Allyson Rosemore is one of our amazing Educators and is the founder of Owl’s Roost Farm, an urban farm located in Rockford, Illinois. As a passionate compost expert, Allyson teaches about the cycle of food production and consumption and why compost is important. She says:
Allyson says a fun fact about composting is that the microbiology of the soil the composting materials are in contact with has an impact on the microbiology (and nutritional profile) of the finished compost. This means that choosing your composting site based on what you intend to use your compost for can make a difference. Join the compost partyIf you have the ability and desire to compost at home, great! If not, consider joining the Owl’s Roost Community Compost program. It’s a bucket swap program, so you’ll get a bucket from Allyson, fill it up, then swap it for a clean one. Repeat! To compost with Owl’s Roost Farm, sign up through Grown By.
0 Comments
Letter from our Executive Director, February 2022 An equitable food system is one in which everyone, especially people living in low-income communities and communities of color, can participate, benefit and prosper. Please just sit with that for a moment: everyone can participate, benefit and prosper. Everyone can prosper.
An equitable food system is one in which everyone, especially people living in low-income communities and communities of color, can participate, benefit and prosper. Please just sit with that for a moment: everyone can participate, benefit and prosper. Everyone can prosper. To me, focusing on the word ‘prosper’ is key to increasing equity in the food system because it’s really easy to think that participation and benefit just mean access to fresh food, and that access to fresh food is enough. But it’s not even close. Should you support your local food pantry and advocate for food access in your community? Absolutely. But here are a few more ways you can deepen your efforts to bring about a more equitable food system:
February is the month we celebrate Black History, the month we celebrate love and friendship, the month we celebrate CSAs during CSA Week. The message is clear, don’t you think? Celebrate February by taking action today to support a more equitable food system. Everyone can and should prosper. AuthorJackie de Batista, Executive Director
Also, currently we are utilizing a heater to warm a portion of one of our high tunnels and we are experimenting with growing vegetables over the winter. This creates its own challenges because we run the heater during the day while we are on the farm and turn it off in the evening when we depart. Typically at night is when it’s the coldest outside and our plants are left under these conditions, but we cover all of our plants with row covers to try and provide an extra layer of insulation during this time. We are experimenting with growing both cool season crops (kale, spinach, collards, mustards, etc), and some warm season crops (beans, and summer squash). Also, we have to hand water our new seedlings because we don’t have access to water over the winter in our high tunnels. I’m encouraged that many of the vegetable seedlings are starting to grow. After all of this, we now have to decide how much to grow in the community garden for the residents of Blackhawk Courts, what to grow for upcoming events we hold annually, and how much to grow for our CSA business and for potential markets. Because all of these needs come at different times of the season, we have to plan a series of succession planting throughout the season to make sure we are consistently covering our needs. All of these decisions are daunting and challenging but will allow us to have a successful growing season.
I’m happy to say this was a huge success! Practically every seed we requested was granted. I want to thank Choices Natural Market and their customers for supporting our program in this way. Finally, if you are interested in receiving fresh organically grown fruits, vegetables, and herbs, please consider purchasing a CSA share from us. Visit our webpage for more information about our program. Warm Regards,
Tedd, Program Director of Roots & Wings and Yatte, Urban Farm Manager at Roots & Wings |
Archives
August 2023
Categories
All
|