Summer 2012 at GIGM

our big news

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:03:19 -0500

Sitting down to write this, I have to admit, I am distracted. My littlest one is pushing buttons on the printer, I need to pick up my pre-schooler, and there’s dinner to be fixed (well, and the breakfast dishes still to be cleared!). I’m sure this sounds just like your life too. We are all busy people!
So here’s the news - fast.
The Early Street Community Garden has always been on borrowed time (and land!). But over the course of the last three summers, something magical happened. All of YOU made time for Early Street - to garden there, to take a class there, to hang out or go to a pot luck. You’ve cared about one another, you’ve cared about the garden ...and the garden became more than a space to grow food. It became a community hub.
Now there is an opportunity to change the path for this special place, from temporary to permanent. Working with the Trust for Public Land, the administration for theTown of Morristown would like to preserve the land the garden is on, then lease it back to Grow it Green Morristown. We’d run the community garden and put in a public park. But we need your help to do it.
It costs a lot of money to save land in urban areas.
But it isn’t your money we need - we need your time.

Please come celebrate Valentine’s Day with us! On Tuesday, Feb. 14th at 7:30 pm at the Morristown Town Hall (200 South St.) the Town Council will vote to approve (hopefully) an application to Green Acres to apply for the funding needed to save the Early Street Community Garden. Please come show your support for this project.
Take a look back and see what you made possible...

Before

Early Days at Early Street

Building the Beds

Opening Day

Free Classes

boy was i wrong...

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 09:00:14 -0500

This winter, something new happened in my life... I actually started appreciating having my own herbs to use in winter. I confess, I've always poo-pooed the "pot of herbs on the windowsill" as "why bother?" My gardening dreams are about bounty; big huge gardens filled with enough of whatever I'm growing to "put up" for winter (and folks, that's still just a dream!) so you could say I was a nay-sayer of smaller ventures.

Boy, was I wrong!

I was doing my food shopping and needed "fresh rosemary" in a recipe. I was aghast that a measly sprig of herbs, encased in a clam-shell box of plastic was over three bucks! What a rip-off! But there I was, in the middle of winter, with no pot of herbs of my own! So, I reluctantly placed that plastic box in my cart.

Yet, deeper in the isle, for $3.50 I could buy a small pot of rosemary! And that's just what I did. Basil too.

Away with the half dead, plastic boxed, environmentally guilt ridden herbs!

And it was the best $3.50 ever. We've carefully tended these little pots of herbs. Snipping only exactly what we need, we have been rewarded with rosemary buttermilk biscuits, basil focaccia, herb scented chicken, and oh so much more!

Even better than the fresh herb taste has been seeing the affinity my pre-schooler has for the plants. I have found these little pots are just what he needs to feel connected to his food, to growing, to tending for something.

Who thought a little pot of herbs for $3.50 could be so empowering?

I'll never look at the windowsill the same way.

Now for the technical details...
I bought the pots of herbs at Kings on South Street. I have found that you really need to be on-top of the watering. They dry out quicker than I expected. I use a bread pan and fill it with water, then set the pots in it for a bit to soak up the water (vs. watering from above). Enjoy!

and so it begins

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:52:59 -0500

I made a New Year’s Resolution this year to try to better chronicle the production of plants for the Urban Farm. So here we are.... forgive me if the prose isn’t quite flowery (no pun intended), as we’re just going to get down to brass tacks.
Ok. So here’s what I’m up to...
First. Inventory the supplies. I went though all the seeds (and there were A LOT) and dumped the packets that I’ve been hanging on to for ages, which will have a low germination rate and so therefor not be worth the time and effort to plant. I also dumped any packets that looked like they had gotten wet. I did put aside any flower seeds that were past their dates... the back of the Early Street Community Garden had some soil moved around, which means there’s a nice seedbed waiting... I figured, rather than just throw the seeds in the compost, I’d throw them in the back of Early Street. Who knows, maybe they’ll take.
Next, I went though what we’ve got on hand. The Country Mile Gardens and The Farm at Green Village both donated their old seeds to us so we have a nice collection to start with (and to give away at the swap!!). But there’s always seed types that you just can’t get locally, and that we really want at the farm so it’s time to thumb through the catalogs! This year we’re going to be sourcing our seeds primarily from Johnny’s Selected Seeds and High Mowing Organic Seeds. The quality at both are excellent. But there are many, many different places to choose from.
At the Urban Farm, we use a mix of seed types - from F1 Hybrids to Heirloom, open pollinated varieties. We’ll talk more about F1 Hybrids in a later post, but for you non-botany folks, be assured they are not the same things as GMO’s. These two suppliers have what we need.
In addition to seeds, I’m sorting my supplies, cleaning trays and lids and thinking about getting seed starting mix. I usually use ProMix because it works nicely and I can buy it locally, but I do love this mix by Gardener’s Supply and this one by Johnny’s... if only the shipping wasn’t such a killer!
While we’re on the subject of seed mixes, you’ll see that the one from Gardener’s Supply is called “transplanting mix” and that they sell one called “germinating mix” - the difference is that the transplanting one isn’t as fine as the germinating one. It works just find for starting seeds in - you don’t need to go through the added expense of buying the special “germinating” mix. That being said, I do keep one or two bags of it on hand for when I am starting tiny, tiny seeds - like snapdragons. Anything where the seed is like dust, you might want to consider using the fine, fluffy germinating mix. But for your tomatoes and the like, “transplant” mix, (or an all purpose mix like ProMix) works just fine.
Well, that’s it for today...
Next time I’ll be sharing some of the wonderful things we’ll be growing this year! I’m so excited!!

yep, that’s us.

Wed, 4 Jan 2012 13:44:08 -0500

In December we were honored by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection with a Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award. We received an Honorable Mention in the Healthy & Sustainable Communities Category. Congratulations to all the wonderful groups represented at the awards; there’s great things happening in ‘Jersey!

Thinking about... butter

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:35:11 -0500

Last night at our Board meeting, were starting talking about the importance of blogging. It seems that we just don’t do enough of it. Given that we have a blog, we should be using it, right? So tonight, as I was putting the baby to bed, I was thinking about blogging and … butter. Yes, butter. It seems that I should be eating more of it. Really – the doctor said that if I want to produce wholesome milk for my baby, I need to eat more butter.

No, not just any butter. But pasture butter – that is, butter from grass fed cows. I will admit, it is a lovely thing. If you’ve never had pasture butter, you have yet to enjoy one of life’s richest (no pun intended) luxuries. It is yellow – golden yellow – from all the green grass in the animal’s diet, and it is filled will omega-3 fatty acids. Just the thing my baby’s brain needs.

I must say, I’ve never gotten a recommendation from the doctor as grand as this one.
Eat more butter.

And thinking about butter, made me think of The Artist Baker in Morristown. Her food is rich, unadulterated, made with pure, wholesome foods. Which includes real butter. No fake nothin’. Oh my, I love that place.

But I love it for more reasons than buttery goodness.

Our tag line at Grow it Green Morristown is “Creating Common Ground, Growing Community.” For this work we have been honored by the governor of New Jersey, the Daily Record, the Neighborhood House, the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions, the New Jersey Association of Landscape Architects, and others… which is all wonderful, but when I go to the Artist Baker, I want to give them an award for doing exactly what our tag line says.

How’s that, you ask?

Besides the physical space being quaint, inviting, and yes – artistic, the business itself supports the growing of community. It goes beyond buying from local sources (which, they do buy from the Urban Farm, among other farms).

For instance, my husband and I were there a few weeks ago for one of these dinners they have been hosting. I could tell you about the wonderful little bites of polenta, topped with local wild mushrooms, or the diced, roasted parsnips which were the sweetest little morsels, or the Chicago-style deep dish pizza topped with a meatball that made my mama heart sing… but I’m not a food critic, so I’ll skip all that.

What I will tell you about is that the people who go to these every-now-and-then dinners have become friends. Truly. Each month my husband and I meet new people and that “meeting” becomes “knowing” while we luxuriate in the amazing food presented to us over the course of a few hours on a Sunday evening.

Meeting people isn’t easy for me. I’m shy one-on-one. Really.

And I’m terrible with names. Which makes it all, oh so much worse.

This month we were seated next to a couple of which I had met the wife previously. I knew that, because she looked familiar to me... and she knew my name. This means I am meant to know hers (right?). But again, I’m terrible with names. So I waited for her husband to address her…

Now, let me stop here and reiterate – we were seated next to them. We didn’t choose whom to be seated with (though, that’s an option if you wish) but the spirit of the Artist Baker makes you trust one another. Trust to be seated with people you don’t know.
That’s saying a lot here in ‘Jersey!

Turns out, this couple lives one street over from us! And I feel I know them now. I know they fell in love though their shared passion for sailing. I know their differing religious backgrounds, struggles with faith and tradition; I know their passion for adventure. I know them. There is magic to breaking bread with people that unites us. Good food without fellowship now feels so lonely to me.

But finding a way to create that fellowship - all on your own - can be daunting.
“Creating Common Ground, Growing Community” is an art, more than a skill. And there are so many ways that we each can partake of that mission. And there are so many people around us who are, in their own way, quietly, without awards, growing our community.

So here’s my award: The Food and Fellowship Award.
Winner: The Artist Baker.

And I know that The Artist Baker is not alone in growing the community of Morristown. We are so very fortunate to live in a place filled with people who work to find the connections between us all, to find what unites us as humans, and to bring about the best that humanity has to offer.

From all of us at Grow it Green Morristown – thank you for all that you do and Happy Holidays.

And now, I think I’ll go dive into an almond raspberry crumble bar. Yeah butter!

come join in at the Urban Farm

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:38:27 -0400

Hello all, 
I am Shaun Ananko, the new farmer at the Urban Farm at Layfette. I look forward to meeting you all and working with you on the farm this season. There is a lot to learn from the garden that I am excited to share with people, small and tall!  I have farming and gardening in my background. My grandfather grew up on a farm in Flanders NJ, and my mother always had a home garden for us to play in and learn from. I have been studying and volunteering at local farms for the past four years and I am working to get a degree in agriculture from County College of Morris.
 Along with farming, I am also a Beekeeper. I have been keeping bees for pollination for 3 seasons at Valleyvue Organic CSA on Picattiny Road. I practice natural, chemical free beekeeping. I believe that beekeeping is important, not for the honey, but because bees are in trouble and need help to survive and keep pollinating. I will be managing the Grow it Green bees at the Early Street Community Garden. If you want to learn more about beekeeping, keep an eye out for the classes Grow it Green will be offering during the summer.   The farm is open for the community on Saturdays and Sundays from 9:30 am to noon; come on by!

It seems like spring is finally here to stay…

Until then,

Farmer Shaun

a new season begins

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:20:37 -0400

While the season actually began way back in January, with ordering of seeds and the subsequent seed starting operation in the basement, it seems that we are just now getting to say “hello growing season 2011!” to all of you.
The Urban Farm at Lafayette has been a busy place this spring! We have a wonderful group of people working to steward the farm this summer. Headed by Farmer Shaun, we have two interns - Michaela and Rona - as well as a number of steady volunteers who have committed to working regularly at the farm. We are so very thankful for their labor, knowledge and, most of all, their enthusiastic spirits!
Classes from the Morris School District have been flowing in and out of the farm gates. We’ve had days that it literally has been back-to-back visits from classes!
In addition to tasting lovely vegetables, like radishes, spinach, swiss chard, and peas, the children have been very excited with the newest addition to the Urban Farm - chickens! Our three girls arrived a week ago and are already hard at working improving our soil.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Early Street Community Garden and all the wonderful things taking shape there. Under the care of long-time volunteer and film maker Christian Schuller, the Community Garden looks better than ever. People’s beds are looking loved and cared for, the new shed is fantastic and Christian has a whole line of great events coming up. We’re incredible fortunate that he’s helping out GIGM with the Garden!

the future of agriculture...

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 22:00:04 -0400

Last weekend I joined a group of around 60 youth (defined as 18-35 years old) gathered in a world café type setting to discuss the future of agriculture. Most of us were new or aspiring farmers. While conversations often had to be directed away from the downward spiral of thinking – based on current trends of monoculture, disease outbreaks, bankrupt farmers and factory farming – the group did stay true to its course with visions of hope and inspiration. Many of us had experience with or were involved in the growing trend of localizing the food system and sharing knowledge and food with those around us. This world café was how I was welcomed to the Biodynamic Conference at the Pfieffer Center in Chestnut Ridge NY.
Currently our model of agriculture is based on an infinite supply of energy. As the energy paradigm shifts and prices go up, water will be harder to acquire for irrigation and the fertilizers used on most farms will be out of economic reach for most farmers. The future of agriculture relies on our soils and our willingness to cooperate with one another as well as with our ecosystem.
Every time that we buy food we are telling the agricultural industry something. We know this and yet we still vote for easy and cheap. Convenience wears down our will. We want a better world, but feel comfortable now and find it hard to justify spending more money on food when a similar product is available on sale.
Biodynamics is a way of viewing agriculture. Not as a way of ‘returning to the land’ but rather, a way of working with the land to re-create wholeness and heal the split that humans have from the land. The themes in biodynamics include biodiversity, rhythms, relationships, and intuition. A theme throughout the conference was forming relationships of cooperation with the land that you are growing on, the ecosystem your land is in, and with the community around you. In this way farms become not industrial production lots but a fundamental part of the health and wholeness of any community. By supporting the agriculture and biodiversity in our area, we are helping to create a foundation on which life can grow and flourish.
Grow it Green Morristown is a model of this ideal. Building a productive garden in the heart of Morristown is a small step to a more food-secure Morristown. People come out to volunteer, to learn, and to share food. This is a way of fostering relationships where before there were none. Food is a fundamental part of all of our lives and an easy common ground for all of us to connect around. More farms means more jobs. In a time of economic insecurity, when people don’t know where their next meal is coming from, it is encouraging to see more people getting involved in the future of our food system.
The future of agriculture depends on each and every one of us getting involved in our fundamental need to eat good, healthy food. The future of our families, our towns, our country, our world depends on us moving to a more localized economy and moving towards a more food-secure environment. Getting involved in and supporting your local farms and/or growing your own food are great first steps in living a more sustainable life. Not only that, the joy and inspiration found in watching seeds grow against all odds can make it all worth it!

an unwelcome guest

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:58:54 -0400

Tomato hornworms have entered the scene at the Urban Farm. As sales started the hornworm decided to dive in for free bites of the tomato plants.

The tomato hornworm are known for destroying tomato plants by eating the leaves and sometimes burrowing into the green fruit. Here are a few pictures of the worm and the damage it has done.

There is an organic answer though: a small braconid wasp. It lays it's eggs along the spine of the hornworm and when the eggs hatch they feed on the worm and kill it. So we encourage such things here at the farm. Parasitic wasps welcome! Tomato hornworms not welcome!

let the bees be

Sun, 8 Aug 2010 14:33:13 -0400

If you've visited the pumpkin patch at the Urban Farm at Lafayette, you may have seen first-hand the intricate connection between bees and flowering plants. Without bees - honeybees or otherwise - we would be pretty hard-strapped for food. 1/3 of our food supply in America is dependent on them to be exact. Pumpkins are just the beginning. Melons, squashes, blueberries, apples, nuts, alfalfa, clover, cocoa, vanilla, mango, plums, apricots, cherries, avocado, canola, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, cotton, carrots, coffee, and kiwi are just SOME of the crops that would not survive without the efforts of the bees. But can the bees survive without help from us these days?

According to the flyer that just came in the mail from a bee equipment supplier, they cannot. When I opened the mailed advertisement, the first page was told me that I had to put chemical and 'natural' remedies into my hive in order for my bees to be healthy and strong for the winter months. They craft yellow soy patties attempting to feed the bees protein posing as pollen. This little pamphlet is proclaiming the cheapest source of high fructose corn syrup to feed the bees you steal honey from. They sell essential oils to kill mites (which also kill microbes in the hive that may be beneficial to the bees), they sell prophylactic antibiotics to kill bacteria in the hive (some of which may be beneficial to the bees), they sell chemical insecticides to kill moths and beetles that can kill weak hives (which can also kill bees, they are insecticides after all!).

It may be a glum picture that I paint, but it follows what is innocently taught at most beekeeping courses throughout North America, and many people do not question the techniques. When walking into such an adventure as beekeeping, we tend to trust the people guiding the way, and usually those people have been using these invasive techniques because that is what they have been taught. It is, after all, how we will save the bees from disease and death.

But is it?

Mites are small parasitic bugs that attach to adult bees and bee larvae in order to feed off of them. Often the mites weaken a hive and bring in disease. If there are high mite levels in a hive, they can destroy that hive in a season, since they multiply much more rapidly than the bees. The 'organic/natural' approach to treating the bees for mites has been to apply essential oils (such as thyme) or acids (oxalic and formic). I have seen people use these and I am not convinced that they are all that 'natural'. Because bees use pheromones to communicate, the application of such strong oils will impair that ability (and if you want to use the wax for candles, your candles will end up smelling more like your treatment than the beautiful sweetness of bees!). Acids are caustic and can kill a hive if used incorrectly. These options don't seem viable to me.

Fortunately, a small movement has been forming here in the northeast around treatment free beekeeping. It is a more hands off approach to the bees, trusting that the bees know what the bees needs are and letting them follow their insticts rather than ours. Beekeepers are working hard at breeding bees that know how to deal with these mites. They are not breeding bees to produce tons of honey or to be gentle, they are breeding bees to survive. An average beekeeper looses 50% or more of their hives in the winter. Clearly the way bees are cared for nowadays is not working.

Last weekend I went to a treatment free bee conference in Leominster MA along with 100 other people from near and far. I didn't hear much about bees dying at this conference, it was more about bees thriving. Thriving and Swarming! A swarm is a hive's way of procreating. When the number of workers exceeds the capacity of the hive, the workers will rear a new queen and when she is ready to be born about a third of the hive will go out with the old queen and find a new place to live. This is how bees thrive. This is how the bees move and populate an area. Beekeepers today are taught to stop this from happening at all costs. Some beekeepers clip their queens wings so that she cannot fly away. Bees make honey and if 1/3 or your bees go away then 1/3 of your honey goes away too. The thing is though that when a swarm leaves there is a break in the brood cycle which gives the workers less nest tending time and possibly more honey gathering time. This gives the mites less food and less of a chance of survival. The new queen will generally be vigorous and create a strong colony just on the fact that they created her. Bees that swarm are more likely to survive according to the low numbers of winter deaths that the beekeepers at this conference were giving.

Maybe the bees could live without us, but the fact of the matter is is that we are in a relationship with them that is thousands of years old and we have to find our way to balance with the bees and the bee nature. The land is in it's full glory right now and it is our responsibility to tend it, with love and respect. First do no harm. Meaning, when we see a problem, we observe it for a while before we intervene, because the intervention could be more damaging than we imagined. Let the bees be!

Tammy will be teaching a great bee class this Wed., August 11th at 6 pm
at the Early Street Community Garden.