Our home-place for both a teaching garden and a market garden, for the 2008 Summer Art-Farm programs is nearby the big, ole' barns on the former State Hospital grounds. We share this space with a group of 22 other families and friends who are learning the ways of tending an organic garden and growing their food.
Our goals and guiding mission are permaculture based—caring for the Earth, it's people and giving something back. We began our gardens in April, with tilling and soil ammending and have spent the past month and half, cultivating the soil, building beds, planting seeds and transplanting seedlings. A BIG part of our Art-Farm garden caretaking is in getting water into our garden beds. For a wonderful account and short radio piece on our efforts, go to www.radioanyway.org and listen to the final story for the June 28th episode, by Lou Blouin with our apprentice Esprit sharing her thoughts on irrigation practices, and the need to learn about growing our food locally.
This week was the first for taking some of our produce to market. Lou, Esprit and Casey gathered spinach, arugula and a few herbs and went off to the Farmers Market on Saturday morning and sold our first $15.00 worth of fresh, organic produce. Below is a snapshot of Casey and Esprit at their first market gig….
Here's what we're growing in our 8 garden plots in the Community Gardens: A variety of cut flowers, yukon gold, russet and red potatoes, swiss chard, arugula, spinach, mustard and japanese greens, genovese and sweet basil, green and yellow bell peppers, white and purple eggplant, heirloom tomatoes, carrots, salad mix–gourmet and spicy greens, hakurei turnips, green curley kale, cherry tomatoes, pole beans, onions, leeks, cucumbers, butternut squash, zucchini, sweet corn, amaranth, pumpkins, sunflowers, and a fine selection of herbs: chamomile, fennel, chives, sage, marjoram, summer savory.
Our Art-Farmers are a wonderful combination of mentors, apprentices and interns: Esprit, Casey, Rohan, Shelby, MacKenzie, Chris, Molly, Carmen, Lou, Conor, Dede and Penny. And, we are looking forward to working with a younger crowd of Beehive-Art-Farmers when the camps begin later in July. (There is still space to register in the camps, and some scholarships also. Contact us for more info.)
Some of our partners and supporters of the Art-Farm and Market Garden programs are: Michigan Land Use Institute, The City of TC for a donation of leaf mold compost, and wonderful horse manure from Steve Buse's friend and truck-loads of leaves from Matt Miller, Rolling Centuries Farm and Nels Veliquette for the donations of the two water tanks, The Agri-Science Program at TBAISD, Meadowlark Farm, Children's House Montessori ( WOW! Thank you Cymbre Foster), McGoughs' Feed Store, Ace Hardware, Oryana, and much sweat and additional garden goods and seeds from Lou, Penny, Dede, Conor, Marcello, Diane, Gaia and Char. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and more thanks to come!!
Items we are still in need of: 30 Tomato cages, a roll of 48" Welded wire fencing, and 100 feet of Remay…..
Look for updates and reports from the team of Art-Farmers here throughout the summer and into the fall harvest season.
