Grower’s School

We talked a lot about farm expenses. Here I asked families what some common farm expenses in Burma are. It turns out if you don't have a water buffalo you have to rent one. Of course!

Jennie and I have been teaching an 8 week Grower’s School for our refugee farming families.  For 3-4 hours every Friday we teach a different agricultural, business or marketing topic.  Everything from soil fertility to farm finances has been covered thus farm.  Creating these classes has been time-consuming but very rewarding and our refugee families have really appreciated getting the chance to sit down in the class room and really focus on details and concepts that will help them be better farmers and marketers next year.  We’ve got 5 classes under the belt and 3 more to go.  As soon as we finish the Grower’s School we’ll head right into planting.

Grower's School teaching about Farm Expenses and Business Planning

Grower's School

Breaking New Ground

This coming year we will double our cultivated space to almost 3 acres.  14 of our 17

Our newly harrowed and bedded section. The soil looks good!

families will be given more space so that they can start growing enough food to market through a CSA (more info to come soon!).  Yesterday we had 52 (150 foot long) new beds harrowed and bedded.  A soil PH adjustment was needed on the new section as well as last years West field so yesterday Pawel and I spread 700 lbs of solu-lime.  The PH on our far Eastern field is a perfectly lovely 6.5 which means I can happily leave it alone–it’s perfect.

Now that the new section is bedded up I’ve got to start thinking about getting the drip irrigation set up over there……………..

Teaching about Soil PH

Spring Planting Soon

The first week of March we’ll start planting all of our cool season veggies.  That’s when all of our prep and planning will be put into action.  March and April will be a planting frenzy.  It’s my favorite time of the year though–I love being able to be outside watching the Spring unfurl.

Pawel and I spread 700 lbs of Limestone to adjust the Soil PH

Transplanting Traditions Community Farm

After much adieu we now have an official farm name and a logo!!  I based this logo off of an image of a farmer in Burma and did my best to bring back my little used drawing skills.  Let us know if you like it!  All of the refugee farmers in our program farmed primarily with water buffalo in Burma as pictured above.  Mechanized farming equipment hasn’t reached much of Burma and from the stories they tell me, I imagine farming in Burma to be somewhat like what farming was like in the United States up until the beginning of the 20th century when tractors began to replace animal power on farms.  My Dad has told me stories about his grandparents who used animals to farm.  Particularly I remember him telling me about the sorghum pressing they would do in the Autumn to produce sorghum molasses.  The process was dependent on a mule walking in circles to turn the mill that would press the juice out of the cane.  There are small farms across the U.S. that are re-embracing the labor role animals can have on a farm.  Perhaps we should import a team of water buffalo to our Transplanting Traditions Community Farm and have our Karen farmers teach us a thing or two–I suppose a pair of oxen might do the trick as well!

Just wanted to let everyone know that we are hiring for a part time position.  Please see the posting below and pass onto anyone interested and qualified.  Thanks!

The Orange County Partnership for Young Children seeks a 15-20 hour per week site coordinator to work with Refugee Agricultural Partnership Project (RAPP) and the Transplanting Traditions Community Farm.  The Transplanting Traditions Community Farm currently works with ethnic Karen refugees from Burma teaching them sustainable agriculture and farm management with the goal of training participants to become independent farmers. Job expectations include assisting in farm site maintenance, all aspects of vegetable production and harvesting, greenhouse and pest management, soil fertility as well as assisting in teaching and preparing weekly agricultural training workshops. The right candidate will have technical knowledge in farming, with hands-on experience in an agricultural setting. Experience working with diverse populations, especially refugees is a plus as is experience with fundraising, publicity and grant writing.  To find more information see http://ocpyc.wordpress.com/ as well as http://www.orangesmartstart.org/. Send resumes and a letter of interest by February 15th to Cherie Brooks at cbrooks@orangesmartstart.org.  No phone calls please.

Now this isn’t a travel blog so I’m going to stop raving about San Diego and give an overview of some of the amazing things we learned and saw at the conference.  A good conference is both informative and inspiring and this year’s conference did the job right!  The RAPP conference is a convergence of all of the Refugee Agricultural Projects across the nation and everyone meets up and shares techniques and notes and networks and I was honored to do a presentation on our project here in Chapel Hill.

The conference was hosted by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) which works in 40 countries and 22 cities in the U.S. to

New Roots for Refugees farmers selling the City Heights Farmer's Market

provide support and aid to refugees.  The IRC in San Diego supports the New Roots for Refugees Farm which is a project like ours that helps refugees learn to grow and sell vegetables in the U.S.  We visited the City Heights farmers market and saw the project participants selling their veggies like pros.  The farmer’s market was very different from the Carrboro or Durham farmer’s markets because it reflected the diverse immigrant and refugee population of the City Heights neighborhood in San Diego.   Not to go on on and on about eating, but………. at the

Some sort of sea creature sold at the Farmer's Market. How do you eat that?

farmer’s market I ate a delicious Salvadorian pupusa (corn tortilla stuffed with beans and cheese) as well as a bright red, salted and pickled, hard boiled duck egg which is a traditional way of preserving duck eggs in the Phillipines.  There was also a mad rush of customers around a vendor who brought fresh sea creatures to buy and eat.  It was a really fun farmer’s market!

All mustard greens apparently a very popular item. Notice the banana trees in the back?

We also toured the New Roots for Refugees farm and it was amazing to see all the different plots cultivated by refugees from all over the world.  The techniques of growing and the myriad of fruits, flowers and veggies growing in each plot was such a diverse reflection of the histories and cultures of the farmers.

Another highlight was the IRC and New Roots for Refugees plant nursery and a tilapia aquaponics/aquaculture system all located downtown in City Heights.  The tilapia aquaponics system was made famous by McArthur genius grant recipient Will Allen and the Growing Power urban farm in Milwaukee.  Here’s how the system works:  Tilapia fish are raised in large tanks inside a greenhouse.  The nitrogen rich wastewater that the fish create is pumped through a filtration system of gravel and sometimes watercress which both work to break down the ammonia in the fish waste into nitrogen fertilizer.  The

filtered nitrogen rich water is piped through the roots of plants also growing in the greenhouse.  The plants further filter the water removing nitrogen so that the water is then safe to flow back into the fish tanks where it first came from.  In the end you have tilapia that can be raised in an urban environment and plants and vegetables that are fertilized as a byproduct of the tilapia production.   It’s a loop that requires very little extra input–the water is recycled and the fish waste used to nourish plants instead of “wasted” or disposed of.    In conventional fish farming the high concentration of the byproduct waste can be a serious pollutant and in freshwater systems the amount of water needed is tremendous.  Hence the beauty of the aquaponics/aquaculture system.

Urban aquaponics/aquaculture + nursery

Vertical space used by hanging plants. Underneath are veggies growing aquaponically and fed by fish waste water.

filtered water going back into the fish tanks

The nursery supported by the aquaculture system

A couple of weeks ago we did a follow up cooking and nutrition lesson with our Karen families and the UNC nutrition coalition.  The Karen come from a subsistence agriculture lifestyle in Burma where what you grow is what you eat. Then suddenly to the United States where grocery stores are filled with rows of unfamiliar processed foods with complicated nutrition facts labels and serving size confusion! So after cooking a delicious lentil, sweet potato, kale, carrot and bell pepper stew (secret ingredient was cinnamon) and a beet and kale salad, Sarah, Ester and Samantha did a thorough lesson on understanding a nutrition facts label.  Understanding a nutrition fact label is a crucial tool for being able to make healthy food choices but can be hard for even us native Americans.  Luckily, it seems that most of the Karen adults still have their cooking traditions deeply rooted in making fresh meals from scratch and healthy eating is just part of their culture.   However, some of the mothers have expressed concerns to me about their children who are growing up in the U.S. as they told me they have noticed them gaining weight.  It can be hard to get around the dilemma of helping low-income families eat well.  As we all know, cheap food is often

MMmmmm Kale Chips!

not very good for you, filled with empty calories and saturated fats.  Of course a big goal of this program is to help families grow their own fresh fruits and vegetables giving them the power to change their lives through food.  I know the nutrition lesson was highly appreciated and I hope to run into some of our families in the grocery store dutifully reading the nutrition facts label!  Thanks also to the Carrboro United Methodist Church for giving us access to their lovely kitchen.  Until next year–Happy Holidays to all!

This group photo will be up as well as an additional portrait of RAPP farmer Lion Wei.  The show is opening this Friday from 6–9 and there will be refreshments.  Come on out!

After the Frost

So now that we are winding down at the farm you might be wondering what we’ll be doing over the winter.  I always think that the winter will be a time to catch up on that stack of papers that’s been pushed to the corner for the past six months (piling precariously higher and higher).  BUT, we have got so much planned for the next couple of months that I will again be turning a blind eye to that stack!

First of all we are planning on doubling the amount of cultivated space for next year allowing 5 of our farmers to increase their plot sizes to 1/4 of an acre.  We will be starting an educational CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) this coming Spring to start teaching our aspiring farmers marketing and business skills.  During January and February we will be teaching 8 agricultural and marketing classes for our refugee farmers.  This will allow us to go more into depth on important agricultural and marketing topics, thus better preparing folks for managing next years 1/4 of an acre successfully as well as one day managing as farmers on their own.  We also have a  second round of ESL (English as a Second Language) classes starting with the Orange County Literacy Council and  I’ll be making a trip to San Diego in December for the annual Refugee Agricultural Partnership Project conference.

Rows of Autumnal Greens

The way these different greens were growing reminded me of an autumnal bouquet

Also, thanks to a grant from the generous Strowd-Roses foundation we will be building a greenhouse/hoophouse to allow for season extension as well as some ginger and turmeric production.  Before we know it February will be here and we’ll be ready to seed and plant again.

I wanted to post some pictures of what the frost has done as well as all that we still have growing.

Frosted gourd leaf and its' remaining curled yellow flower

Red cabbages looking like roses

Luffas drying in the sun to be peeled later and used as scrubbies in the shower

The Frost

Trisa digging Sweet Potatoes. This variety is a deep purple all the way through!

About two weeks ago we realized a frost was looming and decided to dig our sweet potatoes.  Sweet Potato vines will die in a frost but their underground starchy sweetness is somewhat protected by its’ covering of dirt.  Still you don’t want to leave them in the ground much after a frost and I heard from an old timer farmer that frost will travel down the stem to where the stem and the potato connect and can start to do a little damage.  We always dig ‘em before the frost and so I’ve never found out whether he’s right.  Sweet Potatoes are actually swollen roots that serve to hold nutrients and allow the plant to become perennials in warmer climates. The wild relatives of the Sweet Potatoes are said to have originated in the area of what is Colombia and Venezuela.  The first discovery of domesticated sweet potatoes were found preserved in south central Peru in highland caves in an area call Tres Ventanas (Three Windows) and were dated to ~8,000 B.C.!   The Sweet Potato is in the morning glory family and if you look at its’ flower there’s no denying that.

Sweet Potatoes are sort of a super food and are really healthy,  loaded with carotenoids, vitamin c, potassium and fiber.  So we were in luck as we dug up huge potato after potato.  Sweet Potatoes will store for quite awhile and will provide our farmers with a nutritious and filling food source into the cold months.

And speaking of cold months we got our first frost last Saturday night and its been frosting every night since!  Last Friday,  in anticipation of the frost,  we encouraged everyone to harvest the last of their gourds, peppers, eggplant, okra, winter squash, roselle and all the other summer crops that were still trucking along.  The frost has turned all of our summer plants into  a drooping greenish slimy brown.

So now what do we do?  We are busy cleaning everything up and planting a late cover crop of crimson clover and wheat.  Our Fall vegetables such as kale, swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and all of our root vegetables won’t be damaged by a light frost and we’ll continue to eat them for another month or so.  Personally I am excited about fires in my woodstove and opening up some of the cans of tomatoes, beans and okra that I canned from the summer!

This is what our Crimson Clover cover crop will look like in the Spring

Wheat cover crop

We also started doing some soil tests.  Soil tests are great to do in the fall so by the spring you have an account of the PH and nutrient levels of your soil.  Jennie Rasmussen who started working with us in September taught a workshop on how to collect soil samples correctly.  We are constantly talking about soil health and fertility as I believe it is one of the most important aspects of a healthy and successful farm.

Jennie Rasmussen explaining and demonstrating the importance of soil tests

Does anyone know what this plant is? A very popular Karen herb with leaves that smell like citronella.

I’ve noticed that for many of the refugee families, saving seed is not a new concept.  I imagine that in Burma saving seed was the only way to ensure you’d have

Families cut open and harvest seed from a bottle gourd

seed for the next planting.  In agriculture today most varieties of plants are hybridized by plant breeders.  These hybridized plants will produce seed that is not “true to type” or in other words will not grow into a fruit or vegetable that is the same as the parent fruit or vegetable from whence it came.  In some cases that seed can even be non viable and produce nothing.  The rise of hybridized seeds (again for better or worse) has taken seed saving out of the hands of the farmer and into plant breeders; there can be quite a bit of money to be made from a successful hybrid.  As a result, thousands of varieties of plants have been lost as farmers stopped selecting their own plants and seeds and were lured in by the promise of hybrids.  Being to young to know personally about the varieties that were lost, many of which were adapted to specific growing conditions or for specific traits, I can only speculate on the performance of hybrids vs. non hybrids. Realistically, I have seen hybrids outperform their non-hybrid counter parts when it comes to production or disease resistance for example.  But, my beliefs cause me to want to rise against the problem of not being able to easily save hybrid seed and grow non-hybridized plants.   There is of course also great concern for the loss of bio-diversity that came with the extinction of thousands of plant varieties as hybrids become the convention.

So after saying all of that I will admit that I made the choice to grow about half hybrid and half non-hybrid plants at the farm.  It will certainly be a gamble next year to see what kind of plants will grow up from the seed we saved this year.  With the refugee families’ exuberance for seed saving we may grow considerably less hybrids next year.

There is most certainly a satisfaction gained from the cycle of growing and saving, growing and saving.