice selection of our favorite varieties, mostly heirloom, grown in 65% homemade compost and 35% sphagnum peat moss. NO chemicals, NO pesticides.

All plants are in 4″ re-used plastic pots.

$4.00 each, every 5 get one free!

All seed packets are $3.00 each.

CASH ONLY PLEASE!

Bring boxes, carts or bags to carry your seedlings home.

SEEDLINGS:

CHERRY TOMATOES: Sungold, Black Cherry, Amish Red, Ghost Cherry
SAUCE TOMATOES: Amish Paste, Federele
SLICING TOMATOES: Cherokee Purple, Gold Medal, Lime Green Salad, Florida Pink, Black Prince, Green Zebra
PEPPERS: Golden Hot, Early Jalapeno, Biscayne Cubanelle, Antohi Romanian
EGGPLANTS: Orient Charm, Black Coral, Long Italian Purple, Raveena
BASIL: Genovese Basil
ARUGULA: Rocket

SEEDS:
*Luffa Gourd, *Mustard, *Gandules a.k.a Pigeon Peas, Sunhemp, Buckwheat, Cow Peas

*There will also be a small selection of seeds for sale.  These are plants that grow very well in our climate and most of them make good cover crops.

For more information:

web site: Little River Market Garden
phone: 786-991-4329

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Small Farms Conference, Part 3, final chapter.

Posted in animals, farm, farmer/grower, food, location, photo, tagged , on September 28, 2010| 2 Comments »

Hello Redland Ramblers!


Mangos from Dr. Jonathan Crane at TREC, blueberries from Gail & Mike Waldron in Marion County.

Guest blogger Melissa Contreras here again. It’s been several weeks since the last post, and I apologize for that. Most of that time was spent waiting for photos from the official IFAS photographer, my one reliable source of photos from the conference. The poor overworked guy was traveling with several assignments to keep up with, and apologizes for not getting them out in a timely manner. We forgive him. Life’s too short. As promised, this post details the fabulous Florida local food lunches and the Conference workshops. If it’s not enough, well then I guess you’ll just have to attend next year’s conference!

There are omnivore and vegan options at every year’s conference, and both are amazing, featuring Florida food, real food: meat from pastured animals, vegetables and fruits from our fair state’s wide repertoire, milk from small herds of grass-roaming and grass-eating cows, and eggs from hens which get to freely scratch the soil  and eat a smorgasbord of bugs and assorted plants, expressing their “chicken-ness” under the Sunshine State’s skies.

Omnivores loved the delicious Gilchrist Brand Sausage from Jonnie Thompson of Ocala, who emphasizes humane animal treatment.

The fabulous  selections from this year’s menu:

Menu

These delicious dishes were made with food provided from small farms all over Florida. Our Redland farmers provided ‘Donnie’ avocado (Bee Heaven Farm), mangos (Dr. Jonathan Crane of TREC), and longans from Guara Ki farm. Summer in the Redlands  means tropical fruit, so we gave the rest of Florida a taste of the tropics.

Breakout sessions followed several tracks of interest: alternative energy, business and marketing, livestock, horticulture, organic and sustainable farming, policy and regulations. This conference is geared toward small farmers, and there were lots of them present looking for ways to make their farms better, branch out into new enterprises, market their products, and more. This year’s  included urban farmers and local food enthusiasts and activists, in addition to farmers.

Yummy Florida okra and blackeye peas from William Moore at Bluefield Organic Farm in Okeechobee.

The different tracks of interest included valuable lectures and workshops. Here’s a sampling of the workshops: Earth Wind and Fire: Renewable Energy Options; Agritourism; Aquaculture and Aquaponics; Minor Fruit Crops; The Excitement about Social Marketing – How it Can Help Your Operation; Pasture Management; Grass Fed Beef: How Do We Get There?; Poultry Management; Expanding Your Fruit Portfolio: Stone Fruit & Muscadine Grapes; Healthy Schools, Healthy Kids – Florida Farm to School Programs; High-Quality Compost for Organic and Conventional Farms; Advanced Disease Management for Organic Vegetables; Small Farm Friendly Approaches to Food Safety; Diversifying the Income Portfolio for Organic Products; and Direct Marketing Regulations (How to Get Products to Market Legally).  Next year’s workshops will be scheduled according to feedback from this year’s conference.

I am the handsomest rooster at the Small Farms Conference and I approve this message.

It was an information-packed weekend, with plenty of fun and networking.  Vendors in the exhibition hall sold everything from organic t-shirts with organic slogans on them, to fish emulsion fertilizer, to packaging for tomatoes and strawberries, to complete aquaponics systems, to worm poop fertilizer, to hydroponic growing systems, to Florida grass-fed beef, to info about becoming certified organic, and so much more.

And who doesn’t love seeing the animals at the livestock exhibit? I spent an hour in there looking at and sometimes petting cows, llamas and alpacas with babies (below), and lots of interesting and unusual poultry breeds.

We love the local, organic hay at the Small Farms Conference--mmm...

Did I mention that this conference was next door to the national convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses? This made for heavy traffic on Sunday morning, with the JWs in their Sunday best. This explains why they did not come knocking on your door that weekend….(I stand corrected- it was a regional conference, thanks for finding that out Margie. There sure were lots of them… )

So, Marian will be back soon. I have to stop or someone might think I have taken her blog over. A coup de blogue, golpe de blogo, or other messy affair could be suspected, but no worries, she will be back to tell you more of the Redlands and its farmers. Thanks for letting me share…

Gratuitous cuteness.

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Redland farmers road trip to Small Farms Conference, Part Two

Posted in events, farm, farmer/grower, food, location, tagged , , , , , on August 10, 2010| 3 Comments »

Greetings once again, Redland Ramblers! Guest blogger Melissa Contreras here again, founder of Urban Oasis Project, urban micro-farmer.  I’m back to tell you about day two of my trip to the Small Farms/Alternative Enterprises Conference last weekend.

After rising early, we all piled into Margie’s van and headed over to the Osceola Heritage Park for the official beginning of the conference. Since I know that all you local foodies want to know about the food, let me start with breakfast: rather light fare was provided at the conference, but like our full lunch, it consisted mostly of Florida farm-grown food. A deep dish frittata of free-range Florida eggs with cream from grass-fed cows was served, accompanied by Lambeth Groves’ orange juice, cold and fresh, a perfect blend of sweetness and acidity. We were treated to Florida’s “other juice,” Muscadine grape juice: crisp, lightly sweet, and perfumed of dewy-misted grapes, from Lakeridge Winery and Vineyard in the high country of Clermont. Certified organic blueberries from Gail and Mike Waldron of Bay Lake Blueberries in Marion County mingled with mangos from our own Dr. Jonathan Crane of TREC in Homestead.  Fair trade coffee was provided by Sweetwater Organic Coffee Company of Gainesville, which purchases from Rainforest Alliance-certified small farmers in the Tropics. For our coffee, we actually had the luxury of choosing milk from 2 small dairies, Dakin Dairy Farm of Myakka City, or Kurtz and Sons Dairy of Live Oak. Bubba and Leslie Kurtz run a “grass-fed dairy farmstead” of Jerseys and Shorthorns, and work to keep their milk as close to Nature as possible. This is not a business slogan for them, it is a way of life. After coffee finished with Nature’s perfect food, I was ready for a full day of conference and break-out sessions.

We all headed over to the big lunch room for the opening session. Welcomes came from kick-off speakers Dr. Joan Dusky of UF/IFAS in Gainesville and Dr. Ray Mobley of FAMU in Tallahassee, a co-sponsor of the event. FAMU and UF and are Florida’s 2 land grant universities, dating back to the ugly days of segregation, when black people went to one university and white people went to another. (Beside the obvious injustice of this, it begs another question- where did the original inhabitants of this land go? But that is another story.)

Next came the Florida Innovative Farmer Awards! These awards are given to farmers and ranchers who are leaders and innovators, based on the following criteria (quote):

  • Success in making farming systems more profitable over the long term.
  • Ability to use farming practices that enhance, rather than harm, natural resources.
  • Leading -or participating in-  activities that support viable communities, either through economic development or contribution to regional food systems.
  • Effective outreach and/or education about sustainable agriculture ideas and practices to others, such as producers, community leaders, agricultural educators, and the general public.

There were 3 winners of these awards, the first being Chris and Eva Worden of Worden Farm in Punta Gorda. They got up on the stage in front of their small farmer peers, and were given a well-deserved round of thunderous applause. Both are Ivy League educated, Yale and Cornell, but are very down-to-Earth and in love with their vocation and avocation, farming. Upon acceptance of the award, Chris said to the audience, “We love to grow crops.” They grow 50 different varieties, mostly vegetables, some fruit, and do it organically, using soil and water conservation techniques. They have a CSA, sell at farmers markets, have workshops at the farm, art programs, and “grow future farmers and gardeners.” They help community gardens, about which Eva knows a thing or two, having authored papers on the subject. She said “anyone who works with community gardens knows that it is easy to start one, harder to maintain them, so we stay with them, encourage and help them.” Eva explained that they “grow great crops, connect with the local community, and promote the viability of the family farm.”

(L-R) Christine Kelly-Begazo, Eva Worden, Chris Worden. The Wordens receiving the Florida Innovative Farmer Award, a happy achievement for the work they love!

I went to Worden Farm last year with Farmer Margie and the WWOOFers, and my folks from Urban Oasis Project. We had a tour of the farm, and got to see the amazing results Chris and Eva get from good stewardship of their 55 certified organic acres. Because they supply some of the food in Redland Organics CSA shares, I thanked them for feeding my family. By the way, have you thanked your farmer lately?

The second recipient of the awards was Trish Strawn of Deep Creek Ranch in Deland. Trish and her dad, David, work the family farm which has been around since 1883. Trish said they got into grass-fed beef because her dad had a health issue, but she said if you ask her dad, he’ll say it’s because they’re “cutting edge.” The room broke into laughter.Trish is Co-Leader of Slow Food Orlando, and a founding member of the Florida Food Policy Council. She is also a lot of fun to go out and have a beer and a lot of good laughs with, which we did later that night. Trish and her dad are the real deal. Joel Salatin must be proud.

The third award recipient was George Owens of Chipley, FL, who has a mixed cattle and timber/forestry operation, or silvopasture. George could not be present for the awards because his son had just come home for a short visit from Afghanistan. All were very happy for him. The award presenters said “we tend toward a monoculture system, so when we get someone who does integration, we want to encourage it.”  I am a believer in agroecology, and it is very encouraging to hear agricultural professionals talk about moving away from monocultures!

I was very excited to hear my friend Will Allen of Growing Power, Inc. give the keynote address. Unfortunately, Will had some knee surgery which made it impossible for him to travel to the conference, though that was the original plan. Technology to the rescue! The AV geeks got the satellite/internet hookup to Will Allen up and running, and we were able to see and hear him on 2 large screens, and he was able to see and hear us.

That's me with Will Allen at a Growing Power workshop last year. Will loves scooping Lake Perch out of his aquaponics tanks! He loved to fish when he lived in Miami too.

Larger than life on the big screen, Will spoke about the history of Growing Power, all the amazing past, present and future projects they have, and was enthusiastic and inspirational as always. Larger than life is a profound statement when referring to Will Allen, who stands tall at 6’7” and weighs 230 pounds. Will played basketball for the University of Miami in the 1970’s, and still wears an orange and green UM cap with his signature royal blue Growing Power sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves. His biceps are bigger than many supermodel’s waists, and he keeps them that way by working hard every day, growing food for Milwaukee’s inner city on 3 acres, 2 blocks from one of the country’s largest low-income housing projects, in what was an urban food desert until Will’s good food movement became a good food revolution. Will is not an armchair CEO. He gets his hands dirty. He loves farming like Chris and Eva Worden do. I think some of us are born agrarian. It is not a choice, it’s in our blood, and it’s who we are.

Will showed many slides of Growing Power in action: composting thousands of tons of Milwakee’s food and brewery waste and “growing soil” as he says; passing compost through the digestive tracts of thousands of worms, creating rich worm castings fertilizer; raising tilapia and lake perch in the bottom level of a 3-tiered, homemade aquaponics system, with watercress growing in the middle layer, and tomatoes on top; raising chickens and bees in the city; providing a safe after-school space for urban youth to learn green job skills; feeding senior citizens healthy food with a “food basket” CSA; providing a retail grocery space with their fresh salad greens, eggs, and so much more to the neighborhood in which Growing Power’s urban farm resides.

“If people can grow safe, healthy, affordable food, if they have access to land and clean water, this is transformative on every level in a community.  I believe we cannot have healthy communities without a healthy food system.”

Will is a major inspiration for what we do in Urban Oasis Project, doing our part to make good, clean, safe, healthy, and local food accessible to all. Access to real food should be a right of all citizens. Will says “we can’t wait around for government or others to do it, we have to do it, just start doing things.”

I could go on about Will Allen forever, but I’ll stop here. Please come back for Part Three, highlighting local food lunches and conference workshops!

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Melon run

Posted in farm, farmer/grower, fruits, location, politics, tagged on July 27, 2010|

Farmer Margie, winter melons, and Mike Counts.

Last month I rode up with Farmer Margie to C&B Farms up near Clewiston to load up with fruit for the summer fruit sales. We came back packed to the rafters with melons. Loaded in the back were three boxes of cantaloupes (the last of the season this far south), and six big heavy boxes of some of the cutest round watermelons I ever saw. They are called “personal size” and it’s easy to see how one person could very easily gobble one up. And at the other end of the size scale, we snagged several ginormous winter melons that had originally been destined for Asian communities up north. Each one of the winter melons was about 20 pounds, but that is just a guesstimate.

The CSA got a lot of food from C&B Farms through the regular season. A quick look at the newsletters (you read and kept yours, didn’t you?) shows that we ate zucchini, celery, rosemary, strawberries, yellow squash, green beans and mint — to name a few things — grown there. Margie kept telling me that I ought to go up and visit C&B, so when she called me the other day about making the melon run, I jumped at the chance.

Snake Road wiggles like a snake.

We rode up up I-75 and headed west on a bright sunny morning with big puffy clouds in the sky. Margie spotted all kinds of things — an occasional bird perched in a dead maleleuca tree, big green shrubs studded with pale pink wild hibiscus native to the Everglades, and a golden brown snake rippling across the road. About an hour into the journey, we turned onto Snake Road (but didn’t see any snakes there). Swamp lilies grew in the canals on either side of the road as it turned and twisted past cow pastures dotted with cabbage palms and cypress domes. Swallow-tailed kites soared above. The sawgrass was in bloom, sending up long feathery clusters of small, reddish flowers. We passed through the bustling Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation, took a turn and found ourselves in the Devil’s Garden agricultural area.

C&B Farms in Clewiston

C&B Farms is sandwiched between Clewiston and the edge of the Everglades. According to owner Chuck Obern, the farm is 2500 acres in size, with 1500 acres that are tillable. Of that, 1000 acres are planted  conventionally and 500 acres are in organic production. Chuck offered us a quick tour of his farm, so Margie and I hopped into his truck and headed down a sandy road into the heart of the farm. One side of the farm is organic, and the other side is conventionally farmed. The two sides are separated by a large ditch and a row of of trees. Each side has separate farming equipment and packing lines, where the produce is rinsed and boxed, and there’s a separate organic section in the enormous cooler.

A 2-acre block of rosemary.

Mid-June is pretty much the end of the season and there wasn’t that much growing at C&B. It’s already too hot. We passed by two-acre blocks or fields of herbs — dill that had already bolted, marjoram, knee high sage, bushy rosemary, tarragon, oregano, spearmint, and parsley. We passed by long brown piles of compost, which is used mostly for water and nutrient retention, or as a soil conditioner. The soil is light gray and sandy, very sandy, and it’s amazing they can get so much to grow in it. We passed by blocks of cantaloupe, personal sized watermelons, and butternut squash.

Pumping station for drip irrigation. Barrels hold liquid fertilizer.

Crops are irrigated two different ways. There’s an automated double drip irrigation system (double meaning two lines of drip tape per planting row). Water is pumped from a ditch or a well, and liquid fertilizer is mixed in. A computerized system controls how much water is sent where and when. There’s also the seep irrigation system in which water is pumped into or out of the ditches to raise or lower the water table under the fields. The water seeps into the soil from underneath, rather than drip down from the top. Seep irrigation water is reused or recirculated several times before it is sent to a retention area. Excess water is treated to remove phosphorus before it is released back into a canal bordering the Everglades ecosystem.

During peak season, 500 workers are in the fields picking and packing. But at the end of the season, with a lot less growing, there are only about 100 workers. Fields were dotted with trailer-mounted portapotties complete with a handwashing and sanitizing station, as required by recent federal food safety laws. These regulations also require that workers can’t wear jewelry or bring outside food or drink into the fields.

The federal food safety act is actually many sets of guidelines that came about after the e. coli incident with contaminated jalapenos from Mexico a few years ago. Since then, domestic growers have to comply with stricter standards of produce handling cleanliness. To check compliance, a major food safety certifier comes once a year to check procedures, equipment, and records over a period of three days.

Mobile portapotties, with handwashing station, that are taken out to the fields.

Surprisingly, Central and South American growers do not have to comply with the same strict federal food safety laws as domestic growers. The vast majority of imported produce is not inspected. At most only one to two per cent (maybe even less) of the food coming in is checked for the same standards of cleanliness and safety, and pesticide residues. “There’s no traceability, no accountability,” Chuck complained. “And no guidelines. It’s not a level playing field.” Imported or “offshore” produce is priced less than domestically grown produce, and American farmers find it hard to compete. Their costs have gone up due to extra work and expenses meeting the new guidelines.

So what should a conscientious food shopper do? “Vote with your dollars,” said Mike Counts, the C&B sales manager. “Your dollar ultimately makes the statement. If enough people do it, they will change.” That said, we finished loading up and headed back out on the highway. One hundred miles later we were back at Bee Heaven, unloading fresh melons that had been picked just a few days before. Maybe it costs a little more to buy local and organic, but as you sink your teeth into those juicy fruits, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re keeping a couple of local farmers in business.

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Little River Market Garden

Posted in csa, farm, farmer/grower, people, photo, tagged , , on July 23, 2010| 5 Comments »

Cover crops growing at Little River Market Garden.

Tucked away in an obscure corner of northeast Miami, a new vegetable garden is starting to take shape in what was an empty city lot. Long straight rows of cover crops — Sunn hemp, cow peas and velvet bean — raise their young leaves to the late afternoon sun. In between rows of cover crop, peanuts are just starting to show pretty little yellow flowers. Loofa vines race to the top of the chain link fence at the front of the property, and a row of cassava flourishes alongside a stepping stone path. Over on one side is a trellis for a muscadine grapevine already forming a miniature cluster of fruit, and sweet potatoes grow beneath. Sage and other herbs are planted in a well-mulched S-shaped bed edged by palm tree logs. In the shade of an ancient mango tree loaded with fruit, a teepee shaped chicken coop holds several brown hens.

Welcome to the Little River Market Garden. This is the handiwork of Muriel Olivares, last year’s farm manager at Bee Heaven Farm. She created this garden from scratch a mere six weeks ago, planting on land leased from friends. Only grass and several trees were growing in what was once part of a citrus grove many decades ago. Now, weathered cardboard peeks out from the edges of some vegetable rows, and Muriel explained that it was set down right over the grass, with compost piled on top. The cardboard is already breaking down, and vegetable roots will easily push through it. In between planted rows, mulch neatly covers grass. The cover crops will get cut down and as they decompose, will add more nutrients to the compost.

This technique of piling on compost and mulch is called no-till because the soil is not tilled or disturbed by a tractor. Tilth builds up naturally without getting disrupted by tilling, and weeds are less likely to grow because they are smothered by compost and mulch. “No-till improves the soil by building soil structure and adding nutrients with compost,” Muriel explained. “It’s a very old technique. No matter the scale of farming, the concept is the same — never disturb the soil and always keep it covered.”

Muriel Olivares

The Garden will provide food for 11 people who have already signed up for CSA shares and flower shares. She says she might be able to squeeze in a couple more members, so if you’re interested, let her know. Her season runs for 21 weeks from November to April. Muriel wants to sell extra veggies and cut flowers at farmers markets, and is already inquiring about getting in to a few in the area. Check out her blog, Little River Market Garden, for news about the garden and updates about markets (once the season starts).

Muriel is confident that her crops and market garden will flourish. She took what she learned working as an intern for a season at a no-till organic farm in upstate New York, and combined that with skills learned at Bee Heaven helping run the CSA and selling at farmers market. Now she is is gambling that she can make a living as a market gardener. “This is my full time job, eight hours a day.” She doesn’t have a “day job” to tide her over. This is it!

So why do this crazy, risky thing? “I really like to be outdoors,” Muriel explained, “and to do what I want to do.” She paused and thought for a moment. “It sounds really weird but I have this connection to plants. I’m absorbed by them. I’m interested in them. Working with plants gives me mental energy.” She chose the urban location because she likes the city and found Redland too isolated. “This is a nice, happy medium. It’s very peaceful, but you’re in the city.” Here she is close to home, her friends, and her customers. When market season starts in winter, look for Little River and say hi to Muriel, the new generation of urban farmer.

Little River Market Garden
8290 NE 4th Ave.
Miami, FL 33138

mail@littlerivercsa.com

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