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Schoolyard urban farming (BC Farmers’ Market Trail Stories)

BC Farmers’ Markets | June 2, 2022

Link to YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StEN-ZHDIgM&t=11s

“We get a deeper sense of where our food comes from by being able to grow it.”

A breath of fresh air from life in the big city, urban farming is an important part of local food production. Located in the city of Vancouver, this Story from the BC Farmers’ Market Trail features Fresh Roots Urban Farm founders Gray Oron and Ilana Labow who strive to make sure their communities are provided with fresh food. Since 2009, the members of their urban farm society have been working directly with schools to teach youth about where a career in food production can take them.

Meet more local farmers, makers, and artisans at City of Vancouver Farmers’ Markets: https://bcfarmersmarkettrail.com/regi…

The BC Farmers’ Market Trail proudly showcases 145+ authentic BC Association of Farmers’ Market members across British Columbia. Dedicated to helping local food thrive, the BC Farmers’ Market Trail is your route to fresh, local, in-season food and artisan goods direct from the farmers who produce them.

Follow The BC Farmers’ Market Trail:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bcfarmersmarket
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BCAFM
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bcfarmersmarket
Website: https://bcfarmersmarkettrail.com

#BCFMTStories #BCFarmersMarkets #ExploreBC

Click the image below to check out the segment!

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Farmer’s Log, Seed-date June 1, 2021

Nuts and Bolting

The nuts of farming, to me, translate to the “awe, nuts!” moments – like when you arrive one morning to your lovingly hand-reared broccoli transplants and find that they have all bolted prematurely. Riding the waves this spring – whether they were tropical hot or arctic cold – meant that a lot of our plantings behaved differently than expected. This early in the spring, when most of our planting spaces are spoken for, it’s hard to make up for failed crops without having a time machine. The effect for Fresh Roots is that we have adjusted our market start dates, and introduced a “soft-market” concept to our first week. 

That said, we did have many gorgeously productive days on site, with all our farm team recruited and in the process of all staff (22 new team members!) training over the past few Mondays. The Vancouver farm team transformed our greenhouse over the last 4 weeks from wild, gregarious, multi-shaped leaves bursting over every surface to a serene, warm oasis with tame baby head lettuces lined up in rows of green and purple. While seeding and rearing transplants is a lovely, crafty task, the prep for transplanting is everything in this process. 

Putting the Seedlings To Bed

When seedlings are ready, their bed has to be made. To start, we first have to uncover the beds that have been sleeping under silage tarps or lumber wrap all winter. If they were uncovered previously, we need to weed — sometimes for hours — before we can move on. Next, we measure and mark out each bed: 36 inches wide, with an 18 inch path. Then we wheelbarrow 3 loads of compost for every 45 foot bed, rake the compost out, and wheelhoe the bed to integrate the nutrition and fluff the mattress, so to speak. If a fluffy bed is a mattress, then consider row cover the sheets. For transplanted beds, the best way to save yourself future battles with weeds is to apply a sheet of landscape fabric to the prepared bed to prevent scattered, wild seeds from seeing the sun or getting irrigated. When we run out of fancy fabric, sometimes we create low-cost covers out of lumber wrap that we cut holes into with rickety scissors found at the bottom of cracked rubbermaid boxes. Transplants are popped into holes in these sheets, and eventually their plumage cascades over the surface, hiding the fact that their sheets are not Egyptian cotton, but rather, black plastic.  

Prepping our beds in this way not only prevents unwanted weed pressure, it also retains the nutritional quality of the soil, preventing nitrogen from being taken up by unplanned plants. Additionally, it prevents surface leaching, by blocking irrigation and rain outside of the holes we farmers have cut. In these ways, we are serving our soil as well as our crops, to minimize our nitrogen output, which also protects the environment.

We did lots of other cool stuff besides bed prep, including clover angels (who knew this was a thing?), building an epic tomato trellis, donating 14 totes of veggies to South Vancouver Neighbourhood House, and wrestling rhubarb – whose leaves I’m considering using in place of landscape fabric, maybe, to suppress weeds? Also makes a great hat during a thunderstorm. 

 

June will see our first CSA Pickup and Market Days – don’t miss them! 

 

We’ll be at the Italian Cultural Centre from 4-7 on Wednesdays starting June 2nd. We’re located at the southwest corner adjacent to the park-look for the white tents, orange signage, and basketball hoops!

AND

Vancouver Farmers Market at Riley Park from 10-2 on Saturdays starting June 12th.

 

-Farmer Camille