“Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

March means the start of spring, and a new season beginning in earnest. This March is all new growth and preparation for spring, with our team busy preparing beds for seeds, directly seeding, transplanting young growths, and laying out our watering systems for the season’s crops. They also ensured the fencing to keep our deer neighbors out was ready, and were excited to welcome a fresh shipment of locally made compost (we source from friends-of-the-farm Organics by Gosh!, who’s compost is powered by Austin food waste). We have carrots, beets, beans and broccoli in the ground along with squash and greens in the works, with our favorite farm-friendly flowers on the way, marigold and calendula.

Our farm team has been continuing their journey of curiosity, exploring different techniques and equipment to utilize to best maintain the farm. They recently installed a tarp to reduce pests and weeds near one of our fields that struggles with high weed presence. We hope that we can share our coming harvest with you soon!

Thanks to the preparations, hard work, and quick thinking of our farm team, the early February freeze did little damage to our crops and farms. Otherwise in this past month, we’ve used our time to finish last year’s harvest and to reset the farms for the upcoming season, and made improvements for the future. Thanks to volunteers, we were able to plant 9,000 onions of 3 different varieties at our South Austin farm over the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. Our farm team rebuilt the well that was damaged during the December freeze, and rebuilt our old greenhouse for our spring seedings. We’re in full swing for the start of the spring season, and ready for volunteers again. Sign up for volunteer opportunities here!

Happy Farm Fact Friday, everyone! This week, we’re sharing some behind-the-scenes insights into what  we’re planning on planting this season. Note: As we’re experimenting with more succession planting (planting in intervals to ensure crops grow throughout the season), this may look a little different from when you may start planting at home.

Week of January 23 to Mid February: 

On the East Austin farm, we will begin direct seeding (planting seeds directly into the soil) boldero carrots and red noodle beans . Boldero Carrots are easy to grow, sweet, thick and sturdy, so they can be stored longer than some fresh vegetables. Meanwhile, Red Noodle beans are popular in Southern Chinese cuisine and are similar to string beans but longer, red, and easy to grow and to cook. You can substitute them in place of string beans for a scarlet twist! 

On our South farm, we’ve begun planting onions and will continue for a few weeks. We’ve been planting red Southern Belle, White Bermuda, and yellow Texas Super Sweet. We can’t wait to share our harvest with you come March!

Meet our Farm Team! Their work is the reason we can do what we do, with their love and knowledge leading the way, from crop planning, to seeding, to harvest. They teach our youth and volunteers through the tasks they prepare, and nurture our organization, from the food we grow, as well as our organization. They’re constantly finding ways to grow both what we can do, and as farmers, and we couldn’t do it without them. Thank you, Farmers Jacob, Lucas, and Jenny!

We here at Urban Roots wish you a happy New Year! As we reflect on the past year, we’ve been able to grow in many different ways, and we couldn’t have done it without our community of food access partners, volunteers, youth, sponsors, staff members, and friends of the farm. Check out the video to see just what we’ve been able to accomplish and how we’ve grown! Read more about it in our Annual Impact Report.

The Clock is Ticking: Help Urban Roots Grow Our Impact Before The Year Ends!

Dear Urban Roots Friends,

Did you know that 18 zip codes in Travis County do not have a grocery store? 14% of our Travis County neighbors experience food insecurity, and the percentage of food insecurity is slightly higher among children, amounting to 15% of all children. Food insecure means to be without reliable access to nutritious, affordable food. To further complicate the matter, 16.8 acres of farmland are lost every day in Travis County.* There is so much work to be done.

This holiday season, we’re asking you to give the gift that keeps on giving so Urban Roots can continue our important work! There’s still time for you to help us reach our year-end fundraising goal of $100,000, allowing Urban Roots to serve more youth and put more fresh produce in the hands of Central Texans!

Please consider making a gift before the end of the year. Every donation–from $5 to $1,000–will help, so please give what you can and spread the word!

Sincerely,
Frances Deviney
Executive Director

*The data provided in this post is from the City of Austin’s Office of Sustainability’s State of the Food System Report.

We here at Urban Roots wish you a happy and reflective holiday season! We’re happy to say that we’re deep into harvest season, and sharing with our food access partners. This newsletter we’re excited to share with you what we’ve been up to on the farm; we’ve shared over 2,000 lbs of food with 7 food access partners (you can check out what we’ve been harvesting and our food access work here!). Our youth have also been busy, with our South Austin Interns making a delicious Friendsgiving meal, leading volunteers, and soon to start their block tours. Meanwhile, our Food and Leadership fellows have been doing a lot in their final month, from cooking up farm fresh zucchini cakes and cucumber salad, doing a pickling workshop, and more, which you can read about here. Additionally, if you’re interested in joining our Food and Leadership Fellowship program for Spring 2023, you can apply here.

In some other exciting news, we’re pleased to announce our Food Access Sponsorship program, which allows us to work even more closely with some cooperate sponsors of Urban Roots (we’re launching with program in partnership with long time Urban Roots supporters, H-E-B and Topo Chico). We’re also pleased to share that Urban Roots will be a beneficiary for a upcoming Wine and Food Foundation event (check out the event details and tickets here). You can read more about all of this in our December newsletter.

The South Austin Interns have been deepening their knowledge of food equity in workshops and familiarizing themselves with different parts of Urban Roots. The youth attended our November Community Lunch and led visitors on a farm tour. They celebrated Thanksgiving with a Friendsgiving potluck and shared their food stories as they made fig leaf and lemongrass agua fresca.

With a strong foundation to build off of now, the SAI interns will start preparing for their block walking in Dove Springs soon, to get to know their community and invite residents to be a part of Urban Roots. Keep an eye out for them and say hello if you spot them on one of their Saturday walks!

Meanwhile, our Food and Leadership Fellows have been busy in their final month. They heard from our food access partner Keep Austin Fed to hear more about how we work together in our food access efforts, and have been doing cooking workshops with the veggies they’ve grown! The youth made farm fresh zucchini cakes with noche squash and chicken, yellow squash, and cucumber salads for a side. They also did a pickling class with our carrots, cucumbers, radish, and green beans. As the program comes to a close, they’ll continue their farm duties, and work on their own personal projects.

We’re excited to share that we’re knees deep in our harvest season and were able to work with our food access partners at Farmshare, Vivent Health, Caritas, Keep Austin Fed, Manos de Cristo, Ghisallo, and Sunday Lunchbox. In just this past month, we’ve sent out over 2,000 lbs of food to our food access partners and volunteers, which is about 3,000 servings of food! We’ve been harvesting and sharing delicious and nutritious greens, like kale, broccoli, lettuce, arugula, spinach, collard greens, bok choi, and root veggies like carrots and turnips.

Otherwise, our farm team has been busy working against weeds, pests, and installing a new compost system for our herb garden. With the lower temperatures, we saw slight frost damage on some crops, but otherwise the farm is looking green and luscious this December.

Design by  STAV Creative
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