Upcoming Events and Opportunities
We are in full swing of spring one whole week in advance! Cool season crops are putting out more leaves every day and we have already broken ground at 4 sites this year! Our recent call for a Sustainable Agriculture Internship received an overwhelming response and we are glad to be moving forward with the selection process in the next week. If you are interested in learning more about our internship, contact us at byfarmer@gmail.com. We will be accepting new applicants every 4 weeks, so please get in touch with us for this unique learning opportunity.
We have a lot of great projects in the works, including a number of community events that we need your help with! If you want to volunteer a few hours with us in exchange for hands on experience in Sustainable Agriculture, consider spending the day with us at any of the following events
- March 17th – St. Patricks Day Celebration at Legends Brewery
- March 20th – Irish Festival in Churchill
- March 27th – Tricycle Gardens Workshop at Chimbarazoo Park
- April 1st – Leadership Metro Richmond Community Roots Project
- April 11th – Whats the 4/11 Job Fair at Carter Jones Park
- April 21st – VCU Earth Day Celebration at Monroe Park
- April 25th – Manchester Earth Day Festival
Please contact us if you are intersted in working with us for any of these events; or just make sure to come and check us out!
In Preparation…
It’s not easy thinking about lush, productive gardens when there is 6 inches of snow on the ground. Fortunately for our workshop goers last week, the snow hadn’t hit and we actually had decent weather all day. We had a great turnout at the Sacred Heart Center in Manchester; over 35 people showed up to learn how to plan their garden, followed by a tour of the growing Sacred Heart Community Garden.
For those of you who couldn’t make it or didn’t know, we are planning a full year of workshops and other educational opportunities designed to guide any interested gardener through the challenges and joys of growing and harvesting their own food. Depending on your experience level (beginner or intermediate), we are going to have regular opportunities, scheduled seasonally, to provide practical information and hands on experience to attendees.
If you want to learn about starting your own seeds, growing your own soil, organizing a community garden or starting your own home-based agribusiness, these workshops will help start the wheels turning. We aim to not only provide one-time assistance, but to be a resource for any question regarding sustainable agriculture and community development through gardening. Thank you for your support and patronage, and look for our schedule of locations and activities coming out in the next few weeks!
Winter Workshop at the Sacred Heart Center
Come join the Sacred Heart Center, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Backyard Farmer for a winter garden workshop where you will learn how to plan your garden with maximum effieciency and ease. Backyard Farmer will go through the simple steps we can all take to make sure our gardens are productive and healthy. We will be discussing crop selection, garden charts, resources for home gardeners, as well as the basics of sustainable agriculture at home and in the neighborhood. Enjoy a special presentation by Jay Burlinsone of JMB Greengardens; he will share his experience with the tastiest and most successful plants he has trialed in Virginia.
After the workshop, there will be an opportunity to take a look at the Sacred Heart Community Garden and apply what you just learned to a sample garden plan; or, you can learn about the simple wonder of sprouting in a jar ($25 fee covers your sprout kit, jars, seeds and instructions)
A special thanks to the Sacred Heart Center who has lent us the use of their facility, which is located at 1400 Perry Street, Richmond Va 23225. Save the date, tell your friends, bring the family, just make sure you are there! If you want, download a flyer and put it up at your place of work or share it with a friend.
Contact Jess Barton or Backyard Farmer for more information.
Growing Soil
If you didnt start a garden this year and really can’t wait, we have an idea for you. It’s called sheet mulching. And it will take all winter.
Using an array of “trash” materials, you can build your soil without having to dig at all. Sheet mulching is the layering of cardboard, straw, leaves, manure, coffee grinds, soil, peanut shells, egg shells, newspaper, gutter muck, food scraps and more! Its basically composting right where you want your garden to be! Better than having to pick it up from the mulch lot or in 40 lb bags from the nursery.
If you want to start a new garden, or rehabilitate an existing one, consider sheet mulching now with materials that are easily procured from your home, garden or nearby businesses. Check out this article on sheet mulching, or contact us for a demonstration at your home! We bring all the materials and set you up with the first bed and let you build the rest!
What To Do With All This Warm Weather?
It’s not a common sensation to be sweating in November, but this year, we are finding ourselves experiencing some amazing fall weather, even for temperate Virginia. For those who were with the program and got a good round of fall crops planted between August and September, this weather is undoubtedly making your lettuce, arugula, peas and spinach very happy. But what about the rest of us? How many people know that you can harvest well into December and January, and enjoy all the best salad ingredients? Did you know you can grow cover crops, ideal for compost ingredients as well as their numerous soil building properties, right through the winter?
If you didnt get to start a garden this year and still want to, there is plenty of work to do all winter long in preparation for the spring. Try out some of these ideas over the next few months and let us know if you have any questions!
- November – PLANT GARLIC! Find a nice sunny spot with well-drained soil and dig a 3×6 ft bed. Take the clove of seed garlic (you can use garlic from the grocery store, just keep in mind it has most likely been treated, unless you are buying for a guaranteed source) and turn it upside down, so the rooted end is going into the earth. Plant 2-3″ deep and 6 inches apart on offset spacing for maximum productivity. Then, spread a layer of compost and mulch (straw, leaves, etc) over the bed and water lightly. Garlic takes over 180 days to mature, so be patient. If you need to get Garlic seed FAST, check out Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, located in Louisa County.
- December – START A COMPOST PILE! Clean out your gutters, save all of your leaves, hedge your bushes, clean your pond! Compost ingredients are everywhere this time of the year, not to mention going into your trash can every day from table scraps and left-over leftovers. As long as you balance the nitrogen (wet, green materials) and carbon (dry, brown materials) are in equal proportion, and you need to add soil or compost to the mix (only about 5-10% of the total volume), you wont have that nasty smell so many people fear accompanies a compost pile
- January – MAKE A GARDEN MAP! Plan out your beds now so you don’t plant the wrong things at the wrong time in the wrong place! Having a garden plan will help you save money on seeds as well as prevent any opportunity to accidentally have an empty bed in between seasonal plantings. Check out the folks at Home Place Earth; Cindy Conner is a farmer and a former market gardener turned educator of sustainable agriculture. She has produced and starred in a movie about compost crops, and is currently finishing up her second movie, ALL ABOUT GARDEN PLANNING!
- February – START SEEDS! You can do this inside, outside in cold frames, in a green house or in jars (if you just want to eat them). The most successful and well-fed gardeners and farmers start their seeds early and take good care of them until they are ready to go into the ground. If doing them inside, keep in mind that they will need to be watered regularly and need 4-7 hours of sunlight as soon as they have sprouted. If you just want to watch seeds sprout, check out this resource on sprouting!
- March – CALL BACKYARD FARMER! It’s time to dig!
If you want more ideas for winter gardening, just give us a call or write to us!
Turn Leaves Into Compost
This fall, kill two birds with one stone by having Backyard Farmer come winterize your property and build you a simple compost system that will provide you with home-made plant food for the spring. We do leaf raking and pick up, shrubbing and hedging, edging, gutter cleaning, pond winterizing and more! Better yet, we take all of those ingredients and we help you start a compost system using simple structures strategically placed in your garden for easy access.
If you want to start a vegetable or fruit garden, but know what to do first, COMPOST! Compost is a natural way to feed your vegetable and flower gardens, as well as shrubs and trees. It is made of all natural ingredients, like food scraps, leaves, grass clippings, straw, peanut shells, coffee grinds and algae!
For more information or to schedule a home clean up, call us today at 757-350-1356 or email byfarmer@gmail.com. Tell your friends, family and neighbors and receive a $25 referral!
Backyard Farmer Busy
The cooling weather and falling leaves haven’t given us a fall break that we expected. While we aren’t as busy building gardens, we have filled up the past few weeks with great workshops and community events and are continuing to find that more and more people want to do more to build our local food system here in Virginia.
- Our compost workshop on October 17th at the Humphrey Calder Community Garden was attended by 25 brave folks, who cared more about compost than 45 degree rain. We talked about how to manage and build compost piles while Jocelyn Tice from Green Duck talked about large scale composting and Jim Ashley from Worm Crusaders talked about the magic of vermicompost. Our worm bin has been serving us well, getting rid of both food scraps and newspaper! Thanks to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for making this happen. We will be having a winter workshop in January to get people prepared for their spring gardens!
- The next week, we started sprouts with the members at Senior Connections in Innsbrook. Senior Connections is a community program for senior citizens who live in the Innsbrook Area, and we had lunch with several folks and talked about salad flats, mason jar sprouting and WORMS!
It only takes a couple seconds to get sprouts started, as members of the Senior Connections Center learned at our Indoor Gardening Workshop
- Backyard Farmer was a $2500 sponsor at the Partnership for Smarter Growth’s River City Saunter, held on October 26th. PSG serves the Greater Richmond Area by organizing citizens to address issues of farm land development and suburban sprawl. We were glad to donate our time and services to support this great organization. We worked with Edible Landscaping in Afton Virginia to supply 12 fruit trees for silent auction, which we then planted for the generous supporters. We also helped organize the local-food heavy appetizers for 100 attendants, foraging food from Manakintowne Specialty Growers, Nadolskis Butcher, Lucilles Bakery, AgriBerry, Sullivan Pond Farms, Farm To Family and Fall Line Farms.
- On October 29th, Backyard Farmer took to the Forum at the University of Richmond with a full spread of tasty compost ingredients and talked to students as they went from classes about the importance of composting. Many people took part in a compost layering demonstration and played games made of recylcled materials offered by Save the Trash.
- Just one week later we were on-site with the Urban Garden Collective and other volunteers starting the new community garden at Sacred Heart Community Center in Manchester. Together with enthusiastic students at the center, we built 2 garden beds and planted garlic and cover crops. It was a beautiful day and we put a whole lot of leaves to good use! We will continue to work with the Urban Garden Collective and the Sacred Heart Community Center to plan and expand a community garden at this site in the spring.
Students from Sacred Heart work together to build a garden bed
It certainly has been busy, but we dont expect to slow down. Keep checking back for more updates or if you know of any event or opportunity for us to teach something about gardening, let us know!
Compost Workshop Saturday the 17th
This Saturday, October 17th, join us for a Compost Workshop at the Humphrey Calder Community Garden at the corner of Patterson and Thompson. The event starts at 10:00 am and will feature discussions on the composting process, cover crops, vermicompost and biodegradable products. This event has been put together by local businesses and organizations who are interested in educating people to lead more sustainable lives. Special thanks to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Backyard Farmer, Tricycle Gardens, Green Duck and Worm Crusaders.
Schedule
- 10:00 am – Welcome, Introductions and Overview of Compost
- 10:30 am – Break Out Groups
· What Is Compost – a detailed overview of what it is and how it happens
· Growing Soil – a discussion on the importance of organic matter and soil fertility and how we can accomplish this in our homes and on our farms
· WORMS – a discussion and demonstration about the wonderful work of worms and how to use worms at home to recycle your food waste
· Trashenomics – a discussion of where we are today and how much we could and should be composting. - 11:45 – Compost Grab Bag and Conclusion
- 12:00-1:00 – Community Conversation on Composting in Richmond (optional)
This event is a great opportunity to learn a lot about one of the easiest ways to have a positive impact on the environment. You will learn how to grow your own compost and prepare your soil for a plentiful harvest in the Spring. Bring your friends, family, colleagues; tell your teachers to bring their students! There is a suggested $10 donation, but this event is open to the public.
Registration is suggested, but not required. Please Contact Jess Barton at JBarton@cbf.com or Backyard Farmer at byfarmer@gmail.com to confirm your attendance.
Welcome!
Welcome to Backyard Farmer Blog
Backyard Farmer is a new business serving the Greater Richmond Area. We build sustainable, organic gardens for homes, businesses, community organizations and schools to provide access to fresh, local produce. We research sustainable agricultural technology and practices to better preserve the tradition and knowledge of growing food. We start seeds on a regular basis and search for bugs at night with flashlights attached to our heads. Most importantly, we believe in creating a more sustainable local food system, in which fresh, nutritious vegetables are both valued and available in our communities.
Across the country and throughout the world, communities are taking it upon themselves to secure a safe, reliable, sustainable, food source for their families and neighbors. We are proud to be part of a growing global movement whose core values lie in the backyard gardens of communities around the world. The simple effort of using available land to grow food is a huge step towards achieving sustainability.
We have been helping people throughout the Greater Richmond area build gardens, and in just 7 months, we have brought food and knowledge into dozens of homes. While introducing people to the fundamental joys of growing and eating home grown food, we research and rediscover sustainable agricultural techniques and technologies that have been lost to the era of commercialized agriculture. As we continue to grow, we encourage others to take an active role in their communities and in their own lives to engage with their food sources.
The Backyard Farmer Blog will be a way for others to follow our gardening adventures and for us to share the information that we acquire along the way. We have built gardens in myriad locations, each with unique conditions. Perhaps, we have had the same problem that you are dealing with. We gain insight from our successes and setbacks, as do our customers. It is important to share these stories of a developing local food movement in Virginia so others can benefit as well.
The Backyard Farmer blog will serve as a platform for us to discuss important news and exciting examples of sustainable agriculture locally and as a worldwide movement. Interspersed with our tips and garden stories you will find a variety of news and information on urban agriculture, small scale farming, sustainable practices, organic growing, agricultural policy, and cutting edge techniques and technology. Stay on top of your garden and sustainable agriculture globally with Backyard Farmer. Thanks for visiting our blog.
Enjoy.