Organic Farm Tour - Day 2

Day two of our organic farm tour began with a visit to Provision Organic Farm in Oklahoma City.  The farm provides organic vegetables and meat for Provision Kitchen.  Both are locally and family-owned.  Here we are at the beginning of the tour with one of the farm managers.

Just like Three Springs Farm (from the blog on Day 1), they have a large hoophouse full of tomatoes.  

The tomatoes are trained up twine that is attached to overhead supports.

They are in the process of building a large barn that will serve several purposes.

In addition to vegetables, they also raise "pastured" chickens and hogs.  This means their animals will never see the inside of a Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) a.k.a. Pollution Palace.  Believe me, you do not want to eat an egg or any meat that comes from one of those places.

Here is their chicken "tractor".  It can be moved around to give the chickens access to fresh grass.

LOL.....it is a little bigger than our chicken tractor.  We move ours around with our Gator.  I think you'd need a tractor or a truck to move their chicken tractor.

They have Rhode Island Red chickens.  

And, they raise Berkshire Tamworth hogs.  Although you cannot see it, the hogs are fenced in with electric fencing that can easily be moved to allow them access to new pasture and "rooting" ground.  

Here's a closeup of one of the hogs.  I was standing just on the other side of the electric fence.

Next up on our agenda was a visit to Guilford Gardens  which is located in northwest Oklahoma City.  It is comprised of four city lots, smack dab in the middle of a suburban neighborhood.  However, you would never know it was there.  The garden is behind the the family home and well hidden by privacy fences and shrubbery.   Here's our tour bus parked in the driveway.



A flower garden occupies one of the four lots.  It is a commercial venture between Guilford Gardens and Elia Woods of CommonWealth Urban Farms.   Here are some of the flowers that are grown there.  

The Guilford Gardens is owned by Kamala Gamble and supplies produce to her other business Kam's Kookery, as well as to their CSA members.   Kam does catering and treated us to a terrific lunch before we toured her gardens.

Next, we loaded back on the bus for the trip to Ft. Cobb, OK, and a visit to Arcadian Family Farm.  This farm is owned by Rod Ardoin and Nanette Ardoin.  They are originally from Louisiana.  Ron is the second person from the left, in the rubber boots.  I really enjoyed him.  He has a slight southern Louisiana accent and made a point of singling out a couple of OSU professors, who were on the tour with us by asking questions of them.  He'd say things like "Maybe one of the doctors could tell us .....".  I got the feeling that he might actually know more about the subject than the "doctors" did.  Ha!  

They've had a lot of rain in this area recently and there were puddles around.  I think Ron had the right idea with his rubber boots.

Ft. Cobb is located in southwest Oklahoma.  As you can see there are wide-open spaces all around.  One of the crops this organic farm is known for is their sweet potatoes shown below.  Who better to grow sweet potatoes than someone from southern Louisiana!

The black tubing running to the rows is part of their drip-irrigation system. The tubing contains small holes that allow the water to drip slowly right at the base of the plants.  This is so much better at conserving water than the large sprinkler systems that so many farmers use.  The picture below shows how the smaller tubes are connected to the main water line. The picture also shows how black plastic is used to control weeds in the field.  These are onions.  Small holes are punched in the plastic and the onions plants are planted in the holes.

Arcadian Family Farm was the last stop on our 2-day organic farm tour.  By the time we got home that evening, we were tuckered out, but extremely excited by the organic movement in our state.