Mobile Market to be Featured in Upcoming Conference

We’re excited to be presenting at the “Farming for Profit and Stewardship” Conference this January 18^th and 19^th in Lansdowne, Virginia, hosted by one of Arcadia’s partners, Future Harvest CASA.

Our workshop will discuss “Evolution and Innovation” in farmers’ markets, and will be co-presented by one of the Mobile Market’s funders, Wholesome Wave.  Arcadia’s Mobile Market will be on-site at the conference as an innovative example of how to establish a farmers’ market in a low income, low food access neighborhood.

Arcadia's Mobile Market at LeDroit Park, D.C.

The two-day conference will have six tracks for a variety of audiences, including “Beginning Farmers,” farmers wanting to “Scale Up,” “Grass-Based Systems” of livestock husbandry, members of “Local Food Communities,” “Fruit & Vegetable Production,” and “The Business of Farming.”  A full list of the workshops can be found here.

The Early Bird registration rate ends December 31^st – get your discount while you still can, and we hope to see you there!

Welcome Stephen, new Arcadia Farm Director

Stephen Corrigan is Arcadia's new Farm Director! We're really glad to welcome him to the team. While there will surely be plenty of opportunities to meet him in person, read on to meet him virtually.

What experiences have prepared you for this position?
I’ve been growing and raising food for the better part of a decade now, working in a commercial setting for about 6 years, and as an educator for the last 4 years. Throughout that time, I’ve learned that in order to connect people with their food, we have to get them out there doing the work, seeing where their food is grown, and meeting the people who raise it. Once that curtain is lifted, it’s very difficult to see food as something that doesn’t matter. I’ve had the great fortune to have had thousands of these interactions with CSA members, chefs, students, fellow farmers, and random passers-by, and the experience of sharing what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, as well as delicious recipes, gardening advice, and, of course, beautiful, tasty food, has been an incredibly rewarding experience.

What is most exciting to you about your new job as Farm Director at Arcadia?
I feel fortunate to be joining a relatively new organization filled with bright, passionate, and motivated individuals and an inspiring line-up of programs. I’m also looking forward to being part of the future growth of this farm, which I hope can develop into a showpiece for the region.

I’m incredibly excited to be jumping into a new region, where the local food scene seems to have so much interest and steam building behind it. Having spent most of my time growing in New England, I’ve seen the passion that many have for local and sustainable food begin to taper off, which has made it difficult to be innovative or creative. While these are just first impressions, the market here seems to be clamoring for new products, ideas, and, overall, simply more farms and farmers to supply it.

I’m also eager to be a part of this historic piece of property and its rich agricultural and culinary traditions. I’m looking forward to scouring through the historical documents that are available to find out more about with kind of things have been raised here over time.

What challenges do you anticipate you'll face as the Farm Director?
Moving to a new piece of land is never an easy task, and I anticipate that it will take me a little while to figure out exactly what this piece of land can do and how best to improve it for the future. I’m fortunate to have Mo’s guiding hand a bit to hear more about what’s been done and what is possible for the future.

Getting to know the rhythms of a new region is also going to be a bit difficult and yet present me with a wealth of new opportunities. Farmers can easily fall into a rut of the same schedules (planting, harvesting, pests, etc.), but being here will allow me to work with crops and varieties that I’ve never had a chance to grow and a longer overall season, which will be a welcome challenge as I’m doing my planning and continue into next season.

What are some of your goals for the 2013 growing season?
I’m still working out which of these goals are feasible and which are harebrained, so perhaps I’ll keep my goals here on the modest side. I’d like to keep up the aggressive improvement of the soil quality through active management, cover cropping, and amending. As part of that, I’d like to really nail down a good larger scale composting system. We’ve got an excellent supply of raw materials (manure, food scraps, etc.) around, and I’d like to be making use of that much better. I’d also like to begin growing more beneficial plants on the farm not only for soil and plant nutrition, such as nettles, equisetum, and comfrey, but also for beneficial insects and bee forage.

As a model of what I want this farm to become, I want to be meticulous in the farm’s succession planting to ensure a consistent supply of what we grow and always having top-quality produce.

If you were a vegetable, what would you be?
No question, garlic. It’s humble, definitely not the flashiest vegetable out there, but it’s indispensible to almost any method of cooking , incredibly versatile and got a spice that you won’t soon forget. I also like how it can provide a crop in several different ways, from scapes to green garlic to full-sized mature heads, providing different flavors for you throughout the season.

Field trip registration opens Monday!

We're opening registration for 2013 field trips to Arcadia Farm on Monday, December 3.

Here are some reasons our field trip program is awesome:

• We encourage kids to try new healthy fruits and vegetables by showing them where food comes from.
  
• The Groundhog Garden, our kid's educational space, is a fantastic classroom where kids can interact with each other and with nature in a positive way.
  
• We help reinforce classroom learning by providing hands-on lessons where students can experience the concepts they've learned in school. For example, check out the photo above: instead of just learning about decomposition in a book, kids can dig in the compost and even touch worms!
  

We've gotten some great feedback from teachers, like the comment below.

I thought the trip was very well organized and the volunteers were really great with the students. All the topics were interesting, age-appropriate and relevant to what we were studying at the time. I loved that the students got the opportunity to get hands on with their learning and their favorite part was tasting all the different things from the garden. - DCPS third grade teacher, fall 2012

Our program is designed for pre-K through 5th grade groups of up to 60 students. In 2013, Arcadia Farm field trips will take place on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays starting March 20. Learn more by visiting the field trip page on our website or you can download an overview of the program here for Virginia schools and here for DC schools.

We hope to see you out at the farm soon!

We're growing! Preparing new fields for 2013

The growing season is winding down and the Mobile Market is in the shop for repairs, so Mobile Market Director Ben has a new project: procuring leaves. LOTS and LOTS of leaves.

Why all the leaves? We're expanding Arcadia Farm! In 2010, we cultivated our first 1.5 acres. In 2013, we're hoping to put about two more acres under cultivation to grow more healthy local food for the community. We're using the leaves as a mulch, which will decompose over the winter and improve the health of our soil. We're also adding horse manure from a local stable as an organic fertilizer.

Those two acres (also known as the lower field) are visible as you drive south on Route 1 from Alexandria. With help from our friends at Mt. Vernon, we tilled the land for the first time in the spring of this year. Then, we planted oats as a cover crop to suppress weeds and we grew a few vegetable crops, including potatoes, kale and radishes.

We're also winterizing our original 1.5 acres using cover crops like winter wheat and red clover, and lots of leaf mulch. Plus, we're still harvesting carrots, spinach, kale and more from those fields.

With the help of those leaves, some decomposers and a new Farm Director (stay tuned for a post about Stephen next week), we're looking forward to making the lower field a beautiful, productive space in 2013.

Wrapping up our fall field trip season

After a bustling, exciting fall season, Arcadia Farm is quiet this week after our final field trip of 2012 last Thursday.

We started the program last fall with the belief that experiential learning can play a key role in helping kids form healthy and sustainable eating habits. In other words, we think that when kids have the opportunity to learn about where good food comes from, they're more likely to eat it and they're more likely to become healthy adults. We also think the farm is a great place to explore and reinforce the concepts kids learn in their classrooms, like plant life cycles, decomposition, and pollination. Plus, the farm is FUN, for kids and adults alike.

We welcomed about 350 kids to the farm this fall and just under 1000 kids in 2012. Here are some highlights from this fall's trips:

• We got lucky: we had NO cancellations due to weather this season! In fact, we hosted most of the trips to the farm under sunny fall skies.
  
• Inspired by our trip to the Washington Youth Garden, we added farm-fresh honey tasting to our Pests and Pollination station. Not surprisingly, it was a huge hit.
  
• Education Coordinator Brandi strengthened our Taste Sensation station by incorporating healthy recipes like a honey mustard dressing and a beet salad. (Check out the kid on the right: he can't get enough of that beet salad!) She also made some awesome additions to the salad bar, including roasted eggplant and hard boiled eggs from the farm. Yum!
  
• Awesome intern Lacey filmed one of our trips, and is in the process of creating some videos of our lessons that we can share with future farm educators (and you!).
  

What really stood out this season is our fantastic field trip crew: Kasey, Eli, Adriana, Brandi, Teiji, Marta, Lammot, Morgan, Lacey, Amanda and Mallory. It was a joy to watch this awesome group of farm educators grow and learn over the course of the season and it's because of their skills and passion that we have a successful field trip program. Kudos to the field trip team!

See you in the spring! (Email liz@arcadiafood.org for more information about spring field trips).

5 Middle Schools and 1 Big Green Bus

 Arcadia's Mobile Market has visited with Middle Schoolers this season to talk about local sustainable food, how food systems work, how to tell the difference between real food and junk food, and to teach them how to shop the farmer's market to create a balanced meal with a budget of $15.

Farmer Ben demonstrating food processing via the food web

At Kelly Miller Middle School this past Tuesday, Kids were encouraged to try something new and use their sophisticated vocabularies to describe what they tasted. We made a honey mustard dressing and presented a salad bar that included field greens, radishes, orange sweet peppers, roasted eggplant and basil from their own garden. The young adults had many opinions and, for the most part, kept their comments very positive. I was surprised to hear "I really love eggplant" and "I've never had an orange pepper, they're pretty sweet."

Chef Brandi serving up roasted eggplant

As the one of the groups were leaving the market, one young man began to chant, "We eat to live!" It was very inspiring and has become the foundation for every lesson I teach on the farm and on the Mobile Market.

Kelly Miller's Garden is Still growing strong!

They even have Strawberries!

Photobooth Fun at Snallygaster

Zombie Farmer Liz 

Last weekend the crew at Arcadia headed over to Yard's Park to celebrate Snallygaster with the Neighborhood Restaurant Group. In addition to being a huge beer event and a raging good time it was also an opportunity for Arcadia to fundraise for the future and share our message with both the children and the adults who attended the event.

The staff and volunteers at Arcadia set up a whole "Little Monsters Zone" for the children to enjoy while their parents sipped their craft brews. I was in charge of setting up a photo booth and encouraging our little monsters to dress up as farmers, vegetables and snallygasters to get their pictures taken.

I have to say it was quite a success and I wanted to share some of my favorites from the day. Thanks to all the little Snallies for coming out and having fun with us!

This family had so much fun dressing up together!

Education Coordinator Brandi's sons went full on monster.

I could see this same girl striking this same serene pose as an old woman - holding her prized potato. 

Even a few adults indulged. I loved this pea-pod's poses. 

Such a great smile!

Their parents were so thrilled that big sister posed with her little brother. I like his far-off farmer look.

A shy butterfly.

Teiji and I being serious farmers and Marta being a sunshine flower