Meet Our Farmers: Dina Kountoupes April 5, 2010

Dina enjoys a good walk in the woods

I graduated from Macalester College in 1993 where I studied environmental issues and followed that interest immediately after college to work in environmental education centers around the nation: in California, Maine, Vermont, and Minnesota.  In 1996 I took my interest in the environment to the tropics of Costa Rica where I applied my Spanish skills to work at sustainable development research centers, sustainable farms, and environmental education centers. In 2000 I returned to the Twin Cities and began working in children’s garden programs, community gardens, and local nature centers while pursuing a Master’s degree at the University of Minnesota in environmental education, with a minor in sustainable agriculture.  After graduating I continued to work in my field writing curriculum for, and designing gardens for a Schoolyard garden ecology program where I had the opportunity to follow my passion of getting more kids outside to connect to the land, as well as enjoy and learn about nature.

Meet Our Farmers: Anders Gurda March 25, 2010

Anders returns to the prairie

My name is Anders Gurda and I’m one of three of the new crop of urban farmers working with Backyard Harvest this season. A city kid hailing from Milwaukee, I grew up with a small vegetable garden in my backyard, shaded by Locust trees and our house, picked over by rabbits, cherry tomatoes stolen by chipmunks, and raspberries picked by hungry kids on summer vacation. I knew the trials and tribulations of urban farming at an early age. I eventually left the city for rural Northern Wisconsin to attend Northland College. While at school I spent my summers working for small-scale organic farms in the area, honing my skills and knowledge base on the whet stones of droughts, Midwestern monsoons, good years, and bad.

Feeling a city-sized hole in my life after graduation, and tiring of blaze orange and snowmobiles, I decided to move to the biggest and best of them all and headed to New York City to work as an environmental educator for the NYC Parks Department. I brought inner-city kids into city parks to teach them about everything from botany to native cultures to eco-art. I also spearheaded the revitalization and curriculum development of a Community Center’s youth garden in Harlem, helping me to see urban farming as an effective ligament that not only connects people with their local food systems, but to the larger natural world around them. Spurred by my experience in urban agricultural education, I shot across the country to Olympia, WA to take a job as the Education Program Coordinator and Farm Assistant for a non-profit youth empowerment farm called GRuB (Garden Raised Bounty, “without U, we’d just be GRB”). After a year of farming and teaching, the Midwest again called my name.

A relatively new transplant to the Twin Cities, I’m finding a fertile community of gardeners, activists, organizers, good-thing-doers and great-idea-havers. I’m excited to dig into these cities’ soil and plant myself in backyards throughout the area. We’re cultivating the land and we’re cultivating each other, building a community centered around local food and meaningful connections. There’s no other mission I’d be happier to live out.

New Partnerships: A Note from Our Equal Access Options Coordinator March 5, 2010

One of our goals as a program is to provide good, healthy food to families across the demographic spectrum.  Toward this end, I’ve begun working with Backyard Harvest as the Equal Access Options Coordinator.  We believe one of the ways we will be able to accomplish this goal is through partnerships with local organizations that serve low income families.

One blossoming partnership is with the Cornerstone Group which operates an affordable housing complex in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul.  By invitation, we’re entering into a new neighborhood and beginning a pilot project to serve the diverse residents of this complex, called Rivertown Commons.

At the site this summer, we will be farming a 400 sq. ft. plot (equal in size to 4 Backyard Harvest gardens) with all of our standard vegetables, herbs and edible flowers.  The garden will be bordered by 6 potato bins, a 24 sq. ft. strawberry patch, and a row of serviceberries.  We are currently collaborating with the staff and resident leadership committee at the complex to plan a community event on Earth Day this April.  During this event, we hope to introduce the garden to the residents and celebrate the possibilities that the garden will provide: high quality food, youth engagement and community building opportunities.

We are looking forward to broadening our ability to serve low income families through partnerships such as this, and look forward to more to come!

Lea Berg

Lea doing outreach for Backyard Harvest

Another garden zooming along July 3, 2009

I too have been getting my first harvests from my Backyard Harvest garden. Grayce has been doing a wonderful job ! Here are a few pics of how the garden looked a week ago:

Peas! From Dirt Garden

Garden Party And an Upcoming Bounty June 19, 2009

 

[[photo by: WontonBrutality]]

 

There has been a lot going on in Backyard Harvest land over the last week, but thunderstorms and otherwise strange weather has been getting in the way of decent photos.

Thankfully, the weather held out during the first (annual?) Backyard Harvest garden party. It was great to meet other homeowners and farmers. Everyone is so excited about being part of the project and eagerly discussed what was going on with their gardens. While we all have farmers taking care of the heavy lifting, it was obvious that every single person felt really involved with their garden and the group that organizes all of what we’ve been having such fun watching so far. So, thanks Krista, the farmers, and Catherine Turner for hosting the party!

[[photo by: WontonBrutality]]

In our own back yard, we’ve had the pea and bean structures installed. The beans get to crawl up that fancy tepee you see in the middle of the pictures and the peas have some very cute twisty twigs to curl around. Like I mentioned earlier, we finally had some rain and everything in the garden just sort of exploded – there are blooms everywhere, leaves are growing gigantic, and sprouts where we thought things were already filled in are coming up. There are clearly more surprises in the garden that we know about, and they all look like future dinners.

For our part this week, we got a cooler cleaned up and set out on the patio for Stefan to put in any harvested goodies. Right now, it’s just holding our garden journal which got an entry this week outlining the harvest process. We’ll be getting whatever is ready on Mondays and Thursdays and I can hardly wait! In case anyone is wondering how this will work, we’ll put freezer packs into the cooler on Monday and Thursday mornings so that the goods going in can be at least sort of chilled. The journal stays in there too, in a freezer storage bag thing to make sure it stays dry.

I also got a decent panoramic done for this month and it’s obvious how much the garden has come along even from week to week – what a bounty!

[[photo by: WontonBrutality]]

 

- Lisa in Kingfield

 

The full Flickr collection of pictures for this project is over on Flickr.

A Backyard Harvest for our Local Food Shelf June 18, 2009

As our economy tightens, it is important to remember that many of us will have trouble scraping together enough money to pay the bills. If we consider food to be a basic human right as the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights suggests, no one should have to go hungry. Our local food shelves are on the forefront of seeing this basic human right fulfilled. Last week, we installed our final garden – this one dedicated to the local food shelf. Each week volunteers will stop by the garden to weed, keep pests in check, harvest fresh veggies & herbs & bring them to the food shelf for distribution to the community.

We are excited to be collaborating with Good Neighbor Gardens to care for this garden. Good Neighbor Gardens is a local project that is part of the Summer of Solutions program catalyzing youth-led solutions for a green economy. GNG has provided many of the plants in the plot as well as the people power to help them grow.

Thanks to Mary Hanson for donating space in her yard for this garden & to Jackie & Sarah who helped to install it.

If you are interested in donating money or time to help make this garden a much needed source of fresh food in the food shelves, please let me know!

~ Krista

Interns Jackie McGraw & Sarah Leone install the food shelf garden at Mary Hanson's home.

Meet our farmers: Stefan Meyer May 27, 2009

Planting Lisa's garden

Hi! My name is Stefan Meyer, and I am one of three urban farmers working with PRI’s Backyard Harvest Program. I was raised on a family farm in southwest Minnesota, where we grew the traditional corn/soybeans in our fields and raised countless numbers of turkeys. (Worthington, MN, my hometown, is known as the Turkey Capitol of the World… a dubious distinction indeed!) On my farm we also had a large vegetable garden used to feed the family, and my mom used to can/freeze beans and corn, and made killer homemade pickles. This was my first introduction to food production, and has led me on the path I continue to this day.

The past 11 years I have spent living out in Oregon, where I studied and practiced permaculture and ecological agriculture/gardening methods. I went through the OSU Extension Service Master Composters program and their Organic Gardening certification course. As well, I attended the University of Oregon where I studied Environmental Science, with a focus on biological systems.

I am never happier than when I have my hands in the soil, working the Earth, and feeling the wind blow through my hair. I am thrilled to be a part of this exciting pilot project with PRI, and look forward to helping grow not just food, but community as well.

Sprouts Are Becoming Plants

[[photo by: WontonBrutality]]

Stefan has been filling in our garden little by little every few days. We’re almost getting to look like the plot is full and things are definitely growing (in some cases, with lots of healthy enthusiasm). Still, we’ve been kind of treading water a bit here, urging plants to grow into something more like proper dinner.

There has been compost tea added to the garden and thinning of the greens and watering and lots and lots of watching. Word on the street is that we might have some salads starting soon and we’ve got the cooler prepped for any harvest-able stuff.

This week, the husband and I made a compost bin as well. We did a setup very similar to what is shown in the video here. We’ll be putting kitchen scraps and extra straw from the garden into the bin in hopes of getting good compost later in the season. The only extra modifications we did was to use a drill instead of the nail to make holes and we’ve been discussing how to put a door in the bottom, so that we don’t have to tip the whole thing out to get the final compost out. Any suggestions out there? Anything we should be doing differently compost-wise? We’re both winging it here!

I’m also thinking it’s about time for another panoramic shot of the garden – it looks so different from the first one posted a while ago. I’ve tried a couple of setups, but I think I need to keep playing. More full-scale pictures are coming soon, promise!

 

The full Flickr collection of pictures for this project is over on Flickr.

Mid-week Update May 21, 2009

Stefan just called to say that he’s added some more things to the garden. I know that trellises for the peas and maybe a bean tepee  were on the table. We’ll find out when we get home and I’ll get pictures up as soon as possible. The little sprouties are all getting bigger every day!

Bed installation, first planting May 12, 2009

Hi all;

I’m Karen, another backyard harvest(er?) participant.
I’m new to wordpress (I’m over at LJ) so please forgive my stupid newbie errors. =)

My garden was installed in mid-April near the back of my yard, over a cardboard bed.

From Dirt Garden

From the other angle:

From Dirt Garden

Yesterday, Grayce did the first planting: peas, radishes, carrots, beets, onions, leeks, cabbage and cauliflower. I’m already hungry!

From Dirt Garden

Leeks?

From Dirt Garden