Fresh Take
Fresh Take is your roundup of all things related to organic and sustainable living. Join Florida Organic Growers staff and guest experts as we discuss everything you need to know about sustainable living, organic agriculture, and how to make the best lifestyle choices that benefit you and the environment. So if you’re an eco-warrior, a dedicated farmer, or just someone looking to make more conscious decisions, tune in to get your Fresh Take.
Fresh Take
From Chef to Urban Farmer: Mike Garcia's Journey to Sustainable Agriculture in Orlando
Curious how a chef champions urban farming? Meet Mike Garcia, who traded his chef’s knife for a garden trowel and founded Everoak Farm in Orlando, Florida. In this episode, we explore Mike's journey from culinary school to sustainable farming, where his expertise helps him provide fresh, local produce that exceeds customer expectations.
Mike shares his vision for a collaborative food system in Orlando, emphasizing community-supported agriculture and the potential of urban farming networks. He offers practical advice for aspiring farmers, including land leasing and reinvesting earnings.
Join us at the Florida Local Food Project's Field to Fork Farm Day at Everoak Farm on November 14, 2024! This event provides you with an excellent opportunity to network, learn from experts, and foster meaningful connections with others who are passionate about local food.
This event is offered to local food actors at no cost and is limited to 50 attendees.
Register here!
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Welcome to Fresh Take, where we at Florida Organic Growers speak to food systems experts about topics related to organic and sustainable agriculture, healthy lifestyles and the environment. To help us continue our programs at FOG, including our podcast, consider becoming a sponsor. For more information on sponsorship, check out our Get Involved page on our website, wwwfoginfoorg.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to Fresh Take. Today we're taking you on a journey to Orlando, florida, to a farm that's not just growing food but cultivating a sustainable community and future Ever Oak Farm. Ever Oak Farm is more than just a farm. It's a hub of sustainability, community engagement and a shining example of what modern farming can achieve. We'll be diving deep into what sustainable farming really means in today's world and how Ever Oak Farm is leading the way by partnering with Florida Organic Growers Programs. What makes this story even more inspiring is hearing it from the perspective of a young farmer who is not only keeping the business thriving but also redefining what it means to be a farmer in the 21st century. If you're interested in sustainability, local food movements or simply love hearing about innovative approaches in farming, this episode is for you.
Speaker 2:Mike Garcia, welcome to our show. For you, mike Garcia, welcome to our show. Hey, well, so I'm really happy to have you with us today, and you are a familiar face since I've seen you at the Organic Food and Farming Summit this past April with Fog, so it's a pleasure seeing you again and having the chance to speak with you. So I'm really curious to dive right into your story and find out more about your background in farming and what really inspired you to pursue this type of career.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally Well, it's been a long journey. I always say my journey kind of started back when I started culinary school. I never had the intentions in getting into agriculture. It kind of is something that I stumbled across. I've always the intentions in getting into agriculture. It kind of is something that I stumbled across. I've always been passionate about food and cooking. And then with that passion, you kind of start thinking about like, where are these ingredients coming from? What are the quality of the ingredient? So I started what is it like?
Speaker 3:Four years into cooking, I picked up gardening and I started backyard gardening in my house in downtown Orlando. I started with a little four by eight garden bed and just tinkered with that. Then, over the years, the garden just kept growing, dove into permaculture. Meanwhile I'm still cooking, studying the whole industry, studying every form of agriculture. There is the ins and the outs and that journey kept pursuing.
Speaker 3:Eventually, it's just I started getting a little burnt out working in the kitchens. I knew I wanted to settle down, have a family and I wanted something a little more wholesome and that's why I stumbled across market gardening back in 2015. I was like, all right, cool, let me give this a try. Started at a 3,000 square foot plot up in Sorrento, did that for a season.
Speaker 3:And then our housemates at the time and I decided to partner up and started urban farming, literally ripped the play-by-play book of the urban farmer by Curtin Stone and put that model to practice here in Orlando and just applying it to our context, and we realized, implementing these practices and techniques and these methods, you can make a decent living off of it. Not tremendous like this is not a big money scheme, but it's a good, honest living. And so that's where it went from cooking to growing yeah, I always like to say too um, within 10 years, less than 10 years, I went from a four by eight garden bed to a three acre farm wow yeah, 2019 is when we established ever oak farm, um, and then that's when I kept scaling things up, so incredible.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned market farming. What exactly is market farming?
Speaker 3:So direct to consumer sales, that's our main focus. When someone or a farm addresses themselves as a market farm, there's so many different types of farms out there but on the small scale, family based farms are typically-type farms which you're growing the product to sell directly to your consumer or to restaurants or maybe to a wholesaler, bypassing going through a packing house or a distributor, and all that. When you're small-scale growing I imagine something 20 acres or less, that business model makes the most sense of trying to get those direct to consumer sales, other than when you start going past that, you start wanting to look into being more crop focus and also look into different distribution outlets. I didn't want that and I'm not looking to ever really scale up like that.
Speaker 3:I like direct to consumer, yeah, I like community engagement. Food brings people together and also being connected with like what it really means living and eating local and seasonal. I always kind of tell people it's like everyone has their doctor, their lawyers, their CPA, those once in a while, but the one thing you need every day is a farmer and it's a good. Yeah, that direct relationship.
Speaker 2:So I love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so building that bond in that community has always been my goal, so that's why I've always focused in the realm of market farming and trying to stay small.
Speaker 2:So that really is what I think makes you guys stand out is the emphasis on the community. Makes you guys stand out is the emphasis on the community. And you also have that background in culinary, which I think also puts you on a different, you know starting point because you actually understand the quality. You know what is needed for a good quality product for, in terms of flavor, nutritional value, all of those. You know the color, texture, everything. So how do you think that that background in cooking has shaped you as a farmer?
Speaker 3:Well, thinking about that now, there's like two things. One is that I think the big part is being able to relate, like be able to understand the ingredient and how to prepare it, and to be able to communicate that to our customers as well, because it's great. You have people that come up to the farm stand or at the farmer's market and some people, some ingredients are new that you don't see every day, and they're like hey, how can I go about preparing this? Or sometimes you see produce that are fully intact, like turnips with tops or beets with tops, and the tops are edible, and it's like how else can I prepare this? So having that culinary background and that insight of food preparation helps a lot.
Speaker 3:Another thing is what standard, like what's the quality standard that most consumers and even restaurants are looking for as well kind of helps with that. And then also the last thing so I guess it was three things would be having that way to talk to chefs and work, like walk into a kitchen and be able to like it's comforting, like I spent so many hours in the kitchen and I know how it is, I know how the hours are and the long days are, and so you'd be able to relate on that and even thinking about it now. Farmers and chefs pretty much almost have the same lifestyles. One starts earlier in the day and one starts later in the day. You're out there hustling and you're trying to feed and nourish your community and bring an end product to yeah, to keep your community nourished and fed, wow. So.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I think just what you said about knowing the schedule. I think that's a huge leg up because then I think you are already, you have an advantage in terms of communication with these key actors in the community. So it sounds like you really know what you're doing and I think that, for the region of Central Florida, seems to be like the farming community is really growing there. How do you think that the landscape of agriculture has looked in that region in terms of its history and now? Do you see it changing? Is there a positive future, you know, coming to fruition?
Speaker 3:I definitely think that there is a good, positive future and there is changing. It's crazy to think that I've been in Orlando since. Was it December 2007. So what is that? I don't know how many years I can't do math right now I've been here and seen the change, even how the culinary food scene, the whole culinary scene, has changed over those years and now even seeing more farms slowly coming about and emerging, most of them being urban farms or like super small scale farms, which is great.
Speaker 3:Central Florida always did have like their commercial farms, like in larger industrial type farms, especially on the outer parts of Orlando getting towards Apopka. Apopka was more nursery and foliage, but they also, uh, foliar and ornamental type plants. But you still have like a lot larger farms like producing cabbage, cucumbers and some tomatoes and citrus industry slowly dying. But also what's big and then really changing is the development. Farmland is getting consumed like crazy. So, so constraints is kind of a struggle and you see more farms closing.
Speaker 3:I don't know. Sometimes I feel like the farms are popping up and then I see some farms closing. So but it's there and the food scene is there and there are smaller farms really coming up to the scene. When I first started too, there wasn't really much small scale farms around that I could really get my hands like dirty and get involved and really learn that experience because I was totally self-taught and now being able to have the space that I have, that's smack down in the middle of Orlando I'm 10 minutes from downtown back down in the middle of Orlando, 10 minutes from downtown, and now I've been having interns coming on and being able to offer them a place to get hands-on learning experience and learn from my failures and also learn from my success and be able to learn a lot of these techniques and methods of growing at a smaller scale, and hopefully that encourages to keep having more small farms pop up in and around the area.
Speaker 2:And speaking of interns, you said that you were self-taught, so you haven't, prior to starting UN Farm, shadowed another farmer or interned or done any of that.
Speaker 3:No, I literally just picked up a few books, read some articles on UF, ifas and just put it to practice.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:You could theorize all this like everything, all the literature, all day, but you really don't know until you put it in full practice. And yeah, there's been a lot of failures. But a lot of those failures you learn and each season just keeps getting better and better. It would have been nice to have the mentor and actually learn. It probably would have saved me some times and some heartaches and headaches. But it was part of where I was with my life and it was hard to step away from kitchens because that was my paying gig and juggle both. So I've been farming full time and living off our farm income since 2019.
Speaker 3:So from 2015 to 2019, for four years I was working in kitchens and working on the field on our own farm, doing that hustle. So it was like wake up in the morning, farm, make it happen and then later in the afternoon go into the kitchen. Meanwhile, too, I was picking up private chef gigs, so I was able to kind of work my own. So, but that's wild your.
Speaker 3:Your work weeks must have been yeah 80 plus hours about that, but it was at a good flow and a good time. I didn't have my wife and I I didn't have any children at the time, so it was definitely easier. Hustle and bustle, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, are there any farmers in the area that you look up to or feel like you are able to learn from? Because I know that there's a lot of. You know a big community that's growing there, so I'm curious to know if there's that kind of mentor in the making, if there's that kind of mentor in the making.
Speaker 3:I don't really have a mentor there, but just talking to all the other local producers and us just talking, shop and learning our own personal experiences and sharing that. That's why I really love connecting with other producers and just be like what do you do this? Or I've ran into this problem. We all have something to bring to the table and there's a lot of great urban producers here Now. You got Mason from Winter Park Urban Farm, kate from Open Hand Farms there are just the two on the top of my head that are in the immediate area that take on the market and talking to them is fantastic and just sharing our experience, which I that community thing.
Speaker 3:I feel like there is no competition and I never will ever feel there is competition. I always tell people too. I think the most ideal situations have every neighborhood has its own little urban farm, like I truly believe our food is so centralized, our food system is so centralized, and to have that decentralization of multiple small farms in different neighborhoods, like our farm right now caters within 10 miles, so all the CSA deliveries that we make are within 10 miles from the farm and all the restaurants we cater to is 10 miles on the farm and I tell people I wouldn't mind cutting that by half and it would be nice to encourage other producers to come in and take on some urban farming and do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And and tackle that on the markets. Big enough. I have hotels and resorts reaching out to me and I'm just always turning them down. I'm like, look, I'm at capacity. I'm super small, Just kind of keeping within that super hyper local, really catering within the neighborhood.
Speaker 2:So yeah, well, you said it, with decentralization, that's like the key to our, you know, building out these local food systems. Have set yourself up in a way that you could serve as a mentor for another small farm, considering your partnership with Florida Organic Growers and a couple of these really exciting projects that I'd love to get into. The first, I guess collaboration of sorts. You were, you know, kind of I don't want to say voluntold, but excited to become one of the hubs for the market that is aiming to get farm fresh food into homes of average consumers and help become another. Have it new or additional revenue stream for farmers to make and deliver orders aside from their current stance, whether that's in a farmer's market, just from their farm. This is another additional way of being able to sell more locally grown foods. So how has that process been for you in being the hub in Orlando? What have been some things that you've learned, some challenges you face? I'm curious to hear all about it.
Speaker 3:I think this, the timing of it, is great because it's nice to start easing to it Now, as now and then the next few weeks, we have our fall crops coming on and, as things slowly start coming off the field, we're able to upload it onto the Agri platform and while other producers, too, are slowly learning the whole platform and just now educating people like, hey, there's another way to get your local produce, and just spreading the word out there.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, and right now it's just the very early stages of it and I see a big potential on it. It's just getting the consumers to look into it and to give it a try, especially in individuals that have busy schedules as well that can't always make it to a farmer's market and be like, but still want to buy and support local. Absolutely, have a platform to be like. Okay, cool, this could work into my, my busy schedule. Um, because, also, too, sometimes you go to the farmer's market and if you go too late they're sold out. Yeah, able to have this pre, uh, an option like you're pre-ordering your order and have it guaranteed.
Speaker 3:Like cool, I'm gonna have all this ready to pick up from where we're conveniently located, like I said, 10 minutes from downtown orlando. We're off two major roads, on 436 and on state road 50. So where we're at location, wise, is perfect too to be a hub. And, too, you not only are you buying and supporting from other local farms, you're able to come to visit a small urban farm that's practicing a lot of sustainable and regenerative practices and to be able to get connected and see, like, what is possible out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's it's interesting. You say that because and so there's a lot of different types of spaces that you can consider to be a food hub, and a farm can definitely be one of them. So I find that to be really, you know, a plus to that kind of hub where you can actually even see the farm that's growing some of these foods and aggregating from other local farms as well. So I'm curious to know what type of foods can people find at the Orlando hub in terms of ordering online, and are these vendors also small producers? What is the mix of the bag that you guys have?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so right now we're producing only a couple items, right, we're selling actually CSA shares through it as well, so you have the option to even buy CSA shares through the Agri platform. But then we also have a poultry producer that's out in Tavares selling eggs, other cottage goods and poultry. We have a mushroom producer that's just joined a couple weeks ago and, yeah, mushrooms.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's great to have that, and yeah, so right now we got poultry, we have mushrooms and all the produce. Folks, myself included, we're pretty quiet right now, just waiting for the season to come on. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:We do have some fruits coming off here soon and some perennial type tropical type greens on there like morangas available, but for the most part that's for a special type of individuals that know how to eat and consume foods like that. But yeah, right now it's slow. It's the summer, everyone's planting for fall and probably in the next few weeks we should see more greens coming on.
Speaker 2:That's really exciting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm really excited to see when October comes full throttle and seeing everything that we have available and all the other local farms around that are producing to slowly start seeing things come back online lettuce, kales, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and yeah, and that's I mean those are really big seasons for growing.
Speaker 2:So what you mentioned earlier about being able to pre-order, you're basically like a loyalty vip member of the farm um that can just choose what you want ahead of time and not have to worry about, you know, missing out on things that have sold out or, you know all those other factors. So it's a really cool alternative for folks, especially, like you said, who are busy, who work on the weekends or who even have a disability and cannot make it out to those markets or to the farm and have you know another avenue of being able to pick up from a different venue. So there's a lot of different benefits to this and I'm wondering for you why did you choose to become a hub on top of farming? Because I know you have a very busy schedule. So what? What are the benefits that you've seen so far? And I know it's the early days, but you know just in the couple of months that you've been doing this. What have you seen?
Speaker 3:um, one thing I'm also looking forward to that. I mentioned that we're also trying to be able to have the ability to accept uh, ebt and snap, ebt, snap. That's going to be a big thing. That's definitely something as a farm myself want to accept more. And being able to have this platform, once we get to that level that we're able to process, nap, to offer that to consumers like hey, yeah, just order through here and use your, your snap to purchase locally grown and seasonal food straight from the farm.
Speaker 3:But being the hub, it's just like it goes back to our conversation what I said earlier being a community base and to be able to offer a space where not only where I'm able to sell, but to have other producers sell. Some of these farms in and around the area, and even urban farms, don't have the ability to sell produce straight from their farm just because of location, and some people just don't because they'd rather have their privacy, and then some farmers don't want to deal with individuals coming on too and to offer a centralized place where myself and other producers could offer their products to sell. I the more the merrier. I want more people to have accessibility to locally grown food and to eat with the seasons. And that's the goal. And that's why I was open to be a hub, because I got to want to practice what I preach, and when this opportunity was proposed to me as an option, I'm like yeah, it was. I didn't think twice about it.
Speaker 2:We also are really excited to see the Ever Oak Farm as the venue for an upcoming fall event for the Florida Local Food Project, which I oversee, and we are really ecstatic about this because it's the last of three farm events that we have put on for this USDA project and I think we're going to go off with a bang, because Central Florida has a lot to offer and I'm looking forward to, you know, inviting very you know selective chefs and growers and entrepreneurs to really have an intimate gathering whereby they can connect and kind of learn different things from each other. So what are you looking forward to with this type of collaboration with the Florida Local Food Project?
Speaker 3:The networking and connection and just keep building and enhancing our local food community and get other restaurants connected with other producers and producers connected to chefs and their restaurants. And also just the networking aspect is learn from each other and for us to all share what we have to say and how we want to contribute or what we would like to see where our food culture goes from, where we're at now. So that's what I'm pretty stoked about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you mentioned you know that you're not in competition with other growers and I think some growers might not think the same in other parts of the state or city, and I think that shifting that narrative to creating a more collaborative food system is really what we're trying to do with that particular project and bringing these key people together, having a space where we can actually talk about the needs, the barriers, develop workshops around those things. So, in terms of the biggest needs that you think your specific community is looking for when it comes to local food, I mean, what do you think are the biggest needs and barriers for that particular region?
Speaker 3:More farms.
Speaker 3:There isn't a tremendous amount of small scale or even just farms in and around this area.
Speaker 3:So just to have that influence and also just to get consumers more educated on food Most people don't even know how a tomato is grown or the process that goes into that, and most of the times it's being shipped over from Mexico and just that whole seasonality of like nutrition and wellness too, because as soon as foods harvest it starts to degrade in nutritional value.
Speaker 3:So when you have something being shipped across, it's like the state or the country or the world it's losing its nutritional value and some people don't think too much about that, right. Also, people don't think too much about their food and I think we've gone so far from that, like I grew up not really thinking or caring too much about food and sourcing and where it went through, and most other people aren't. So bringing more education and awareness and more producers because how it is now, the industrial food complex is what's keeping us like industrial agriculture is what's keeping us fed, and if that does go down, there's still not enough local small scale producers to keep up with the demand. So we need more producers and just more awareness, and that's what I'm always hoping to bring awareness. Every time people come here to the farm, I try and educate them as much as I can and share as much as I can of the complexity of our food system and what goes into it and all the little nuances of everything absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's complicated. It's complicated yet simple. I think there's a lot of things that we can do as educators to relay some of these processes to consumers, and not just I mean. We're all consumers at the end of the day, but even chefs have sometimes a lack of awareness or a lack of knowledge on the growing seasons and the inputs and all the things that it takes to grow a proper tomato right. And I think that having these educational moments whereby chefs and other experts can come to a farm, harvest their own food, learn about the techniques and the things to keep it sustainable, it really changes everything. Because even you know it's proven for for even young children that when they pick their own fruits and vegetables and I'm sure you know, as as a father now, that it like their whole world shifts and now they are, like, are excited to eat this, this carrot that they pulled out of the ground or this onion Do you find that that adults can really reap those same benefits?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think so too. So too, I really do think so. Um, or at least adults learning to tap into their inner child and being relearning and being open to look at it at a different perspective, but definitely. But going back to what you were saying about the chefs not even were, uh like, aware of seasonality and food, and that's such a true thing. And making it adaptable to our region, central florida and florida in general is so different compared to where it is, what it is throughout the whole united states yeah I think a lot of people don't realize that even when I teach gardening class, we're talking about gardening.
Speaker 3:People that moved to the state still think, like you're planting things late spring into the summer, it's like. No, our growing season is totally different. Like we, we're harvesting strawberries in December, while most people get strawberries by June, july, blueberries come in by March, peaches come in late April, like this. Our seasonality is so different than what it is through the whole United States and even people living within Central Florida or in Florida in general embracing the Florida seasonality to consume those items when they're being produced here in the state.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And I think a lot of chefs too aren't fully aware of that as well.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, well, we at we with the Florida local food project, one of the tools that we're trying to build is actually that exact thing, which is a regional Florida seasonality calendar or tool, so that people that are, you know, in South Florida, north Florida, west Coast, can all see what is available in their particular area, because our state is diverse and it is large and so many different types of soil, climate you name it.
Speaker 2:So it's just very everything is different, you know, in those various regions that we have. So it's really important yeah, like what you just said, for folks in whatever region they're living in, to really know what those specifics are. So we're excited to be putting that together and hopefully can pull some input from folks like yourself to really round out that kind of resource. So that's a really exciting thing for the Florida Local Food Project and this upcoming event. But I also wanted to ask, you know, in terms of the fall produce, what can we expect to see at your farm during this event? And even the people you know, are there specific experts or professionals you're expecting to see coming this November?
Speaker 3:Yep, yeah, so that's the events happening mid November, so by then it should be oh, cabbage, napa, cabbage, green cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower tomatoes Roselle should be coming on around that time, which is hibiscus For those who don't know it, as Roselle should have kohlrabi, lettuce falls the best time in Florida yeah, lots of yummy greens yeah, a lot of greens, a lot of greens and even peppers and a plants.
Speaker 2:We grow 20 different fruits and vegetables here on the property, so amazing yeah, which a good chunk of that should be available about fall, so so yeah, so we I mean I want to take a step back for a second and talk about your perspective on keeping a successful small farm running right. What are key elements to the foundation of a small farm? What do you need to really get started?
Speaker 3:Man. It all depends and every individual is different. Every individual has their own needs. So once you really fully define what you need out of that farm or that business, then you're able to kind of make the decisions you need to make. I think a lot of people like to see that copy and paste or the one size fit all, but it really is and it's. There's a little bit more complexity, but a good general thing is what keeps us going is having a diversified market stream. Like I said, back when we did first started this farm, we were primarily just selling to restaurants and then COVID happened. I'm like that's not sustainable and that's where I'm like okay, it's nice to have three sources of revenue of restaurants and wholesalers, csa, and then our farmers market, farmstan.
Speaker 3:I think diversity is key. I like to have our farm and the crops that we grow as diverse as possible. So I think having a diversity into your business is key. We're now even expanding and doing a little bit of nursery stuff. We're planning our first fall plant sale that we're also collaborating with a few other local folks here. So cause I always tell people like the best thing you can do is grow your own, but there's only so much you can grow yourself or be able to do that. And then the next thing is support a local farm. So I'm always encouraged people do it and also I think when people learn what it takes to grow something, they value it a lot more and they understand where the cost is and why it costs, what it costs to produce or what it is like. But for going back to the original question of like what keeps the farm going success, I think this is the diversity of market streams.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for a small farm that's just getting started, do you recommend them kind of working with their local nurseries and obtaining like fruit or vegetable trees to plant, or starting out from the seed, or kind of doing a mix of both?
Speaker 3:most of the time you're going to just be focusing on mostly annual production and you're going to learn to start your own things from seeds, depending on how big in the scale you are and if you start introducing fruit trees because we also produce a fair amount of well, getting close to producing a fair amount of other perennial type crops because we have half an acre of peaches here, probably almost half an acre of bananas into production avocados, mangoes, guavas those we slowly attain over time and sometimes it's just buying one or two.
Speaker 3:It depends on your budget and what you're able to spend and whatnot, but a lot of times I like to buy a few trees and then propagate from my own especially. It's budget, more budget friendly that way and the smaller the plant that goes into the ground, I feel like, gives you a more hardier like rooted type tree versus the tree going into, like planting things in one gallons is always, in my opinion, the most ideal size to uh for, at least when it comes into fruit trees yeah the younger they are they're able to get in, and then they're not molding.
Speaker 3:The roots aren't molding into the pots. But but yeah, for annual vegetables starting your own. Everything else is probably best working with other local nurseries.
Speaker 2:Are there expectations for how much a new small farmer should expect to be putting down in order to get started? What is your perspective on all that, and even securing a land too?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's another thing. I don't own the land. I don't own any land, I lease land. I always thought, too, I was like, oh man, I want to be a farmer, I want to grow food, I need to own my own land. I always thought, too, I was like, oh man.
Speaker 3:I didn't want to be a farmer. I want to grow food. I need to own my own land, and land is so expensive and sometimes it's kind of best to maybe not own by land till you actually have a few years underneath your way and then before you make that full investment. But once you attain land and this is tough because we originally started our farm back in well, we started market farming, I said, back in 2015. But 2016 was really the year that we really put a lot in, when we started our first urban farms with our housemate that we started that with $2,000, bare bones quarter acre lot and just started super small, super lean. And then over the years, while working um the money that you get from the farm, you just keep kind of putting it back in and throwing it back in and grow it organically that way that's incredible yeah, I don't know how it would be this day of age, because that's 2016 and where is it 2024?
Speaker 3:right now, much different, oh yeah. So maybe double. That is what you kind of need to maybe start up something super small, and I think it's wise if young farmers are getting into it like start small, smart, lean, and like kind of do the farming part time and ease into it. I kind of do the farming part-time and ease into it. It sucks in the beginning, being so stretched thin at times, but it's definitely worth taking that slow, organic approach of building it With our farm. I always struggle getting any proper financing, even from the institutes that are supposed to be there to help fund farms, and I've never been one to go searching for grants, because that's a full-time job, just writing grants, and a lot of times they're just reimbursements and I don't have the upfront funding for it. So, working with your community that's another reason why I started the CSA to have that upfront investment. I'm like, okay, cool, I allocate some of this to build up and put into this infrastructure and then this to keep paying the bills and whatnot.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And that's what I tell people too, as well as I wouldn't be here for the community and if I wasn't wanted like I'm only here because of community support, If the community didn't want this and there's no reason for being here, I'll just go homesteading and just go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I was. I was just about to get to support systems, but right before that I was going to quickly ask you in terms of equipment. Obviously there's like your dream equipment, and then there's the basic necessities. Have you found like if you could list your top three farm tools.
Speaker 3:So I told if I would do this all again. Oh man, top three, can I throw a fourth one? Yeah, if I would do this all again and like had to do it at a small scale. I have my most ideal and where I'm at now, but in the beginning of how I started, small tilder, paper pot transplanter, jank cedar, and then quick greens uh, the quick greens harvester or cut, cut greens, harvester, whatever. Uh, those four equipment I feel like is what I would start off with and then from there slowly build up to the bigger stuff. Like I'm still looking into hopefully getting a BCS walk behind tractor. There's still equipment that I've been trying to achieve that I haven't been able to get there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, christmas list.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's an ongoing list and as things scale up, and then it's like, all right, yeah, in order for me to keep scaling up, I need to get this, and it's just like waiting till I'm able to attain that. But yeah, it's just going back. Those top four would be to start off with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's excellent. We'll include a link to that in our about text and even the upcoming dates for all of our you know exciting events and how to get involved in the hub if you are interested or live in that area. But before we wrap up, I do want to give you a chance to speak a bit more about you know, your support system with the community, how you foresee this changing or evolving and really what kind of advice you would give to anyone else who's who was in your position, you know, several years ago and might not feel confident taking that next step.
Speaker 3:So the future of where we are and what I see ourself going, as my goal is to kind of eventually move out of this urban setting and scale up on what I'm doing. We've been diving more into agroforestry. My goal is always to go beyond sustainability, because if you think about the word sustainable, it's just like you kind of flatline, you hit a plateau and I think we need to thrive and go beyond sustainability or to slowly not rely on external inputs and rely on producing as much as your own fertility within or sourcing fertility within and around the surrounding areas. Like we are partners with O-Town Compost. We compost here on site and have a partnership with O-Town Compost, which they bring in food scraps from the hotels and resorts and even some of our CSA members, our Oat Town subscribers or even some of the restaurants we deal with, also get there, so it's cool to see their waste kind of get cycled back over here to the farm. And then, since we're conveniently located in the middle of the city, it's easy for us to get wood chips, which is our carbon material, so to have that excess nitrogen material, food scraps material. So to have that excess nitrogen material of food scraps and that excess material of carbon and mixing those, and so over the years I've actually totally backed away from using any even organic fertilizer, integrating poultry and because we also do produce poultry here on the farm and utilizing them as a way to build up fertility of their manure.
Speaker 3:And even we do process birds chicken for meat as well. Here we operate under FDEC's limited poultry license, which is a federal PL exemption, pl 9043 or whatever it is, and even yeah, exactly, and using even like their. After their we're processing you have their, their innards, the blood, the feather, and which most people don't realize like when it comes into organic agriculture, you typically are relying on a lot of animal byproducts. Yes, usually manures, blood meal, feather meal, bone meal, all those type amendments and my thoughts like well, typically those are coming from CAFO systems and buying organic fertilizer. You're still supporting that passively. In my opinion, my eyes, so to like, cut those loops out.
Speaker 3:All these processes and these steps that I've implemented into the farm have been baby steps. I don't recommend anybody trying to conquer this overnight. These are slow, like been slowly integrated into our outfit. But going back and then even implementing agroforestry and more perennial systems into our farms and have that integration of perennials with annual growing because at the end of the day we need to plant more trees, try and sequester as much carbon as possible. Perennial systems are more sustainable than annual production because there's less happening, more, less ground prep, there's less input typically going in into perennials than there are. So to kind of have that balance as well and to have that support and to also enhance our ecology here on the farm because that's what our goal is is to promote as much life as possible on this farm, like it's nice seeing over the years of certain insects I've never seen before, native bees I haven't seen before and over the years seeing the enhancement of our local ecology here years seeing the enhancement of our local ecology here.
Speaker 2:Yes, the idea of agroforestry and incorporating that into a, you know, farm space is so critical for the biodiversity, and I think we did an episode actually before about landscaping and it was really this idea of creating your own ecosystem in your backyard by using perennial plants, by attracting native animal species and insects and really creating a very lively environment just in your own backyard. So even for folks that are not actively growing they are listening to this episode it's something that we can all practice, even by living in an apartment complex, like I do. So there's just I totally agree with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, because I think the idea is to promote more life. I was that I'm going two years without spraying here on the farm that, even any organic stuff. I always look at pests and disease as a stress response and learning to see why the stress response presented themselves in the first place and a lot of times it's excess or lacking up. I always tell give these two prime examples with our farms and what I've personally dealt with in the past and some of the there are actual published published literature on this like aphids, for example, are attracted to plants that are taking in a high amount of excess nitrogen and going through that growth. If it's are attracted to that and water stress. But if you have a good, balanced soil it's going on a good, steady pace. You typically don't deal with that.
Speaker 3:Another thing too is I deal with yellow mosaic virus. It only for my zucchini, so I in the fall I ended up getting deformed zucchinis but I could grow zucchinis in the spring and the reason for that is because planting in the fall is the heat and humidity still high. The plant experienced that stress. It doesn't exert those symptoms or it doesn't show that it's still present here on the farm versus the spring, I can grow zucchini with no problem, um, and I don't see any of the the symptoms of having yellow mosaic, yellow zucchini mosaic fires. So knowing that and working with nature has always been the goal.
Speaker 3:And and another thing too pests is sometimes a seasonal as well. We deal with flea beetles every March that they always go after anything in the Brassica rapa family, which is typically your Chinese type or Asian type, brassica greens, napa, takchoy, mizunos, tatsuo those are plants in the Brassica rapa family and we just take that path of least resistant and not grow that. Yeah, I can get insect netting, but that's me relying on buying more infrastructure. Or I can spray, which is more labor for me to spray, but organic sprays or synthetic spray, it doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't pick and choose the benefits or the ones that you're trying to terminate. So that's why I avoid spraying in general and just work with the ecology. So to enhance the natural ecology and just to work with the rhythm of what's being presented, yeah, working with nature, not against nature.
Speaker 2:that's it Exactly. Yes.
Speaker 3:So that's how my approach is, and you just can't be afraid of failure. You just got to jump in it. You can, like I said earlier, you can theorize this stuff all day, but you don't know until you really put it into practice. And yeah, don't be afraid to fail, because you're going to have a lot of failures. But those failures it's how you overcome those failures is where you're going to become successful.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for sharing that advice and, honestly, you know we've had, mike, the absolute pleasure just speaking with you, learning about your story, and just grateful that you could take some time out of your busy, busy farming schedule today. So, you know, thank you again so much for sharing your advice and making the commitment to beyond sustainable as a farm food hub and community space.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally, it was a pleasure. I could actually keep talking about this stuff for hours. I know we're so limited for time.
Speaker 2:We are exactly the same. You know I could be here for hours, maybe days on end, but you know we've had really a great wrap up of, I think, a lot of really great key points for our listeners to take away. For those listening, whether you're a farmer, a foodie or someone who simply cares about where your food comes from, I hope this episode has inspired you to think more deeply about sustainability and the impact we can all have when we support local organic agriculture and beyond. Thank you for joining us today. Be sure to keep an eye on Ever Oak Farms upcoming events and our social media and continue to support your local farms. Until next time, stay rooted in sustainability, stay connected with your community and keep cultivating positive change.
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