Lynchburg Grows

I started volunteering at Lynchburg Grows last fall, shortly after I moved back to Lynchburg.  My parents mentioned it to me, I checked out the website, and thought, Wow!  an urban farm in town, with 9 huge greenhouses!  How did I grow up going to the City Stadium, and never notice those structures behind?  Turns out very few people knew.

View from the rear of Lynchburg Grows

I went over and said I wanted to volunteer.  For some time I've wanted to work in a greenhouse, so this worked out perfectly.  It couldn't have been easier -- they told me to just show up any day, and they'd have something for me to do, whether it's weeding, planting, cutting, trimming, or any of the other innumerable chores a farm imposes.

Crops

When I started in the fall, the main crops were lettuce mixes (spring mix, arugula), swiss chard, beets, radishes, spinach, and roses.  Over the summer they grew carrots, green peppers, basil, cucumbers, and others.  The contrast in the interior between low winter greens and upright summertime peppers was marked:

Wintertime lowriding spinach

Wintertime beets line the raised bed

Summertime peppers bust out tall

The seasonal difference in heat is also severe; in winter they are a mild 50, but in summer those glass ovens scorch at 120 degrees and higher.

Residents

Plants aren't the only things living on the farm.  Princess is the resident goat.  She spends her days hanging out in her pen with her close friend Lucky the Duck.  Sometimes she's hunkered down in her wooden hut; other times she's perched on a log or her huge cable spool, just enjoying standing around.

Princess reclines on her spool

Not too far from her pen live the chickens.  They enjoy a nesting hut with individual nest boxes, as well as a decent-sized yard and a tree.  They get fed corn meal and lots of vegetable and plant scraps.

Chickens socializing

Greenhouse #9

Several months in, I asked the guys for a longer-term project.  They told me, "Take Greenhouse #9 and upgrade it so we can host events.  Do what you can, however you want."  Whoa, what a cool opportunity!

Greenhouse #9, summer 2012

What are the plans for #9, you ask?  Well, get rid of unsightly messes like this, for starters:

Greenhouse #9, in suboptimal condition

The idea is to create a welcoming space for events such as wedding rehearsals, meetings, and receptions.  A couple of weddings or receptions have already been held here, but to really make it a great spot for the community, it needs a lot of work.  Steam pipes are being cut out, beds cleaned up, weeds pulled, and before anything else, about 80 panes of glass need to be replaced.  The budget is tight, so we've raised about half what we need for the glass.

Some ideas for the space include herbs, a water feature, benches, green end walls, carts with planters, and a better floor.

Aquaponics

This year's principal capital improvement project has been the aquaponics system, in Greenhouse #7.  Micha laid a beautiful stone walkway through the entire greenhouse.  Throughout the spring and summer the beds were cleared and frames erected over the beds.  By August they had started running water through the first two aquaponics systems.

The plan is to stock the bottom bed with fish (probably catfish or tilapia), then grow various crops in the upper troughs.  Some students from the Lynchburg College environmental program are helping design and set up the system.

Composting

These days I'm not going over as much as I was last fall, but I'm helping in other ways.  For example, they maintain a worm composting bin in the main greenhouse.  I thought it deserved a poster or sign explaining how it works, since quite a few school groups and other visitors come through, so I found a poster online:

Worm Composting Educational Poster

In addition, the City of Lynchburg drops off a good portion of the leaves it collects in the fall at the Grows, for a source of compost.  As you might imagine, all those plants generate tons of scraps, which are either fed to the residents, or stuffed into the large compost bin.

The Grows offers a CSA program, as well as onsite sales of its produce.  They hope to offer rose bushes, starter plants, and more crops as they evolve.

Working in the greenhouse is grounding and satisfying.  I get dirty, even got poison ivy from clearing out some of the leftover overgrowth from one greenhouse, and I love it.  Cutting my own chard and sauteeing it up minutes later; eating arugula straight from the plant; helping develop a local agricultural and community destination; these are all great reasons to work at Lynchburg Grows.