Saturday, August 21 8am

5608 Joe Sayers, 78757

Everyone’s favorite urban, neighborhood CSA is expanding!  CSA = COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE, which consequently, is impossible without said community support.  So come on out Saturday morning & help Paige, Keith, Michelle, & cohorts plant potatoes & prep FOUR NEW farm sites!

Have you been toying around with the idea of creating a garden in your yard, but you can’t quite figure out HOW?  This is a great opportunity to learn from some hard-working young farmers who have done just that.  Curious about the dreaded Colorado potato beetle?  (Which, contrary to its title, will eat the leaves of your beloved nightshades no matter where you live.)  Steve Martinez is our resident “BugMan” & can answer your questions.

Will it be hard work?  YES!  Will you hang out with some incredibly knowledgeable, fun-loving folks?  YES!  Will there be a reward?  YES!  (Read on, dear volunteer.)  The hard work should be finished well before noon, then we get to EAT!

VOLUNTEER INFO:

All volunteers meet at 8am at 5608 Joe Sayers.  Groups will then split up–with some staying at the main UP site to plant potatoes & others heading around to FOUR NEW residences for farm prep.

BYO water bottle, coolers & ice will be provided.  BYO snacks for throughout the morning.

Coffee provided (we’re still working on this, but cross your fingers!).

BBQ provided later in the afternoon!!!  Be sure to stick around for some finger-lickin’ good, smokin’ grub!

]]> http://austingrowersguild.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/were-growing-up/feed/ 0 austingrowersguild http://austingrowersguild.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/urban-patchwork-mulch-party-2k10/ http://austingrowersguild.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/urban-patchwork-mulch-party-2k10/#comments Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:40:46 +0000 austingrowersguild http://austingrowersguild.wordpress.com/?p=122 ]]> Save the Date!!!
Urban Patchwork is Growing!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Come one, come all!!!

The creative, hard-working Urban Patchwork team is prepping four new farms for their neighborhood (Crestview) distributed farm program.  Urban Patchwork is growing more than produce, they’re growing community–and you can help!  Learn all about what UP is doing in Austin by visiting their website, & don’t forget to sign up for their newsletter to stay up to date on season-long projects.

Come on out and share the fun!  Learn all about deep mulch farming and what fall vegetables you can grow successfully, while helping to plant potatoes and spread mulch.  It will be a sweaty, fun time spent with friends and farmers.

With fall planting season upon us, now is the time to soak up all the incredible information Paige, Keith, & Co. have to share–wanna learn about potatoes & the bugs that haunt them?  Steve Martinez, AGG’s resident bug man, will be on hand with IPM tips!  Interested in tending an early-winter garden (yes, ’tis the time to think about early winter crops–hard to believe), or getting a late cucumber and pepper harvest?  We’ll have answers for that, too!

Members of the Austin Growers Guild and FOOGs.org will be in attendance, as will some current Urban Patchwork CSA subscribers–so you can find out about their experience with this innovative, community-focused farm.

Save the date and come help Urban Patchwork grow!

Saturday August 21, 2010 8am

The party begins at 8am just east of 2222 and Burnet in North/Central Austin.  Check back here often–more details will be posted as they become available.

Plan to stick around after the workday–we very well may be screening the movie Fresh, & you can be sure wherever the AGG is, there will be food, too!

Please direct your questions to Keith, Urban Patchwork’s Farm (totally awesome) Manager, by emailing him at MulchParty *at* UrbanPatchwork *dot* org

I’m out of town until next week…Happy Gardening everyone!!  (And Happy Father’s Day, too!)

I’m busy typing up an article about the Urban Farm Raising to run in this week’s issue of The RagBlog, a non-profit internet newsmagazine produced by activist journalists committed to progressive social change.  There may be a follow-up next week as well…I’ll keep you posted!

I am simply floored by the incredible amount of support we had for the first ever AGG Urban Farm Raising!  Over the course of two days, nearly 100 people turned out to WORK–and I do mean WORK–at turning a weedy, rocky, under-appreciated 1/2 acre of Austin real estate into the beginnings of a community garden and urban CSA farm.

I cannot stress enough the gratitude we at the Austin Growers Guild–and Steve especially–feel(s) for being the beneficiaries of such an outpouring of community involvement.  I’m all warm and fuzzy!

Warm fuzziness aside, I’m also freakin’ pooped!  Temps over ninety degrees + that lovely Austin humidity + shovels and pick-axes and chipper-shredders and tillers = a welcome sense of physical exhaustion.  They also = mental exhaustion, and I know you’ll all excuse me for taking a couple of days to upload all the photos and give you a complete reflection on the weekend.  And let’s not forget the really exciting part–what’s next??  We’re working on that, too.  Believe me, there’s plenty of farming, gardening, and skill-building work within this community to go around!

There’s an Austin Growers Guild Shutterfly site in the works, so that anyone who wants can upload and/or download photos, order prints, and all kinds of other goodies.  I’m working on the overall content and organization of this site as well, so you can be sure things will continue to evolve.  Be sure to sign up over there on the right where it says “Keep me in the Loop!” & you’ll get notifications of updates.  Or something like that.

Again, THANK YOU!!!

The first day of Austin Growers Guild’s Inaugural Urban Farm Raising was an incredibly rockin’ success.  Over FIFTY people joined us at the Hogg Farm/RetroGarden (tentatively re-named Hogg Heaven, thanks Eva!) to clear a half acre of under-utilized city plot and make way for a productive urban farm and community garden.

The volunteers had a great time using tons of great tools–diamond hoes, shovels, power drills–and there were a few guys who could hardly tear themselves away from the tillers!  Steve even broke out the auger a day earlier than planned, just to keep up with the enthusiasm!  Everyone built up their energy with a great, healthy breakfast and some really terrific coffee–thanks to Thunderbird and Houndstooth Coffee for getting our energy up so early in the morning!  And again a BIG THANKS to Tecolote Farm, Naegelin Family Farm, and Ottmers Family Farm for supplying us with delicious fresh veggies for our breakfast.  Please be sure to express your thanks in person to those guys at the three weekly Sustainable Food Center Farmer’s Markets!

We’ll be out at the farm bright and early again tomorrow morning–CLICK HERE to see the Sunday schedule, including breakfast menu. Sure hope to see you there!

I’ve been slaaaaaving away in the kitchen since yesterday afternoon getting all the breakfast prep taken care of.  It’s unbelievable the generosity of the community–Tecolote Farm, Ottmers Family Farm, Naegelin Family Farm, and Rigel Thurston’s happy hens have provided us with an incredible amount of fresh produce and eggs.  SOOOO much, I can’t even tell you.  Suffice to say I’ll be happy not to chop another potato for a good year or so!

Saturday morning Michele & I will be serving up about 70 scrambled eggs, parsley-ed potatoes, greens, and 3 different kinds of muffins.  That oughta keep you farmers goin’!  Sunday we’ve got brown rice, beans, steamed squash, and fresh salsa, plus any muffins that might have survived Saturday’s breakfast.  Come early, or your hungry hosts just might eat it all before you get there!

So let’s talk PARKING.

As I mentioned in a previous post, please consider CAR-POOLING as this is a residential location.  We’ll have the grassy lot at the corner of North Loop & Jim Hogg Ave available for parking, but please do think about riding with a friend!

It’s going to be a wonderful, eventful weekend!  BIG THANKS to all who have contributed and to those who have signed up to participate!

OH!  One piece of bad news: the massage therapists we’d promised for the after-party Sunday afternoon have had to back out.  So sad.  If you know any massage therapists who might be interested in some muscle rejuvenating love for weary, sweaty volunteers (sounds great, doesn’t it!) please send them my way–KatyHamill (at) that google mail server (dot) com  (Damn spammers always find me, sorry for the ambiguity with the email address.)

WAIT–volunteer participants, you say?  I thought this was an instructional weekend full of free farming and gardening workshops–did I sign up to volunteer??  With apologies to Ricky Ricardo, lemme ‘splain:

All workshops are HANDS-ON.  We (you, me, everyone who shows up) are turning an under-utilized, sun-drenched urban lot into productive farmland!  That means we’ll all be getting our hands dirty and our backs sweaty.  (It’s okay, no one will mind the smell–we’re all farmers/gardeners, too.)  There’s no better teacher than experience, after all!  Most workshops will be held “in the field” while simultaneously accomplishing a task, e.g. in the Machinery and Tools for Farm and Garden Use, Steve Martinez will demonstrate the use of an auger to dig holes for a fence, along with smaller hand tools such as a CobraHead, shovel, pitchfork, and who knows what else; during the Chicken Coop Building workshop, Paige Hill will help you actually build a chicken coop on the property; in the two Soil Building workshops with Steven Hebbard, volunteer/participants will first clear the land in the community garden area, then build up the soil for better crop production.

In other words, please come prepared for a dirt-y experience–no seminars or Power Points here!  We’ll have all the tools available, but you may want to bring a pair of gloves.  And don’t forget your water bottle!

PLEASE CONSIDER CAR-POOLING, as this IS a residential location!!!

***********

THUNDERBIRD COFFEE added to the event sponsors list–both Saturday and Sunday morning this sweet local coffee shop will be providing us with ICED COFFEE to wash down our delicious home-cooked breakfast!

Sunday morning, we’ll be giving away a CobraHead garden weeding tool to one lucky volunteer, thanks to a generous offer from the folks at CobraHead.  Be sure to put your name in the drawing!