There goes the neighborhood

Our urban farm is located in a neighborhood where the yards are large, but houses are still very close together. The people who live here work hard to keep their yards looking tidy, and although I am not in favor of using chemicals on my lawn to make it look like Brady Bunch AstroTurf, I understand that our friends want to live near neat and clean yards and houses. They want our neighborhood to be beautiful, and this attractiveness will keep up the property values. For me, it is VERY important to keep my neighbors happy and on board with the urban farm. I have done a lot to get to this point, and since I am not willing to give up on this lifestyle (growing my own food while benefiting from living in town), I would hate to have to move and start over somewhere else.

What is an urban farmer to do to fit in?


Beautify

The most important feature of an urban farm is, of course, the production of locally grown, sustainable, delicious fruits and vegetables. That said, the farm must be as attractive as possible. The time spent keeping weeds in check in the vegetable beds is well worth the effort. Although I don't have a Scott's lawn care subscription, I mow and weed the grass to keep the lawn we have fitting in with the general look of the neighborhood (and those bagged grass clippings are a great treat for the chickens!).

Adding flowers around the chicken coop, for example, shows that I value creating a space that is not only productive, but is aesthetically pleasing to be in and look at.

Planting ornamentals around food crops and animal housing adds color and visual interest.

Keep it clean

My neighbors want to be able to enjoy their yards just as much as I want to use-- and enjoy-- my own place. Keeping clean is a way to show respect for them and also helps me to maintain a relaxing space of my own. While we worked on building the chicken run this week, we made sure to clean up each night and leave the area looking orderly. Once the chickens are at home in the new coop, keeping the area clean and free of smells is priority #1. Unlike on a farm (where there is endless room to hide animals) an urban farm yard is used not just for farming but for weekend barbecues and tossing the ball around with your family. I appreciate clean and neat spaces just as much as my neighbors.

My neighbor's fence is next to these beds, so hopefully they will enjoy the view of the veggies.

Friendly Farmer

To have friends you have to be a good friend. And I need the support of my neighbors in order to be successful. Keeping them informed of what I am up to is important so that they aren't surprised by something that may at first seem out of place in town. Also, sharing a few eggs or some of the bumper tomato crop helps them feel like they are an important part of the urban farm (because they are!).

Thank you, good neighbors! (You know who you are!)

Someday soon I'll have organically grown onions to share.

The urban farm as a system

Urban farm goals: surplus of healthy food, enjoyable levels of labor, rich soil to maintain high yields, a neighbor-pleasing space that is supported by the community.

Permaculture: an agricultural system or method that seeks to integrate human activity with natural surroundings so as to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems (Merriam-Webster).

Over the winter I took a short intro course at my local community college on permaculture and came away with many ideas and goals on making the urban farm into a system that could support itself, both in terms of lower levels of physical labor and fewer outside inputs. Someday I'd love to take a full length permaculture course, but for now we're starting small with a few ideas and projects that will hopefully lead to setting up a whole system.

Chickens

This chick doesn't know it, but she's very important to the health of the urban farm.

This spring we spent too much money buying compost. This was mostly due to the big farm expansion and not having enough of my own compost to fill the new raised beds. In the future I'm hoping to be able to use urban farm-made compost, thus saving money and the hassle of having it delivered and dumped in a big pile on the driveway.

Our chickens are going to be a big part of this system. Not only will the hens provide a delicious protein source for us with their eggs, their waste is probably even more valuable. Chicken manure, when composted, is nitrogen rich "black gold" that will feed all of our vegetables. Also, we can take our bags of grass clippings, weeds, and even dinner scraps and give them to our hens, keeping these "waste" products within our system and turning them into something useful. This will not only make the chickens healthier, happier animals, it will reduce the amount of feed we need to purchase.

I have two bins: this one and something similar given to me second hand.

Rain garden

A nice example of a rain garden.

Bees are all over the news this spring, and for good reason-- most of the fruits and vegetables we eat need insect pollination to produce fruits or seeds. One way to attract pollinators is to plant native species close to the vegetables or fruits that need pollination. This summer we are installing a rain garden in a drainage area that remains wet much of the year. The rain garden will be close to the raised beds, so the bees will have plenty to pollinate, which will increase our food surplus.

This natural area in our urban farm will be dual purpose, since it also will hold water on our land instead of allowing it to flow down the hill and into the street (and then directly into our local lake, Lake Mendota). Also, it will be beautiful and will attract butterflies, birds, and humans.

The more we can re-purpose materials, items, and areas on our urban farm, the more resources we can save, making the farm that much more valuable!

Onions and garlic, or spring has sprung!

This was a big week at the urban farm-- I transplanted for the first time this year outside of the hoop house. Despite waking up to snow flurries yesterday morning and the frost free date being a month away, there are no nights in the nine day forecast with freezing temperatures. I now am officially stricken with spring fever! (It also means I have been stricken with bike fever and will need to budget my time better so that I can fit in some rides along with work.)

You can't beat this outlook!

Onions

The first crop transplanted this week were the onions. I am testing out both the transplants I started from seed (Red Amposta and Yellow Sweet Spanish Utah) and sets (Yellow Stuttgarter).

The advantage to transplants grown from seeds are the amazing number of varieties available and the bulbs should grow larger. I have never used sets before, and I found out how easy they are-- just buy and plant. However, there were only three options available at my local garden store-- just one each of yellow, white, and red. From what I have read transplants produce onions that store better, though a friend from the community garden has had the opposite experience. I'm looking forward to seeing how they compare!

Sets: I selected the yellow option.

Transplants: they look small now, but I am excited to see how they turn out.

Because our urban farm has a small footprint, I am using intensive planting methods, many of which are described in the book All New Square Foot Gardening. According to this book, you can plant 12 onions per square foot. Since I am going to grow onions to full size, I decided to plant only 9 per square foot (this is at least double the density of my onions last year). Because of the high density, it is important to keep plants evenly spaced. I ran across a website that had a great tip, using a muffin pan to map out where to plant.

This muffin tin had the right spacing to give me 9 plants per square foot.

My muffin pan grid keeps me in line.

Garlic

I am very excited to plant garlic this year-- my first very first time trying it in my garden! I was lucky enough to have several bulbs of garlic leftover from my CSA. They stored very well over the winter, so these are a good variety to save. I broke up each bulb and planted the cloves, just like the onion sets.

Enjoy your early spring everyone!

Garlic cloves-- each one will yield one whole bulb.

To chicken or not to chicken

When I was thinking about this post last week, I decided I would write about the pros and cons of backyard chickens. I was slowly and deliberately weighing the decision to add hens to the urban farm. And then in one moment (as things often do) the situation changed. My wonderful parents, having watched me read about, Google, and otherwise study chickens for the last couple of years, decided to gift me my very own chicken coop for my birthday. The coop hasn't arrived yet, but I am finally now moving forward and hoping to have eggs by late summer!

Peeps will never look the same.

Pullets or Chicks?

I couldn't decide between buying started pullets (young adult hens that are already laying or will be laying soon) or newly hatched, female chicks. But once my daughter got involved in the decision, we decided to raise chicks. The benefit of pullets is gathering eggs sooner. The benefit of chicks is being able to tame them early and, honestly, to just enjoy their silliness.

This book, among many others, gives a ton of good information.

Breeds?

Until I started visiting my friend's backyard flock, I didn't realize the variety of chickens available. We decided to get 5 chicks, with the ultimate goal of 4 hens (because it's difficult to see the differences between male and female chicks, there is a good chance at least one of our birds will turn out to be rooster, and keeping a rooster is against city regulations). The chick breeds we selected will all be winter hardy, which is very important in our cold climate.

Two of our chicks are Buff Orpingtons, the "Labrador Retriever" of the chicken world. They should be docile, kid-friendly, and easy to pick up. Two of our chicks are Australorps, a black chicken bred in Australia, and also a friendly hen to have around. The last chick is supposed to be an Easter Egger--a mixed breed that lays beautiful blue or green eggs-- but right now she looks exactly like the yellow Buff chicks, so only time will tell.

Buff Orpington

Australorp

Now for that backyard chicken pro/con list

Cons:

• Need daily attention
• Cost of supplies and feed
• Cleaning the coop

Pros:

• My city has a relaxed, open attitude towards backyard flocks
• Fresh eggs, and I will know exactly how the hens were fed and treated
• Chicken TV-- they are fun to watch!
• Composted chicken manure is fertilizer gold

I will update soon as the chicks grow and as we get the coop built!

Sleepy chicks