Saturday and Sunday, 9am-2pm. Plant Starts – Grow Yer Own!

We’d love to help you get your garden started with healthy, vigorous plants, selected for great taste and our PNW climate.

Saturdays and Sundays, 9am – 2pm. Cash, check or new this year, debit and credit (Visa/MC).

List of plants at https://urbanfuturesfarm.com/plant-starts-grow-yer-own/

Recent years have seen a progressive weakening of the standards regulating what it means for food to be certified as “organic.” The corporations that now control the USDA certification process have so weakened the definition of organic that today “organic” bears little resemblance to what was intended when Congress passed the Organic Production Act (OPA) in 1990.  Despite the fact that the OPA required that organically certified produce be grown using soil improving practices, last week a judge ruled against a group of true organic farmers, bizarrely and erroneously stating that food doesn’t even have to be grown in soil to be certified as organic. This is another good reminder to be skeptical of the “organic” produce you see on the store shelves, and to build relationships with local farmers you can trust to grow your food sustainably and truly organically, in fertile, healthy, biologically diverse soil. To learn more about the lawsuit check out the email below:

https://mailchi.mp/realorganicproject/john-tester-5223880?e=a98f288347

We’ve been busy on the farm lately, starting all sorts of plants from seed. In a few weeks, they’ll be ready to go into your garden! Details on our Grow Yer Own webpage, including plant list and prices. Start planning your dream garden and we’ll see you Saturdays and Sundays, 9am-2pm, starting April 10.

Modern industrial agriculture has done an amazing job of increasing yields.  Today we produce more than enough calories to feed everyone on the planet. Unfortunately, the single-minded focus on yield and calorie production has come at the expense of flavor and nutrition.  Compared to the foods our grandparents ate, the foods we consume today are flavorless and devoid of the full range of vitamins and minerals our bodies need to thrive.

The reduced nutritional value of the foods we eat today means we wind up eating more calories than we should in pursuit of the nutrition our bodies need, a direct cause of growing epidemics such as obesity and diabetes.  Complicating matters, the corporations that control our food supply have used cutting edge research to develop thousands of chemical compounds designed to trick us into eating more than we should, as we seek out the flavor and nutrition that has been intentionally bred out of our food,  A vicious circle if there ever was one!

Author Mark Schatzker addresses this problem head-on in his exhaustively researched, well written and highly entertaining book The Dorito Effect – available through our very own Timberland Regional Library System.  As a farmer, an eater and a citizen I believe this is one of the most important books that has been released in recent years, and it stands among the top tier of titles that have influenced my thinking about our food system.

Here at Urban Futures Farm we have always challenged ourselves to grow vegetables, herbs and fruits that not only produce good yields, but which also provide the maximum flavor and nutrition for our customers. Believe it or not, this is pretty unusual among today’s farmers.  Even among so called “organic” farmers, a niche market increasingly controlled by a handful of multinational corporations, many of whom don’t even bother growing crops in actual soil any more, a focus on flavor and nutrition is the exception rather than rule.

Read The Dorito Effect.  Then start to ask questions.  Ask yourself: Where does my food come from and what’s in it?  Equally important, what’s not in it (hint: flavor and nutrition). Ask the produce managers at your local grocery store how the produce on their shelves was grown – where and by whom?  Ask your elected representatives why they continue to vote for legislation that subsidizes agribusiness corporations that undermine human health, impoverish small local farmers and exacerbate climate change and environmental degradation.

Wendell Berry once wrote that “eating is an agricultural act”. Michael Pollan took that notion a step further, writing that eating is also a political act.  In 2021, lets embrace our role as eaters/citizens,  and transform our food system from today’s corporate focus on yields and profits to the more important human concerns of flavor and nutrition.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the food you eat and serve your family and friends is delicious, nutritious and sustainably grown?

Urban Futures Farm has been providing the Olympia community with fresh vegetables, herbs and fruits since 2015. Members of our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program receive 18 weeks of locally-grown fresh produce beginning around June 1 st.

With the demand for fresh local food at an all-time high our CSA program is filling up fast. Only 8 shares left!

To learn more, and to reserve your share visit www.urbanfuturesfarm.com

With all of the uncertainty in the world these days, wouldn’t be nice to know that you can count on eating delicious, safe, sustainable local food this year?

Urban Futures Farm has been providing the Olympia community with fresh vegetables, herbs and fruits since 2015.  Members of our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program receive 18 weeks of sustainably-grown fresh produce beginning around June 1 ^st.

With the demand for fresh local food at an all-time high our CSA program is filling up fast. Only 15 shares left!

To learn more, and to reserve your share click HERE.

Did you know that 1 tablespoon of soil has more organisms in it than there are people on earth? Or that there are 5,000 different types of bacteria in one gram of soil? Or that it takes nature 500 years to build one inch of topsoil?

Here at Urban Futures Farm we are giving Mother Nature a hand. The beautiful Crimson Clover and Cayuse Oats that blanket our farm this time of year will be cut and tilled in next Spring, adding nutrients, hundreds of pounds of organic matter and providing food to those organisms and bacteria that help us build and maintain healthy soil – which means nutrient dense, delicious, nutritious food for our friends and customers.

To enjoy the bounty of our soil, sign up for a 2021 CSA share.  Returning customers can sign up beginning later this month, with new customers welcome in January.  More details soon!

We’ve just put the farm to bed for the winter, but are already planning for spring!

Over the past several years Urban Futures Farm has developed a reputation for growing and selling quality plant starts each spring.  We love helping our friends and neighbors grow good food!

This is the time of year where we are pouring through seed catalogs, compiling orders and looking for your feedback.

What vegetable and herbs  would you like to see us grow next year?  What plant starts do you want to purchase to grow in your garden next year?

Reply down below or send us an email – thanks for the help!

Leeks are one of the first crops we plant and among the last to be harvested. And they are so worth the wait! A member of the allium family, which includes onions, garlic and the like, leeks have a softer, less assertive profile, and are a divine asset as a cooked addition to soups, stews, quiches, and more. The white part of the leek grows underground and special care should be taken to clean any grit hiding among the many layers. Trim off the dark green leaves at the top and the root end, and cut through the stalk lengthwise , stopping just short of the root end. Clean under running water, then finish chopping. One of our favorite uses for leeks is potato/leek soup. While sometimes presented as a velvety smooth vichyssoise, we prefer the rustic version here.