Spring – Page 4 – gregoryjoel.com

Awe, Communication, Community, Composting, Creation, Down On the Farm, Emotional Health, Environment, Faith, Fighting Poverty, Gifts, Gratitude, Hope, Miracles, Neighbors, Opal's Farm, Regeneration, Simplicity, Spirituality, Spring, Transformation, Trinity River, Unity Unlimited, Inc., Urban Farming, Volunteers, What Can I Do

Freeze One Week, Spring the Next

February 9, 2022 gregoryjoel

Good Evening, Cowtown! It’s been a splendid February day at Opal’s Farm (I never dreamed I would use splendid and February in the same sentence…). The jackets came of early as we finished getting the covers on the tomato beds for the Spring. Our potatoes came in and a fifty-pound bag is cut and ready to plant in the morning. We’re happy to announce that Spring planting is underway!

We’ve been absent from Cowtown Farmers Market for the last month. Freeze damage, last week’s TOFGA Conference, and the market closing for the recent ice storm has left us anxiously anticipating this Saturday – we miss you all and hope you can drop by Cowtown Farmers Market from 8 AM to Noon.

Our resident hawk swooped, down this morning to engage in some helpful pest control. He was carrying off his catch when the crows mobbed up on him and tried to chase him off. The crows are the bullies of the farm. Fortunately, our hawk friend led them past the train trestle and was able to find a quiet spot to eat his lunch in peace.

One of my favorite times at Opal’s Farm is when nature seems to dull the city noise and reveal the beauty that is often overlooked by the fast-paced city life that marks so many of our days. Perhaps it’s growing older, but I find myself reveling in the awe and the beauty of our little place we call home. The farm opened my eyes to the wonders that are right here among us. My son frequently reminds me that I get excited by the silliest things (manure and composting vegetables simply don’t appeal to him the way they do me…).

I get delighted when I turn the compost and steam rises from the soil that will nurture the new Spring beds. I become almost giddy when I see more and more earthworms indicating that we are truly rebuilding our soil knowing I can look forward to a healthy harvest in the months ahead. Ladybugs lie dormant under plant leaves, waiting to devour the pests that appear as the crops grow. The miracle of life awaits me every day and I am awed by the interconnectedness all around me.

I usually arrive as the sun is coming up on days the Grow SE Apprenticeship class is held – the early mornings when the steam rise from the Trinity River and the water is like glass. We have three coyotes that love to come around and keep an eye on us. They don’t run off as quick as they used to, leaving time to watch them as they walk slowly down towards the river.

The egrets often stand guard along the levees – lined up in a single row with equal spacing between them is extraordinary. They take off one by one at precisely timed intervals as I drive down to the pump station. It’s quite a sight and never ceases to amaze me. Now if they’ll only let me take their picture…

We’d love for you to come down and volunteer or just visit. We love to share our little piece of paradise in the shade of downtown Fort Worth. Knowing that what we do is helping our neighbors, our community, makes the day even more special. If you can’t get to Opal’s Farm please come by and see us at Cowtown Farmers Market.

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It Happens Next Saturday!

June 14, 2021 gregoryjoel

Opal’s Farm is finally drying out after our first week without the heavy Spring rains. We might even get to use our new pump so graciously installed by our fantastic friends at the Tarrant regional Water District.

The tomatoes are loving the week of sunshine. Various shades of red are beginning to appear in the humungous green bushes. The vegetables have enjoyed the long, cool drink of Spring and face the summer heat with renewed strength.

The crowd at Cowtown Farmer’s Market is growing as well. Each week brings more shoppers for the fresh, locally grown food. There’s something special (and even more tasty and nutritious!) about locally grown produce. We look forward to market days!

That being said…

Opal’s Farm will not be at Cowtown Farmer’s Market this coming Saturday, June 19^th. It’s Juneteenth, y’all! We’ll be walking with Ms. Opal for two-and-a-half miles, from Evans Plaza to the Tarrant County Courthouse. Afterwards, we’ll be set up at Panther Island Pavilion for the Juneteenth festivities, including live music, great vendors, and fireworks to celebrate freedom. Go to www.juneteenthftw.com to see the complete schedule and times. Come celebrate with Ms. Opal Lee and the good times marking freedom for us all…

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It’s already May!

May 3, 2021 gregoryjoel

It’s difficult to believe it’s already May. April flew by in a scurry of activity. What’s even harder to believe is that all the Spring planting is complete except for the okra that goes in next week. Opal’s volunteers stepped it up and made early Spring a huge success!

April showers showed up just in time to give all the veggies a huge growth spurt. We closed out the month moving into “abnormally dry” as opposed to “moderate drought” status that started the month. The official rainfall total was four-and-a-half inches, but we over five inches at Opal’s Farm. The last few days of rain made access and work onerous but also allowed us some time to catch-up on some things we’ve put off due to Spring planting (like this blog…).

On April 24^th, we had a group from my son Adrian’s church, The House Fort Worth, come down to the farm. They have regular “Love Your City” workdays and provide volunteers for projects all around Fort Worth. They did an amazing job getting furrows mulched and ready for the coming summer heat! Thanks to each one who came and Pastor Mark Ortiz for getting us on the list!

Our National Resource Conservation representative for urban farms, Mr. Michael Higgins put us in touch with two exciting new endeavors for Opal’s Farm. The first one is with Bashira Chowdurry, a native Houstonian working at Auburn University. Bashira is helping us develop new produce such as Bottle Gourd and Bitter Melon, which are staples in South Asian food. The seeds she sent are growing in our test beds. We’re trying them out to see how they work in North Texas. If all goes well, we’ll be able to grow produce for our South Asian community here in Tarrant County.

The second new project is with new immigrants from East Africa. We eagerly gave a third of an acre plot to Sylvia, Christian, and Gerard, new urban farmers here at Opal’s. They have been hard at work preparing beds and getting Spring planting in. It’s exciting to see the passion of our new farmers. My heart jumped a bit when Sylvia said it reminded her of home! We hope to be a part of making them successful as they meet the needs of the East African community and all our neighbors in Fort Worth.

This Spring has brought new volunteers to Opal’s Farm. We’re so happy to share this journey with other people who want to help us address food insecurity and food apartheid here in Fort Worth. Food brings people together. No one should have to be food insecure or denied access to healthy, fresh produce. No one should have to go without the sense of community that we have at the farm. Visit our website www.unityunlimited.org and sign up for your time to farm with us.

If you don’t have time to volunteer right now, please help us with your financial support. Every dollar you contribute goes to helping your neighbors get access to nutritious fresh produce!

P.S. Cowtown Farmers Market is getting busier with all the Spring crops coming in. The varieties of fresh, local produce may sell out so come early every Saturday so you don’t miss out!

Communication, Community, Faith, Grace, Gratitude, Hope, Neighbors, Prayer, Recovery, Relationships, Serenity, Simplicity, Spirituality, Spring, Thoughts From the Porch, Tractors, Transformation, Writing

March 17, 2021 gregoryjoel

It’s hard to believe that we were seeing record cold temperatures only a month ago. The last couple of weeks have been in the seventies and even eighties. I sit on the porch at night in shorts and a t-shirt. In the early morning darkness I was greeted by the sound of the Mockingbird outside. The official start to Spring is only four days away. God is good…

I’ve taken to sitting at my desk in the mornings as opposed to the front porch. I am halfway through my fourth week of quitting smoking and the front porch is a bit of a trigger. The double wide patio door is just outside my office though so I still get the morning air when I open the sliding door. It makes for enjoyable quiet time.

I had no idea what I wanted to write about when I started this blog in 2017. Blogging experts said find a niche to write about. Center it around your niche and turn it into a money-making endeavor. I never could figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. How could I find a “niche”?

Most of my career was about doing the work I never intended to do. Trying to gain a father’s acceptance (which was already there regardless of what I did for a living) instead of pursuing one’s own passions have a way of doing that. The downward spiral of alcohol and addiction doesn’t help either.

Over the years I’ve been a Real Estate Investor and Broker, a Process Engineer, an Operations and HR Manager. I’ve drifted through professions. I’ve played rock and roll in the clubs, worked briefly in radio, and DJ’d at sketchy bars. I’ve worked as a bartender and a food server. I’ve worked in manufacturing and construction jobs. From 2006 to 2017 I had my own landscape and remodeling business. Employment options are limited for folks with felonies so starting my own business made perfect sense.

It was a good living, but I knew there was always a nagging feeling that I was supposed to be doing something else with my life. I spent many off and on years in business documentation – writing business plans, employee manuals, training manuals, etc. I had learned to speak “bureaucrat-ese” and proper business writing, using it often in my professional corporate work – and I got good at it. Maybe that was it…

I shut down the business, signed up for a couple of copywriting and marketing courses, and set off to be a writer full-time. I had a few jobs, and I even got paid for writing. I guess that qualified me as a “writer” (Like that makes a difference?).

Unfortunately, I discovered I’m not cut out for the whole copywriting thing, I don’t like trying to manipulate people with the whole marketing deal and I’m a bit of a dinosaur in the corporate world. I still believe in the whole “the customer isn’t always right, but they are always the customer” thing. Customers should be treated accordingly. That’s not always the case anymore.

That’s okay though, because it led to my relationship with Ms. Opal, Unity Unlimited, Inc., and becoming Farm Manager for Opal’s Farm. I’m blessed beyond measure. I get to wake up each morning and go the farm, work hard, and tell the Opal’s Farm story to anyone who’ll listen. I get to be around amazing people. I even get paid for doing what I love and serving others which is the antidote to addiction’s self-obsession – helping others helps me. I’ve found my center, my passion, and God’s direction for my life. If I’ve found a niche, it rests in the fact life is a story – a story about grace I surely don’t deserve and something I could never find on my own despite my best efforts.

The things I’ve learned to blog about over the last three-and-a-half years have little to do with “5 Ways to Success” or “How to Make a Million in a Month by Telling People What They Want to Hear”. They don’t have to do with the number of followers (except the one’s about Opal’s Farm!) or a great comments thread. They don’t require everyone’s approval to prove success. They have to do with the one person who, perhaps only by chance, reads something that helps them to help others. There’s not much money in that, but it’s the success I only dreamed of.

Be patient with others. Sometimes it takes fifty years to figure out what you want to do when you grow up…

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One Last Day to the Longest Short Month

February 28, 2021 gregoryjoel

Ah, the last day of February. Tomorrow is meteorological Spring. While it’s not the official (i.e. – the Vernal Solstice or Saturday March 20^th) first day of Spring, it’s a reminder that warmer days are just around the corner.

It’s hard to believe that a mere two weeks ago we were huddled around a space heater with no water in a 30-degree house. I was out on the porch this morning for my meditation time. Shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops were all that was needed to be comfortable.

We were blessed to have a generator to power the space heater and a coffee pot. Others were not so lucky. There are still folks without water as I write this. Please pray for relief so the disaster recovery can begin.

Opal’s Farm took a beating. We may still be able to salvage some onions and spinach. I had to replant cilantro, beets, turnips, snow peas, and snap peas. I’m glad to have gotten them in before the rain this weekend. We have potatoes to plant when it dries up and more onions are coming to replace what was lost to the freeze.

It has been a busy week here at the farm – replanting, plowing, and irrigation repair. We lost a couple of hundred feet of PVC pipe to the cold. There’s much to catch up on so if you have a little free time and want some dirt therapy go email us at opalvolunteers@gmail.com or opalsfarm@unityunlimited.org. We’ll get you going!

We had our annual membership meeting for Cowtown Farmers Market yesterday. We are pleased to be a part of such a dynamic group of farmers and vendors that believe in bringing fresh, local food to our community. We will be continuing the SNAP and Double-Up Food Bucks through April 1^st as well. Please come see us and enjoy the best fruits and vegetables in Fort Worth! We’d appreciate the support for our local farmers.

February, especially this year, was an opportunity to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going. The freeze was a major obstacle to a successful 2021. The produce we would normally take to market was lost, cutting our revenue for the next few weeks. This is a huge blow to our budget for this year. We are currently seeking assistance from a couple of disaster recovery resources, but so many farmers suffered losses this month that it may be months if we receive financial assistance.

We nearly doubled our yield over 2019 last year and we hope to do so again in 2021. Our soil health has drastically improved with the amendments we were able to have last year (Thank you Sliver Creek Materials and Microlife/San Jacinto Environmental!). We’ve expanded our production area by another acre. We are excited by the possibilities even with the hardship that came from the deep freeze.

We’re also aware of how blessed we are to be a part of the community and all our friends. While your thoughts, prayers, and volunteering are appreciated more than you know, we are asking for financial help to whether this setback. If you’re able to give, please go to www.unityunlimited.org/opalsfarm and click donate. You can also donate through Facebook, or even drop by the farm.

We have an exciting Spring and Summer planned and we’d love for you to be a part. Thank you for all each of you do. Thank you for being part of Opal’s Farm!