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Yes, It’s Another Best of List…

December 31, 2023 gregoryjoel

My inbox has been filled with “Best of 2023” lists from the various writers and organizations I follow. As 2023 winds down I find myself thinking about all the wonderful things that have happened at Opal’s Farm and the ups and downs of the past year I’ve encountered personally. So, with that in mind I present to you the Best of 2023 for Opal’s Farm.

Ms. Opal

The biggest happening at the farm is always Ms. Opal herself. Each passing year reminds me of the blessing of her presence. Her love for others, her stamina and exhortations to become a “committee of one”, and her tireless work for our community revitalize us daily to make the farm the place to come for food, education, and the promise of food justice. She constantly reminds us that the walk toward equality and justice is one step and often with one person at a time. Our energy is always revitalized by her leadership.

Tomorrow my wife and I will celebrate New Year’s Day the way we have since I started at Opal’s Farm. At two in the afternoon, we’ll be present for her New Year’s Day dinner – along with a couple of hundred others! When we received the RSVP invitation it listed her accomplishments in 2023 so I’ll share them here:

Texas Senate portrait reveal – hers is only the second woman’s portrait to hang in the Texas Senate Chamber. The other is Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.
Three honorary doctorates
Two events with Cynt Marshall of the Dallas Mavericks
Several assemblies at schools with young people
Conversation with Brian Stevenson for the National Juneteenth Museum
Several visits to the White House
Visit with the Governor to talk about the National Juneteenth Museum
Reveal of portrait for the National Art Gallery
Inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame
Received two EMMY Awards – both the Governor’s Award and the Award for best documentary

New Awareness

Ms. Opal also visited the USDA People’s Garden in Washington DC and was featured in a national article for the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS). Both our Executive Director, Dione Sims, and I were invited to a roundtable discussion with Congressman Marc Veasy and US Department of Agriculture, Xochitl Torres Small along with a small group of local non-profits and City Council members.

The USDA is beginning to take a serious look at both local and urban farms and our food system. They opened their Urban Farm office in Dallas this year – one of ten cities to have one. Opal’s is by no means the only urban farm in Fort Worth, but we have had the privilege of hosting the NRCS staff for our area several times as they learn and extend their work to urban agriculture.

NRCS engineers have given us new plans and specifications for better irrigation at the farm. We are changing our irrigation over the winter months so we can grow more food for our community.

New and Old People

The Spring growing season was a time of transition for Opal’s Farm. Our previous Assistant Farm Manager, Amber Carr, helped build the infrastructure for our bio-intensive third-of-an-acre. She left the farm in July, and we were blessed to have Joseph (Joey) Hughes step in this Fall to take over our bio-intensive section. Joey came to us from World Hunger Relief in Waco and has an extensive background in education and urban agriculture. We’ve extended our programs to include agrotourism and educational programs for the community. We’ve also partnered with Delve Experience to a make tours and education more accessible through their website https://delveexperiences.com/ .

We’ve continued to build our partnership with Tarleton State University. In the coming year two new programs for both the community and previously incarcerated individuals will begin. We are presently finishing the curriculum and the final details. We’re excited to share this with you as 2024 begins (more to come!).

On Friday, December 22^nd, we held our first-ever farmstand at the corner of Sylvania and LaSalle near the entrance to the farm. We are now able to support a regular farmstand on a weekly basis for the United Riverside neighborhood of which we are proud to be a part of (you don’t have to be a neighbor to come!). We are presently open from 10 AM to 2 PM but this might change as we get more input from our neighbors.

We’ve long hoped to be able to have our own farm stand and the final incentive came in November when we became authorized to accept SNAP benefits. This has been a game-changer for meeting our community goals. Please feel free to come by and check us out. You can tour Opal’s Farm while you’re there.

We’ve had some awesome volunteers this year and particularly this Fall. Stacey Harwood returned from medical leave as our Volunteer Coordinator in September and has done an amazing job getting some big projects done. We’ve had more time this Fall to plant more hundred-foot beds and expand our biointensive beds. We could not have done it without our volunteers and Stacey’s help. We want you to know how treasured and appreciate our volunteers are. You make the farm complete!

There have been so many things that have made 2023 a successful and major growth year at the farm. I have no doubt I’ve left some significant moments out. What I can tell you is that donors really stepped up this year to make 2023 and the coming year special. We’d like to thank the Enterprise Foundation with Enterprise Car Rental and the Stewart Family Foundation for the special awards that will keep Opal’s Farm expanding through 2024. We’d also like to thank KPMG Inc. and JP Morgan Chase for their continued support!

I cannot finish the “Best of” list without a thanks to our Executive Director, Dione Sims. We are a program of Unity Unlimited, Inc. and Unity’s support and belief in Opal’s Farm is what drives us. Dione spends many hours with all the various programs Unity does throughout the year, but she always has time for the farm. Thank you, Dione, for being an awesome leader, a friend, and a mentor!

On a personal note…

This past year has been incredibly hectic. It’s often difficult to “stop and smell the roses”. I, for one, have learned the value of tasking time to count God’s blessings. I am one of the most fortunate people I know. I get to go play in the dirt – to do what I truly love and am passionate about – and I get to do it every day.

Any kind of farming, whether it be urban or rural, is hard, but rewarding work. On the 110 degree days in August I ask the same question – why do I do this stuff? Then, I go to the markets we attend, and I get to see and know the people we serve. You all have made the year wonderful.

I hope and pray that 2024 brings you all joy, peace, and happiness. Thank you for being part of the Opal’s Farm family.

Happy New Year!!!

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The Farm Stand is Open

December 24, 2023 gregoryjoel

It’s Christmas Eve morning and the rain is falling outside the window of my humble home office. God provided a wonderful Christmas present for Opal’s Farm this year (He always does!). Even after some earlier Fall rains we’ve remained in various stages of drought. We got an inch-and-a-half on Thursday and it looks like another inch or two today!

We had our first farm stand market on Friday from 10 AM to 2 PM. It was a great success and we’re looking forward to being there on Friday’s starting after the first of the year. We can accept SNAP benefits as well. We’re excited! We’ll continue to be at Cowtown Farmers Market on Saturday mornings but serving our neighborhood – United Riverside – is what we’ve worked toward since the farm began.

Joey, Hao and I on our first farm stand day!

We didn’t have a lot of customers as this was our first day, but the customers we did have made it a tremendously successful day. One of the neighborhood members stopped and purchased for themselves and then bought several bags of truly local produce to pass out to his neighbors! What a Christmas present!

We also had the privilege of meeting Hao Tran Friday. Many of you may know about Hao’s Grocery and Café. We’re so excited to have Hao as one of our supporters and customers. She is bringing fresh, LOCAL, produce to Fort Worth and teaching the importance of fresh produce as well as how to prepare it (She’s a culinary instructor at Trimble Tech High School as well.

The Fall and overwinter crops are booming! Please come out to see us next week at Cowtown Farmers Market and then stop by our farm stand the following Friday and visit Opal’s Farm as well!

From all of us at Opal’s Farm and Unity Unlimited, Inc. – have a wonderful holiday and keep family and friends close.

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One Farm at a Time

December 15, 2023 gregoryjoel

What a week at Opal’s Farm! We have everything in for fall and winter and have started taking out spring leftovers, rebuilding beds, and solarizing them for weed control in the spring. We finally took out our tomato plants, but not before harvesting about a hundred and fifty pounds of tomatoes – and it’s ten days until Christmas. We love that a hard freeze hasn’t come yet, but we’re also a bit worried as this is another indicator of how strange our weather has become.

The weather is a “frienemy” for farmers – it brings the rain that helps the crops grow or the drought that kills them off. It’s the one thing we can’t control. We may do a rain dance or pray a freeze holds off until the crops come in, but in the end, the weather does what it will.

However, even weather has things it can’t control either – a warming climate changes the weather – leading to warmer average temperatures and more intense weather events. The intensity of our North Texas summer over the last two years is an example. In 2022, the heat came early, and the rain stopped. There was no rain from June 3^rd until August 29^th. It was much the same this year with 2023 being the second hottest year on record according to the Texas Tribune and NOAA. Moreover, when it finally did rain, it rained so much and so heavily that Opal’s Farm suffered flash floods both years.

Hardiness Zones – the zones which show the lowest temperature in a zone and determine the growing season – have gradually moved northward. According to Yale Environment 360, hardiness zones were moved northward from 1990 to 2012 and are moving at a rate of just over thirteen miles per year. The heat is headed northward. Fort Worth has shifted from Zone 8b to Zone 8a. What and how much we grow changes as the zones move north.

So, What Do We Do?

Opal’s farms about two-and-a-third acres at present. We are growing into the full five acres granted to us by the Tarrant Regional Water District. We don’t expect to see major changes, the amount of land is negligible in the grand scheme of things. However, there is something we can do that’s consistent with our core values of resilience and regeneration.

First, we can continue to research and try non-native (but non-invasive) varieties of food crops that are both heat tolerant and drought resistant. Our salad mix uses Tokyo Bekana along with other Asian greens. Tokyo Bekana looks and tastes like lettuce (some say even better) but it’s actually related to Chinese cabbage. It fares much better than traditional lettuces that can only be grown in early Spring or late Fall. It can be grown year-round in North Texas.

We use this same practice on other crops as well. We are slowly beginning to turn to south Asian foods like bitter melon, bottle gourds, and yard-long beans. The beans are quite prolific and love the summer heat.

Secondly, we never leave exposed soil. Cover cropping is essential. Always have living roots. We are finishing up cover cropping all all non-food crop beds. We use Austrian Winter Peas and Elbon Rye in the winter time. Legumes like the peas fix nitrogen into the soil and the rye’s root system keep the soil broken up and able to retain water and oxygen better for the soil microbes. We use various mixes that we purchase from Green Cover Seed in the warmer months.

Finally, we sequester carbon in the soil. Our biointensive beds are no-till while the remainder of the farm is minimal till. Dr. Omar Harvey, with the Geosciences Department at Texas Christian University, had students researching carbon sequestration at Opal’s Farm beginning two years ago. The explanation of the methods used is several pages long, so I’ll not bore you with the process, but the results are important. Dr. Harvey’s students were able to quantify the carbon sequestered away on the farm and found it to be 168 metric tons per acre.

Why is that important?

It’s important for two reasons. One, the research confirmed not only the amount but the type of carbon – deep carbon. When the carbon is sequestered deep in the soil it stays there and is less likely to be released into the atmosphere. The carbon sequestered in the upper eight inches of soil is still available for the plants which is a winner for both the climate and us.

Our Sugar Snap Peas are blooming and will be available shortly!

I have mixed emotions about the second, and most economically beneficial, reason – that being the figure for carbon credits. At four to five dollars per metric ton Opal’s could generate anywhere from nine to eleven hundred dollars per year in extra revenue. Alternative revenue streams are a must for small farmers.

However, the alternative here seems to be a bit of greenwashing. The idea that a company such as an airline can use carbon credits to meet their climate “goals” while continuing business as usual is somewhat opaque in nature. The bottom line however is that carbon is sequestered and can offset the gases released into the atmosphere. The more regenerative agriculture practiced, the more carbon stored away and an alternative income stream for farmers doing what they do naturally.

Whether for the economic benefits or for the common good, regenerative agriculture can play a large part in facing the climate crisis. Next Spring, we are attending classes to become Carbon Farm Planners. Agriculture can be part of the solution and the more we know the more equipped we are for positive change.

We may not be able to change the weather, but we can do our part to adapt and bring healthy, nutritious produce to Fort Worth and fight climate change in our little piece of Texas. As Ms. Opal often reminds me, “Be a committee of One”. I remember Dad telling me that “everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it”. Being a Committee of One, one small urban farm, is doing something about it. Join us in the fight. As Mother Teresa said, “If you can’t feed a hundred people then just feed one”…