Category: Summer

Autumn, Community, Down On the Farm, Farmers Markets, Food Deserts, Food Insecurity, Food Justice, Gratitude, Hope, Marginalized, Neighbors, Non-Profits, Nutrition, Opal's Farm, Regeneration, Service to Others, Social Justice, Summer, Thoughts From the Porch, Volunteers

What a Year It’s Been

gregoryjoel

September is finally here, and meteorological autumn has begun. I’d like to think that truly means the end of summer, but I live in Texas, so I know better. We’ll still see some hot days but hopefully no more triple-digit-temperatures. All-all we’ve had a mild summer compared to the last three or four years. We even had rain in July and August, which is rare indeed. Opal’s Farm, with the new fall seed, loves it.

Today is one of the one-in-seven instances that the Labor Day holiday falls on the first day of September. Those who get the day off will be spending time barbequing with family and friends or simply catching up some sorely needed rest. Thanks to the rain this morning I get to spend some time at the desk and reflect on what Labor Day truly means. Labor Day isn’t always a holiday for farmers, so I thought I’d take advantage of the weather to play catch up on the recent farm news.

Most of you all are aware of the cutbacks that led to staff layoffs at the first of the year. Add to that an April knee injury and I’ve been working a bit slower than usual this year. I also had to scale back the amount of land we were cultivating to our original one acre. The good news is that we were still able to surpass last year’s total in pounds of produce grown. That’s what happens as the soil becomes healthier with each passing season. That’s why farming regeneratively is one of our core values.

Stacey Harwood, our Volunteer Coordinator, has remained on staff although paychecks have been a bit erratic this spring and summer. She’s been with Opal’s for six years now and has become a loved member of Opal’s family (we may be a non-profit but we’re really a family farm!). She’s done an excellent job of working with our volunteers and we’ve had some great groups and individuals come out to work on the farm. If you have volunteered with us, please know there’s no way to adequately tell you how much you mean to us. We’ve been able to get so much more completed with your help. Your impact has reached far beyond just the farm to the tables and people across the communities we serve.

Help is treasured, but the reality is that most days it’s just me at the farm. That’s not always so bad though. I’ve really thought about how we can serve our community better. One way we have done that is to open Opal’s Farm Stand every Saturday from 1 PM to 3 PM at the “Doc” Sessions Community Center Parking lot (201 S. Sylvania – the corner of 4th and Sylvania).

Opal’s Farm Stand offers more affordable prices for our quality organic produce to our neighbors. We are also a SNAP/EBT retailer and began offering Double Up Bucks two weeks ago with the help of Texas Health Resources Community Hope and Double Up Texas. SNAP participants can redeem up to thirty dollars in SNAP benefits to purchase fresh produce. Those thirty dollars then becomes sixty dollars, doubling their purchasing power.

We’re still at Cowtown Farmers Market most Saturday mornings, but our emphasis is switching from so much being sold at retail to lower pricing for our community. To be honest, it’s a bit of a financial risk. It takes time to build a market location. Farmers live on slim profit margins. People fail to realize the work that goes into growing good heathy food. That’s why Cowtown offers great food at a fair price.

Unfortunately, farmers markets are not always accessible to marginalized neighborhoods: either in location or pricing. We’re so grateful to be a part of the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program at Cowtown. The market and our regular customers are a blessing to us. They’ve helped sustain Opal’s financially and we wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for them. However, we will be taking less produce to Cowtown so that more is available to the neighborhoods we serve through Opal’s Farm Stand.

We also want to extend a heartfelt thanks to Jesse Herrera of CoAct and the Funkytown Mindful Market. Their market is held on the first Saturday of every month at Texas Wesleyan University (1201 Wesleyan in Polytechnic Heights). They’ve been purchasing Opal’s Farm produce to sell to the Eastside neighborhoods they serve. The next market will be held on September 6th from 11 AM to 2 PM.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to the Dallas Wings WNBA and the Texas Fence Association. In January, they built a chain link fence around our bio-intensive third of an acre. The Dallas Wings front office spent a volunteer day at the farm and got so much done that I am in awe of them. They’ll be returning in September and the Texas Fence Association will return to fence another third of an acre (you all are amazing!).

Our first cohort of Taste the C.U.R.E., in partnership with Tarleton State University, graduated on June 28th. The students did a great job of learning and using bio-intensive farming methods. Several have kept their farm plots while others have chosen to take the knowledge they learned and apply it to their own backyards and neighborhoods. The next cohort starts in February and more details will be forthcoming.

Finally, I want to remind our readers of the importance of today, Labor Day. It was signed into law June 28th, 1894, by President Grover Cleveland following the Pullman strike and decades of struggle by the US labor movement as industrialization grew throughout the end of the nineteenth century. Labor Day is a day to remember and celebrate the sacrifices of the US labor movement and honor their achievements and the prosperity we enjoy today.

Have a great holiday. Enjoy your family and your neighbors. Stop by and see us at Opal’s Farm. We’d love to have you join the family!

Community, Connection, Down On the Farm, Education, Emotional Health, Family, Health, Juneteenth, News, Opal's Farm, Service Organizations, Summer, Trinity River, Unity Unlimited, Inc., Urban Farming

Empowering You

gregoryjoel

I hope everyone is staying hydrated and healthy now that summer seems to have started in earnest. We’re hanging in there and keeping the summer crops watered to keep bringing you fresh, healthy, LOCAL produce (you can’t get much more local when you’re right next to downtown!).

We have so much to pass on to you all. June has been an amazing month already and Juneteenth is right around the corner. One of the Juneteenth events you shouldn’t miss is the Empowering You – Education, Health, and Job Fair to be held tomorrow and Saturday at the Trinity River Campus of Tarrant County College. See the attached flyer for details and while you’re there, come see us at the Opal’s Farmstand.

Choices, Community, Connection, Down On the Farm, Emotional Health, Events, Family, Farmers Markets, Food Equality, Food Justice, Gratitude, Health, Neighbors, Opal's Farm, Regeneration, Service to Others, Simplicity, Spirituality, Summer, Thoughts From the Porch, Unity Unlimited, Inc., Urban Farming

Shop Local!

gregoryjoel

Greetings from Opal’s Farm. We will not be at Cowtown Farmers Market this week. The busy Spring planting season came to a bit of a halt this morning. The rain that came in overnight has been great for the farm and not so great for “being under the weather” physically. We will be there next Saturday morning and hate missing the Spring Festival this weekend. Bring your umbrellas and join the fun at Cowtown Farmers Market today!

I can’t stand to miss our family and friends at the market. Over the last five years, Cowtown Farmers Market has truly become family. It’s the highlight of my week. There’s something special about our market and the farmers and vendors who come each week to bring fresh local produce, meats, honey, and all kinds of other local products. I’ve learned so much from the knowledge freely shared by the farmers and friends there.

I grew up in Fort Worth but spent many days at my Uncle Carl’s ranch in South Texas or my Uncle Roof’s dairy farm up towards Boyd. I tend to be more of a carnivore when it comes to diet. That remained the case until I came to Cowtown. You see, Cowtown is unlike the way most folks shop for groceries. People actually stop and talk to one another. No avoiding hurried and harried people with shopping carts and frustration with checkout lines. You won’t find one self-checkout stand at the market; although people may line up because one of our farmers has something special that week (especially when peaches, tomatoes, and blueberries come in).

Photo by Nuzul Arifa on Pexels.com

I’m no vegetarian, nor am I knocking those who are. I still love meat, but Cowtown helped me broaden my food experience. Customers have shared their many ways to cook the fresh produce we bring to market each week and I’ve tried them all (well, most of them anyway). I’ve incorporated many of their recipes into my diet. I even like greens now (except for kale – you all like it so we’ll keep growing it for you – I’m not there yet…).

I hope you will all head out to Cowtown Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. Get to know our local farmers and vendors. Cowtown is a producer-only market. All the farms are within a 150-mile radius of Fort Worth. Everything is truly local. No one is a reseller – getting their produce from a distributor or wholesaler. In other words, we don’t have field tomatoes in January or Brussell Sprouts in August. Learning to eat what’s in season is not only respecting the Earth’s rhythms but benefits overall health as well.

Food is one thing we all have in common. It is to be savored and enjoyed by family and friends and so should shopping for it!

Awe, Climate Change, Community, Connection, Creation, Down On the Farm, Environment, Opal's Farm, Relationships, Seasons, Simplicity, Spirituality, Summer, Thoughts From the Porch, Trinity River

Egrets, Yep, Egrets

gregoryjoel

I’m sitting at home alone tonight. That’s not a bad thing. It just is. Margaret has been in the hospital and moved to a rehab hospital for a couple of weeks. I’ve daily trips to the hospital, Opal’s Farm, the hospital, and back home to work. Add to that all the Juneteenth festivities and I can safely say its’ been a crazy busy June!

I’m harvesting between 400 and 600 pounds of tomatoes per week since everything started to come in during May. Sales have been great at the market, but with so many tomatoes I’ve had to start selling them to another non-profit that serves the WIC clinics in Dallas and to the Tarrant Area Food Bank. Delivering to Dallas has not been one of my favorite tasks although I love the folks at Owenwood Farm. I still maintain that the best thing to come out of Dallas is Interstate Thirty West…

Needless to say, this is the first opportunity I’ve had to sit down and write for the last two months. It’s also the first chance I’ve had to catch up with many of the blogs I follow as well and sit down to go through my personal email account. If you haven’t seen a like or comment, please don’t take it personal. I simply haven’t had time to read.

 I’ve said all that so I can now talk about what’s been on my mind the last month – Egrets. Yep, birds. After a couple of months of silence, one would think I have more to say but… Egrets -those beautiful, long-legged white birds related to Herons. We used to call them cowbirds when I was little because of the way they hung around, and on, the cattle to eat insect pests. I see them frequently at the farm. Mostly nesting and wading about searching for food on the far bank of the Trinity River.

Photo by Mohan Nannapaneni on Pexels.com

We even have some state wildlife and research students with a tracker following the birds they’ve tagged. I’m happy to report that they shall have an abundance of birds to tag this year. There was an unusually heavy baby boom this Spring. The farm is often covered in groups of young Egrets walking about and I’ve become acquainted with some of them. At least I think I have…

This probably doesn’t mean anything to anyone else, but since my cataract surgery in May I’ve been able to see better than I have in many years. My vision is so clear now that I’ve been able to see things I’ve never noticed before like Egrets and their personalities. I’m fully aware of the human tendency to anthropomorphize other creatures but I’m convinced they are much like us – at least the young ones anyway.

Juvenile Egrets are smaller in stature as young ones tend to be. Unlike their parents (who by the way both take care of the nesting and young) they aren’t all white. They have a tan section on their head, breast, back feathers. Occasionally they will raise their head feathers to reveal a small, tan mohawk. It fades to white as they grow older. They always hang around in groups of ten to fifteen. They have one young guy who they’ve appointed leader – they seem to follow pretty much everywhere. If he moves north, they all move north, if he takes off, they all take off in file behind him – that is, all except for one.

I love this little guy – I imagine him to be a bird version of me. He’s always the last one to fly or walk away when I come down the road or walk up to the pumphouse. I can relate. I was usually the one picked last or left behind. The others sense danger approaching and tend to take off as soon as I get close, but this little guy hangs around. He’s allowed me to get closer each day. Each day he grows more curious about this big, flightless biped that talks to him as if we share the same language. His head tilts one way and then the other. He’s even ventured a couple of steps toward me if I stand still long enough. I’m sure passers-by would find me a tad insane standing in a field talking to a bird. I’m okay with that. The young fellow makes for good company on a hot day.

Over the last week the groups of young birds have gotten smaller and less frequent. It appears that most have moved on to do what it is that Egrets do. I’d move on too with the triple-digit heat we’ve had of late – at least somewhere with some shade. There’s been some hangers-on. I’m sure they live with mom and dad. Most of the remaining young birds are professional students of some kind – they never seem to graduate and move out on their own. That’s been my experience anyway…

I wish them all well as they move on to adult things. I’ll miss my companions but like everything else in life, there are seasons for everything and everyone. The farm is a great teacher about the cycle of life all flora and fauna, and people, go through. It’s also been a sage, teaching me how interconnected the world is – how interdependent we are. I learn daily the need for responsible stewardship and just how awesome God’s creation is.

With that I’m off to the farm to irrigate. We’re fortunate that our water is virtually free. It takes a lot to survive the Texas summer, especially in the days of climate change and warming temperatures. The UV rays of the sun have been exceptionally strong this year – a constant reminder of the new normal and our responsibility to keep it from getting worse. After all, I want to have the Egrets around to talk to for a long time…

Bad Weather, Climate Change, Community, Composting, Down On the Farm, Environment, Faith, Farmers Markets, Grace, Non-Profits, Opal's Farm, Positive Thinking, Regeneration, Service to Others, Spirituality, Storms, Summer, Tarrant Regional Water District, Texas, Trinity River, Unity Unlimited, Inc., Urban Farming, What Can I Do

What’s Plan B?

gregoryjoel

A researcher from the City of Austin called me a couple of years ago to ask some questions about having an urban farm on a floodplain similar to Opal’s. The city had recently bought out a thousand homes because of flooding on Williamson and Onion Creek. They wanted to build an urban farm on the property and much like governments do, they had to do a study first. Not that it’s a negative mind you. One should “count the cost” before jumping in, but the city was overthinking the whole project. That tends to happen a lot…

Anyway, this nice grad student from the University of Texas called to pick my brain and had a very long list of questions to be answered. Our conversation went well. Yes, there are challenges to urban farming and no, they’re not that big a deal. Farming teaches us how to work with nature and not against it. Moreover, it’s always a risk since nature tends to win no matter what we do. That’s just the way it is. Resilience must be a core value.

She asked me a question I’d never thought of before: what is your Plan B if it floods? It took me back a bit. “What do you mean by Plan B?”

She went on to explain that they were on a twenty-five-year flood plain and they needed a Plan B if it flooded there. I had to laugh and then remember I was talking to a researcher for the city. Cities have a need to put everything in a plan. Unfortunately, farming doesn’t work like that. I guess that’s why I love it so much. There’s never a dull moment.

I informed her that we had no “Plan B”. If it floods, we rebuild the beds and replant. What else is there to do? Maybe that’s a tad easier for me to say since we are on a hundred-year floodplain and have never had to deal with flooding – at least until this week.

The local media is calling this week’s rain historic. We received a month’s rainfall in a day – fifteen inches at Opal’s Farm. The Trinity River breached a section of the levee and flooded the back half of the farm. I was finally able to drive down there by Wednesday. Walking the beds and negotiating some of the still standing water I was surprised to find the back road covered in dead fish – hundreds of them. The levee is slightly lower on the south end of the farm and had washed over that section and when it receded, it left our finned friends high and dry. It was a first for us.

Needless to say…

We spent the rest of the week on “Plan B” – clean up, rebuild, and replant. We were unable to make Cowtown Farmers Market this week, but we should be there next week. We didn’t lose any of our existing crops although everything was covered in mud. The rain and the cooler nights have led the tomatoes to bloom in force and begin setting tomatoes again. Everything is a vibrant green on the farm once more. The dead fish have been added to the compost pile, so I assume we don’t have to spend anything on fish emulsion. The rain brought us down for “Extreme Drought” stage to “Severe Drought” stage. After all, resilience is one of our core values…