September 8th marks six years since we launched our first Overalls Farm. You may have missed it in the beginning because we didn’t post publicly about it for years. Growing up-an-alley in Jacksonville’s Springfield neighborhood- tucked in a residential backyard (mine, as it were)- it was intentionally kept on the down-low, except as far as the neighborhood was concerned. But then, in June 2023, I shared the origin story on the stage of Florida Theater ending with the dream to replicate our neighborhood farm model. Now, with Overalls Farms One and Two thriving, we’re growing Farm Three to fruition, and we need a little help making it happen. When we started, to ensure we were growing in service of our...
There's something about coming out of the cold, darkness of winter into the warm light of spring that swells our sense of the possible, and so spring is - universally- the most popular gardening season. And for good measure: potatoes, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, pumpkins, melons and all those other frost-tender crops thrive in the early spring warmth - before the onslaught...
I've been rolling my #GrowCart through Jacksonville's streets to highlight the fact you don't need a lot of space to grow your groceries. In other words, you don't need a farm to have a garden -Â which is worth celebrating!If you're like me, you'd love be able to pick something from your garden, more or less, everyday - something to base dinner on or something to give it that extra touch of flavor...
I'm grateful because...Well, it started with my mother: when I was 8, she taught me how to turn over the soil with a shovel, how to sow seeds, how to break a little branch off a shrub and stake it over newly transplanted starts to lessen the brunt of the sun, how to thin carrots, stake tomatoes, dig potatoes, and crop collard greens. By and large, the basics, I learned from her. Without the...
I often hear folks joke, "Yeah, I had a garden once. I put in all this money & effort, and I only got a handful of tomatoes. Each one of them cost $27!" And they usually end by saying something about not having a green thumb.
My first tomatoes of the season
I smile and think about a mental model I've been working on: Growing your groceries is like washing your dishes.While they're raving about how...
