Today is Giving Tuesday! Urban Roots is working to raise $5,000, and we can’t do it without you.
Giving Tuesday is a global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world. Join the Urban Roots team and our youth leaders to grow fresh food and build a community dedicated to achieving food equity by making a Giving Tuesday donation today.
Every donation–from $5 to $1,000–will bring us that much closer to our goal, so give what you can, and please spread the word!
We at Urban Roots have a lot to be grateful and thankful for this year. It’s been a true year of growth, and we couldn’t have done it without the support of our Urban Roots community, from each volunteer, donor, youth, food access partner, and staff member who altogether create the heart of what we are. We’re excited to announce that not only can you feel our growth, from us purchasing the East Austin farm this year, building our high tunnel, and adding substantially to our staff, but you can see it in our Annual Impact Report. We dedicated 93% of our produce to improving food access in Central Texas, worked with 67 youth across 3 programs, and partnered with 756 kind community volunteers who came out to the farms and got their hands in the dirt!
Our Annual Impact Report details what we’ve been able to accomplish this past fiscal year (August 2021 to July 2022), thanks to the love and support from our community members. We sincerely thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We couldn’t do what we do without everyone’s help. We’re excited for the future and to continue growing our roots with you.
In the meantime, we wish you happy holidays and plentiful rest amidst the end of year hustle and bustle. If you’d like to give back during this time of gratitude, check out and sign up for one of our volunteer dates. We hope to see you on the farm soon!
Stay up to date with Urban Roots by subscribing to our newsletter. Follow us on social media @UrbanRootsATX on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
The farm team has been focused on all things planting this past month, and ensuring the farm is prepared and ready for the season ahead! Our farm team started off the month by finishing bed preparation and then seeded and transplanted our gorgeous veggies. They got our Brassicas area (think green, stalk veggies) filled with plants like kale, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. They also expanded the herb terrace adding dill, fennel, mint and thyme. With the help of our volunteers, we also planted three varieties of winter squash on the South Austin farm. The farm team also worked compost into one of our fields with the youth, and did some pest management for the season. We can’t wait to share this autumn harvest with you!
It’s Farm Fact Friday, folks! This week, we’re sharing a staff-recommended NY Times soup recipe by Martha Rose Shulman to warm up with for the upcoming chilly part of the year. It’s a delicious winter veggie soup, made with potatoes, leeks, carrots, and turnips!
Ingredients
Step 1
In a large soup pot or Dutch oven, combine your veggies of leeks, garlic, carrots, celery, turnips, potatoes, bouquet garni (herbs), with 1 and 1/2 quarts water, 2 to 3 teaspoons salt, and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 40 to 45 minutes, until the vegetables are very soft.
Step 2
You can purée the soup using a blender or an immersion blender.
Step 3
Return soup to the pot and whisk in 1/4 cup crème fraîche (or more, to taste). Heat through, taste and adjust seasonings (be generous with salt and pepper). To serve, garnish each bowl with a spoonful of crème fraîche and a sprinkle of parsley or tarragon.
Step 4 (optional)
Let us know what you think by tagging us on social media @Urbanrootsatx!
Happy Farm Fact Friday, everyone. This week’s topic is something green and something we grow often during the fall and winter seasons, and also something we just planted for the season, kale! We typically grow two varieties, dinosaur and curly. Due to their frost-resistant nature and need for considerable amounts of sun, they’re good for our unpredictable winters, produce a considerable amount of food, and look gorgeous and green on the farm when growing.
Dinosaur kale has an interesting, dinosaur-skin like texture on its leaves, which gives it its name. Meanwhile, curly kale has similarly large leaves, except with lots of small ridges that curl in, hence the name. Curly can be good for dishes that you want to add texture to, while dinosaur is closer to a more lettuce-like texture. They’re members of the mustard family, like arugula, broccoli, and turnips.
Have you tried cooking with kale before, only to find its flavor lacking? It’s recommended to massage your kale to help release its flavors. It can be added as a green to lots of meals for extra nutrients and color, with a host of benefits from vitamin A and C, calcium, folate, magnesium, and iron. It can be good for inflammation, bone health, digestion, and heart health. You can even get a kale facial, which can improve skin tone and reduce lines and wrinkles. Additionally, it can be eaten in a variety of ways, from as a wrap, in a salad, in a smoothie, in soup or even as a healthy chip substitute, making it easy to add into your diet.
You can read more about kale and its health benefits here, and check out a quick recipe we recommend here.
Stay up to date with Urban Roots by subscribing to our newsletter. Follow us on social media @UrbanRootsATX on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
It’s Farm Fact Friday once again, everyone! This week we’re talking about something you may find often growing on the outskirts of the farm, the very fragrant garlic chive! It’s delicious, requires less preparation in meals than garlic, and easy to regrow. They’re great in stir fry, stews, and with meat, eggs, seafood, and even specialty butter. They’ve been a part of Chinese cuisine for over 3,000 years, and it’s easy to see why they’re so loved.
Garlic chives actually have a history of being used for herbal medical purposes as well as in Chinese cuisine, having once been used on bug bites and small cuts, as an antidote to some poisons, a remedy for internal parasites, and for helping with digestive problems. They’re also chock full of vitamin A and C, as well as fiber, iron, calcium, and potassium, so they can be a healthy addition to your diet (especially as a replacement for garlic for those who struggle with acid reflux).
Garlic chives can handle sun well, and can deter some pests which make them an easy-to-care-for and tasty addition to gardens. They do have a limited shelf life after being cut from the plant, but with proper storage or allowing them to regrow, they can last longer.
Additional sources here, here, and here.
Stay up to date with Urban Roots by subscribing to our newsletter. Follow us on social media @UrbanRootsATX on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
We hope you’re enjoying the tail end of the summer season! We’ve been in our “slow” season, taking some time to rest and rebuild, and came back with renewed enthusiasm. Our farm team has been busy preparing for autumn, not only bettering our systems in place, but building our new high tunnel by hand! We’re also happy to announce our Fall volunteering schedule dates and details, our SAI recruitment, extended FLF Fellowship application deadline, and the launch of our volunteer Community Ambassador program, succeeding our old Community Crew system. Read about it and what else we’ve been up to in our September Newsletter!
Watch the video above to see the love and care put into building our new High Tunnel!
Our farm team has grown this summer, and with it, what we’re able to do. They built our new high tunnel by hand during our down season with the expertise of Lorig Hawkins as project manager, who happens to be the owner of Middle Ground Farm! We deeply appreciate their help and support in such an undertaking.
Along with our normal fall planning and preparations, we’ve stripped our old greenhouse, sorted what we had, and made for a fresh start on the farm. The High Tunnel will serve many purposes, including being a gathering space for guests, staff, and our youth during inclement weather; a storage space for our large equipment; and as a temporary greenhouse, especially while we upgrade our old existing structures like the old greenhouse. This will allow us to have more flexibility on a day-to-day basis, and have a larger gathering space, which can act as a part of the heart of the farm. We can’t wait to show it off with our upcoming volunteer days and events!
Happy Farm Fact Friday, folks! This week we’re discussing the marigold flower, something you may see us plant on the farm sometimes. Marigolds are drought resistant and do well under the Texas sun, and can be a useful companion flower. Some varieties of the flower ward off tiny, parasitic worms just by certain compounds in their roots, and though many hybrids nowadays are scentless, some use scent to ward off beetles and bugs (smelling like wet hay).
Marigolds have a rich history as a flower used to decorate ofrendas for Dia de los Muertos, with the prominent scent and bright colors displayed to help spirits find their way home. Paper marigolds are also used to decorate sometimes.
People sometimes confuse marigolds are with calendula, which can be called pot marigold or common marigold and have somewhat similar appearances. However, calendula are edible flowers and have a different flower family they are a part of, whereas marigolds are generally not edible and some varieties are potentially toxic if eaten.
Additional sources on marigolds here, here, and here.
Stay up to date with Urban Roots by subscribing to our newsletter. Follow us on social media @UrbanRootsATX on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
