Happy Farm Fact Friday, everyone! This week’s topic is a tasty, green and small fruit (botanically) and vegetable (culinary-wise). Some find it slimy, but others find it perfect for thickening stir fries, stews and gumbos; we’re talking about okra! Okra is fibrous, has protein, and is full of antioxidants. They’re delicious and grassy raw, and delicious pickled with a more interesting texture to offer than the traditional pickled cucumber!
Okra does better in sunny, warmer climates across the world (though it’s known in many parts of the world as lady fingers or bhindi) and can grow up to six feet tall. Did you know that they also have beautiful flowers, since they’re a part of the hibiscus family? The more you pick (when the pods are ready for harvesting), the more flowers they produce, and okra can go from flower to fruit in just a few days!
It likely originated in north east Africa, along the White Nile River, near current day Ethiopia, with it showing up in records around the 12th century. The word okra itself is derived from the Ashanti word “nkruma.” One of our staff members enjoyed this recipe; do you make any okra recipes? Feel free to show them off and tag us on social media @urbanrootsatx if you’d like!
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The sunflower is a hardy, drought resistant pop of color that help absorb harsh chemicals from the soil, as well as being a beautiful calling card to birds and bees (due to their seeds and nectar). However, they do need nutrient soil to grow. Otherwise, they thrive and manage in the harsh and dry Texas environment, and our roads and gardens would certainly look much drearier without them.
Did you know some Native tribes use sunflower seeds to make sunflower flour and their vibrant petals for dye? The stem was also used as a building material. Additionally, some traders managed to take seeds with them back to Europe and Russia in the 1500s, and by the 1800s over 2,000,000 acres of sunflowers had been planted in Russia! It seems it’s not just those in America who love the sunny flower.
The sunflower is quite versatile, from the edible petals to the seeds, and the stem… but did you know in a recent trend, you can also eat the head and buds? Sunflower flower buds can be cooked similarly to artichokes, can be eaten as part of a salad, or cooked in things like stir fry and taste both green and fresh. Meanwhile, the head is recommended to be harvested before the seeds harden, when the petals are still on the flower but beginning to go, and can be grilled up with just some oil in minutes, and utilized fairly similarly to corn (you can read here for further information).
If you try it out, let us know how it goes by tagging us on social media @Urbanrootsatx!
Additional Source:
Happy Farm Fact Friday, folks! This week we’re covering something that might be unexpected. It’s something smelly, messy, and “gross” but helps us improve soil health and nutrients, as well as reduces waste: the important farm practice of composting.
In short, composting is the process of turning organic material (anything we grow that doesn’t make it into consumable produce, like food scraps, weeds, leaves, etc.) via decomposing organisms that break it down like worms into fertile soil. It keeps food waste out of landfills, where it can’t properly decompose without oxygen and creates methane and carbon dioxide.
There are two different types of composting. Hot compost requires materials high in nitrogen at a specific high temperature to kill potential disease and weeds over time. Technically it is a faster process, taking some months, though maintaining the temperatures required.
Cold composting, which we utilize on the farm, is a slower process that may take up to a year to provide nutrient rich dirt. However, it does require less maintenance as you can add whatever material you have that works for composting, and only requires mixing to ensure it breaks down together and takes time. Without the temperature, it’s more important to ensure that weeds are properly disposed of so you aren’t spreading them with your soil, and that you keep any crop waste with disease out of it, to ensure it isn’t spreading.
On the farm, we use cold composting. We also utilize fertilizer and mixtures of things like chicken manure that create the healthy, nutrient rich soil we work with and grow with. You can compost on a small scale, with products you can purchase to use inside your home, or you can compost in a corner of your garden.
You can learn to compost at home, learn more about the components of composting, learn about the do’s and don’ts of composting, and learn more about the differences of hot and cold composting here.
Watch our beekeeper, Brandon Fehrenkamp (you can check him out on Instagram), show you the Urban Roots bees! You can see here as the honey bees are rebuilding their nectar storages in spring, which they had eaten throughout the winter. This spring nectar will go into helping make drone and worker bees for the blooming season ahead. They will continue to rebuild their storages as they pollinate the farm and gather nectar to make into honey through the summer and fall for another winter, and will repeat the process once again.
It’s Farm Fact Friday, everyone! This week we’re talking about honey, a delicious, shelf-stable and antioxidant-rich food and sweetener made by the honeybee. Typically beekeepers keep bees in multi sectional boxes where bees make their home, made for easy and safe extraction of honey and bee tending.
Honey is made from the nectar bees collect as they pollinate flowers. Inside their honeycomb, it breaks down into sugars. The flapping of bees’ wings dries out the nectar, creating a thicker substance without much water content in it. This is why the wax caps the bees make are important, to keep the honey dry, since the lack of water is also why honey is antimicrobial. The antimicrobial properties of honey is why it was used in dressing wounds at one point, to protect the wound from infection.
Bees make more honey than they need once they have time to acclimate to their nest and area. So long as the beekeeper is using gentle methods (like using smoke to relax them, and using calm, slow motions) the bees are not hurt, and the honey extraction doesn’t harm them. Bees can make around 50 lbs of extra honey a year!
The beekeeper takes off the wax cap that protects the honey in each cell (beeswax) and places the honeycomb frame in an extractor, which uses centrifugal force (spinning away from the center) to extract the honey. The frames are reusable and able to be placed back in the bee home for bees to repeat the process.
Thanks to honey’s high sugar and low water make up, it can last for 1,000s of years with proper storage. Archaeologists have even tasted honey 1,000s of years old – still delicious and sweet!
Additional sources:
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We’ve successfully wrapped up our summer Farmers’ Market season, and we owe a big thank you to the Sustainable Food Center’s Sunset Valley Market for letting us participate! We’re grateful to everyone who came out to talk with youth, buy our farm fresh produce, and to support Urban Roots. The booth went great, and we can’t wait to come back again in the fall! We’ll be returning November 12th, and running the booth those consecutive Saturdays until December 17th; keep an eye out on our upcoming newsletters and social media for more details.
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Even with the impressive Texas heat, our farm team managed to take the height of our summer season in stride by harvesting and sharing the most we have this summer, hitting 4,500 lbs of food shared with our partners and sold at the farmers’ market! We shared carrots, green beans, onions, squash, and tomatoes with our partners, worked on irrigation projects, and began wrapping up for the season and planning for the fall. We can’t wait to hit the ground running in autumn! Read more about it and what we’ve been doing in our July Newsletter!
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Happy Farm Fact Friday, everyone! This week, we’re talking about one of the farmer’s biggest ally’s in the field, the bee! A fun farm secret you may not know, we often keep bees on our East Austin farm! We have a small comb hidden away in the back where they sometimes make their home.
Bees feed on the nectar from flowers, where their fuzzy bodies pick up pollen, and bring it to the next plant they feed on. Some bees will even buzz rapidly to loosen the pollen on the plant it is pollinating (this is sonication or buzz pollination). This allows the plant to fertilize, where it can reproduce and create fruit and seeds. Did you know that out of all the pollinators, bees are responsible for pollinating about 75 percent of fruits and vegetables?
Different varieties of bees also have different systems of living; while you may be familiar with the honey bee’s hive building and queen, worker (female bees who are not the queen) and drone (male bees) who protect and work together to nourish their larvae, some bee species live completely differently. Many don’t build hives at all, instead laying their eggs in protected places like flower stems or tunnels, simply left with nectar and pollen for the larvae to consume and grow on their own. The cuckoo bee, for instance, will lay their eggs in the nests of other species, and potentially kill the larvae of the original nester to ensure its eggs grow well.
Bees are a crucial part of what we do, and a very varied and interesting creature! Tune in next week to learn more about how honey is harvested.
Additional source: Nwf.org
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Happy Farm Fact Friday, everyone! This week we’re talking about one of our friends on the farm, who you may see out and about in the early morning… the armadillo! They’re the only mammal to have a hard shell, and their name in Spanish means “little armored one” reflecting that. Armadillos are closely related to the sloth and anteater, and sleep like the sloth as well – did you know that armadillos sleep 16 hours a day? Meanwhile, their tongue is similar to the anteater; long and sticky and designed to lick up bugs from the holes they burrow. They eat some pesky bugs on the farm like fire ants, spiders and scorpions, while only eating crops when lacking in other food sources, and their burrows provide great homes for other critters, enhancing an area’s biodiversity.
Here in Texas, you may see the nine-banded armadillo and further to the south of Mexico, the northern naked-tailed armadillo, with the other 18 species being exclusive to South America. The nine-banded armadillo is the only one to be found in the United States, growing 7 to 11 bands, and though the common misconception is that they can roll away as an armored sphere, the nine-band armadillo cannot curl in all the way (that would be only two species of the three-banded armadillo).
Despite the nine-banded armadillo being typically exclusive to the southern regions of North America, armadillos have been expanding into northern parts of the U.S., even as far as Virginia! It’s a scientific mystery, according to National Geographic, but it may be in part due to warming winters that is allowing them to expand their normal habitat. They’re surprisingly adaptable creatures, and they need just three things to thrive: a mild enough winter season, moist soil to dig for food, and plenty of insects to hunt! (Unlike their northern expansion, they’d be unable to go further west in Texas due to the dry land and insects to eat).
Aren’t they interesting creatures? Due to the vegetation, nearby creek, and density of trees on the farm, they seem to like visiting the East Urban Roots farm for a safe place from the world, just like we do!
List of sources:
General armadillo information source one and source two.
Armadillo effect on environment source one and source two.
Armadillo diet source.
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