A week in schoolyard farming.

I’ve been working towards a master’s degree at OISE, studying food literacy and schoolyard farming over the past year. For a food justice course, we were asked to volunteer in a community food organization and document our work on a blog. I was able to keep up the work I have been doing and share some of that experience here in this blog.

Writing about my current job as a schoolyard farmer has been on my mind all week, and so I decided to give you a (brief) snap shot of what a week looks like for this schoolyard farmer.

Market Banner.

Monday: office work - we need help.

I have been running a quarter acre market garden built on the front and back lawn of a Scarborough high school. The garden has been at the school for 3 years, this being our fourth season. Each year we get funding to offer paid employment to five students – they get full time summer jobs growing food at their school. Each year we also have to raise enough money in grant writing or fundraising to cover the cost of a staff member to run the garden and supervise the youth. My work this year has been to try and shift this towards a production focused farm – we are going to try and gross enough in sales of fresh produce to cover the operating costs of the project. If we can do that – we have a replicable, financially sustainable, model of schoolyard growing for other sites/communities. I’ve developed a business plan and crop plan that saw us out in the field in early April seeding peas and onions – this meant we had crops in the ground a full two months prior than any other season. We are focusing on growing high-value crops – cut lettuces, baby spinach, spicy greens & arugula. These sell well both at markets and restaurants – and that is our plan. In previous years the students set up a farm stand in the front of the school to sell their produce. We’ll keep that up, especially in the fall when the Business class is going to run a market stand and the harvest is bountiful. But we are also selling to local restaurants (those that prioritize local food and will pay $12/lb for cut greens). We are also selling at a farmers market throughout the season.

This plan means an increase in revenue, but it also means in increase in workload, an increase in the amount of time we need to spend in the field, the amount of time we spend processing and cooling produce, and the amount of time we spend delivering and marketing our goods. We need help. On Monday I sifted through a few resumes of folks applying to apprentice with our project. As someone who apprenticed at an urban farm in Vancouver, it’s nice to see people in cities searching for farming opportunities close to them. There has been a much talked about spike in the numbers of young city dwellers that are interested in trying farming. And with our average age of farmers in Canada at 54 - it’s a good time to get young people out into the field.

Its hard to market the realities of farming – there is a romantic notion of working in the sun, birds chirping, your muscles toned, the fruit sun-ripened and waiting to slip into your hand. In reality, you often do the same task for hours. You work the same muscles over and over. You pull weeds to return to more weeds. You plant starts to return to eaten starts. It doesn’t rain. It rains too much. You are exhausted and there is still more to do. And you have to do it. It cannot wait. How do you put that in a job description? How do you find the people that are willing to give the reality a try?

Me and OISE interns Sarah and Katey. 

Tuesday: “It wasn’t alfalfa, it was a truck full of juice” (& “a woman manager?!”)

Urban farming has its benefits – I am close to my markets, have quick and easy access to irrigation, I get to live in the city, folks can buy food from me that was grown next door to their house, we are making use of vacant land, providing paid employment for youth (etc.) Making cities more liveable. But there are struggles too that are unique to the setting – especially a schoolyard farm. To name two: I can’t store a composting manure pile out back & there aren’t many (any) farm supply stores in town. So I needed a to find a way to add nutrient rich organic matter to our soils (ie. not a manure pile) and I needed to find it in the city (ie. not likely). I finally landed on this brewing alfalfa method as a way of adding nitrogen, good bacteria and moisture holding organic matter to our garden beds, but I needed to source thirteen 50lb bags of pure alfalfa pellets. Phoning every farm supply in southern Ontario, folks were often not able to hold back their disbelief when they asked where I was calling from - a farm in the city? at a school? and you want us to deliver there?

After a long search I finally found a supplier that was nice enough to order in what I needed and deliver it to the school. I was working out front with some students, chatting with them about what we were going to do with the alfalfa when it came. A van pulled in and they said, “Maybe that’s your guy.” I walked up and shook his hand, he asked me about the garden beds out front, told me about his own garden. He then opened up the van and turned out to be the juice delivery guy, here to restock the vending machines. The students ate that story right up. I heard juice jokes for the rest of the week.

Later the folks from the farm supply did arrive (and their truck was in fact full of alfalfa pellets, not juice.) Instead of approaching me out in the beds, the driver chose to head in to the office to find the person in charge. This has happened before – the person in charge here is usually assumed to present as male. I do not often fit their assumption of what a farm manager should “look like.” A few months ago a neighbour came by to ask about some seeds. We had a classic “Who’s on first” moment: Who’s in charge? I am. No, who’s in charge? I am. No who is the manager? Me.

"A woman?!"

He finally smiled wide and showed me his seeds and we talked about pepper seedlings and winter squash. Women do not fit our stereotypical image of a farmer. And yet many of the hardest working farmers I know are women – and many of the innovative urban farmers in Toronto are women. I often feel conflicted about this. I have read so many times that women make good farmers because they are nurturers, care givers, because they are naturals at multitasking. I think this is just perpetuating patriarchal gender norms. I think farmers are nurturers – we are called to a life dedicated to caring for other life. If anything I think that I like being a female farmer because it is a subversion, it is a rupture in the norm of what I, a woman, am expected to do. Farming is a feminist act, for me.

Spicy Greens Mix

Wednesday: “I have something to tell you.”

At lunch in the staff room eating soup prepared by students in the foods class. Seated at a table of teachers, we’ve talked about whether there is still time to seed carrots and what people have planned for their upcoming summer break from teaching. One teacher put down her fork, looked me in the eye and said “Katie, I have something to tell you. And it may be hard to hear.” I truly prepared for the worst. Racking my brain for something disrespectful I’ve done, a misstep I’ve made. She shared that she came to our farmers market the week before and bought a bag of mixed lettuce. She then went to another market on the weekend and discovered that farmers there were selling bigger bags of greens for less money.  I exhaled in relief – folks sharing complaints about the cost of produce is nothing new to me. I thanked her for sharing this and really tried to make sure she felt comfortable to continue to do so in the future.

We sell our greens at $5 for a 1/3 lb bag. If someone else sells theirs for $4 for a 1/2 lb bag – that’s only $8 per lb. That is most likely not even covering their cost of production, much less making them any profit.

When I developed my crop plan for this season I had it reviewed by a few veteran organic farmers. Worried that our prices were too high, they all came back to me saying our prices were in fact too low. They did not want our reduced operating costs (ie. free land, student farmers) to be undercutting their prices. And even with our reduced operating costs, at $8/lb I wouldn’t cover my cost of production either.

We talked about how farmers aren’t taking home a lot of money and consumers are pushed to pay more – where is the money going then? We talked about agribusiness and monocropping and cash crops and GMOs and food subsidies and organic certification and why the heck is a candy bar so cheap and lettuce so expensive? Our table in the staff room was a light with engaging conversation about the food system. I was so thankful she brought this up. And I probably won't change the prices.

Flowers on our Snap Peas

Thursday: “I tell them that they’re beautiful.” (& “Can I have one for my girl friend?”)

Thursday was the last day of classes before exams and then summer break (when our paid summer students will start). To celebrate, we made green spinach smoothies with a blender powered by an old road bike. We said cheers to a semester of hard work in the garden and sipped our smoothies. We also set up the big screen and watched a clip from cbc news about our school farm. When the news team was here, they filmed the students prepping beds and feeding the aquaponics system. They also interviewed a few students, just out of earshot, so their comments were a surprise to myself and the teacher I work with. The clip they chose reflected the positive change seen in these students now that they work in the garden. One student shared that he talks to the plants when he is out working in the garden, “I tell them that they are beautiful.” The students loved it. I loved it.

As a final project we built tomato trellises. One student who isn’t always in class, as he has a full time night shift job, came that day – we made him crew lead for the build and he taught his follow students how to read the design dimensions and how to use the impact driver.

After class he saw me harvesting peas for the market that afternoon. He came over and said “I remember planting these.” I gave him one to eat, “they are snap peas, you can just pop them in your mouth.” He said, “I’d actually like to keep this one for my girlfriend, I really want to show her.” I gave him five more. He tried one and we sat there for a few moments eating sweet snap peas in the sun. He said he was happy he came to school that day.

French Breakfast Radish

Friday: “My boyfriend broke up with me and also what’s with this radish?”

The first day of exams I didn’t have any students come out to work as they were all taking tests. I got to work with the help of a volunteer harvesting 10 lbs of spicy greens for a restaurant order. We used our harvest knives to cut the greens and trim the stems before taking them in to wash and cool. One student came out, proud of completing her math exam. She asked if she could stick around, would that be ok. I said of course and got her working beside us in a radish bed. While she was pulling and sorting radishes, she shared that her boyfriend broke up with her. She would alternate between talking about radishes and talking about her feelings. This happens a lot. Students will come work beside me – harvesting, weeding, or just watching – and they will talk about some deep stuff. Racism, violence, college, relationships, smoking, marriage, why mustard greens are bitter, why their friends moved away, why is that cop always around the school. Farming has just the right amount of getting your hands busy, falling into a rhythm, so that your mind can sort of wander. When you get good at it, you can do the thing you are doing quite well, but also still have some moments of profound thought or conversation while your hands are working. I’ve learned that this farm is important to the students; even those that don’t come out as part of their course work or apply for the summer job. Students notice when we are planting, they pay attention to the growing, they watch the radishes pop out of the soil, they notice the flower that comes before the pea. It means a lot to them. 

And I hope they always have it. 

Sugar Ann Snap Pea