Hot yam! This past month, we’ve set a new Urban Roots record for produce harvested in May … *drumroll, please 🥁*... 6600+ pounds!! Can you beet-leaf it? With our talented farm team, youth leaders, volunteers and food access partners, we’ve managed to grow, harvest, and distribute so much beautiful produce in our community. And the season’s still going and growing!

Check out a growing farm making waves in the world! Radical Family Farms, @radicalfamilyfarms, a relatively new farm founded in 2018, showcases important ways that farming and community can intertwine. Radical Family Farms grows culturally relevant food for the “Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese and South East Asian diaspora” that reflect the roots of owner and farmer, Leslie Wiser, who is of German, Polish Jewish, and Chinese-Taiwanese descent. The rest of the food grown is suited to the farm’s local California environment, with regenerative, chemical-free, and gentle-to-the-land practices that reflect Wiser’s passion for restorative agriculture.⁠ ⁠ The farm’s practices also center on communal care. Radical Family Farms nurtures relationships with restaurants and chefs who highlight heritage cooking, utilizing methods, tools, and recipes that are culturally and historically important. They share this knowledge (via recipes and resources) with the folks receiving their produce shares. ⁠ ⁠ Radical Family Farms also does this through their initiative, Feeding Seniors, which focuses on giving back to the elderly in the community, an important cultural part of Wiser’s heritage and upbringing, according to an interview she gave the Newslette. Feeding Seniors allows the farm to provide culturally-relevant produce to their local Chinese community centers.⁠ ⁠ Though Radical Family Farms has a similar mission to ours here at Urban Roots, focusing on communal relationships and health via regenerative agriculture, we are so grateful for opportunities to learn from and be inspired by farm folks doing rad things in the food access space with different models. ⁠ ⁠ Learn more about founder/farmer Leslie Wiser and Radical Family Farms via their website and check out what all they’ve got growing on!⁠

🌱It’s been a while since our last farm update! 🌱⁠ ⁠ Since we saw you last:⁠ ⁠ Our trusty farm team took on the hustle and bustle of the spring season with great spirit! They started with tons of transplanting and direct seeding, planting a significant number of crops like beans, peas, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, basil, squash, and lettuce to name a few 😋 With all of the spring showers, we had to do lots of weeding and clearing beds to ensure all the plants in the ground could thrive.⁠ ⁠ Meanwhile this past month, we started getting our harvest on! Our farm team has been busy with the abundance of our spring harvest, and the planting and preparation for our summer season. We’ve recently shared baby bok choi, beets, carrots, cilantro, dill, onions, spinach, and multiple types of squash with our partners, and can’t wait for what we have on the way! (Sneak peek – okra, tomatoes, and more, oh my!).

☀️ Summer #volunteering is ON! ☀️⁠ ⁠ Soak up some sun while getting your hands into the soil and getting to know your community. Get dirty with us on the farm Tuesdays and Saturdays, 9 - 11:30 a.m., but make sure to register soon by following the link in bio! ⁠ ⁠ Our volunteer slots fill up quickly – we hope to see you on the farm!⁠

Our farms are in full bloom this spring, and with that comes graduation 💐 Last week we celebrated our high-school-aged youth participants graduating from the South Austin Internship and Advanced Leadership Internship programs. Today we held a family feast for our Food & Leadership Fellows to celebrate. We’re so proud of how they’ve grown and we can’t wait to see where the coming seasons take them next. Happy graduation, Urban Roots alumni 🎉!

Last week the Urban Roots fellows welcomed writer, teacher and anthropologist Dr. Ashanté Reese to the farm for a conversation about food justice that was personal, powerful and deeply moving. Thank you, Dr. Reese, for being such a respectful visitor and sharing your stories and knowledge with us! We can’t wait to see you back out on the farm and read your forthcoming works.