Grand Prairie Texas - Making A Difference In The Garden

The City Of Grand Prairie lies between Dallas and Fort Worth Texas. The boundaries of the city run through four different counties with landscapes that vary from Blackland Prairie to the Eastern Cross Timbers region.  This summer, I headed out for a field trip led by Tammy Chan who is the Special Projects Coordinator for the City of Grand Prairie. Tammy has a strong passion for green living and has created many initiatives to help educate and support her community in and out of the garden. In fact she is part of the team who works on the city's green initiative called Green Grand Prairie.
Keep Grand Prairie Beautiful

My mission was to learn all that I could about the garden programs that the city supports. Most of the schools in the city have school gardens. Many of them have plots for the community on their school grounds as well. These gardens are not only teaching kids the tastiness of swiss chard and zucchini, but also the sense of community that working in the dirt teaches.

The Community Gardens have helped seniors grow fresh produce as well as bring crime rates down in communities that were falling apart. Some gardens are on church lots and some on private property that the city borrows to improve the community.  Every garden has to give some of their harvest to the city's  Farmer's Market program that helps fund the green initiatives. They also practice composting, vermicomposting and recycling.

With incredible support from the city, Grand Prairie is definitely leading the way in North Texas with their garden programs. They are creating relationships with the community and the dirt. This farmer was inspired and impressed!

East Texas - Poppa Skinny's & Jacksonville Tomato Fest

Mouth watering, juicy, delicious tomatoes were the theme at this classic East Texas event. If you ever get a chance to time your visit to this small Texas town, try and make it during this annual festival. You'll be glad that you did!

Tomatoes are celebrated year round in this community's Tomato Bowl stadium.

This tomato expert gave us a ton of historical and yes, a little hysterical tomato fest info.

After the Tomato Fest, we stopped by Poppa Skinny's Farm  located near the town of Rusk. This organic farm produces seasonal crops and offers community-shared agriculture to local residents. CSA's are an alternative, locally-based model of agriculture and food distribution. It is wildly popular on the East and West coast and thankfully is gaining popularity in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Local, organically grown food is the healthiest option for all of our families. So if you're looking to get your family to eat healthier,  try switching over to this method of buying fresh, local produce.

Sweet corn is delicious straight off the stalk!

At Poppa Skinny's, they have hoop houses that house their organic chickens.

A trailer train system is their hen house. They rotate it around the field for the grazing hens that lay eggs.

At Poppa Skinny's, Terry will sell you fresh produce, chicken, pork products, preserves and eggs. She also has a wealth of information and advice about crops. They are open most days and welcome folks who stop by. We even got a tractor ride! This stop is highly recommended to learn more about the farm to table cycle and pick up some tasty treats for your own table.

Rainwater Harvesting.., We're Into That

We use a hand pump to bring water to the farm.

Our school is in a great school district. Even in these crazy days of difficult school financing decisions, we can still float the boat and are much better off than other school districts in Texas. That being said, when we started our farm project, or now if we want to add anything new to the farm, there is a lot of red tape, forms to be compiled and plans of work to write up. This hasn't been a problem for our farm team though. In fact, it has given us time to plan and really think through what we are doing and where we are headed on our farm.

Students at work on the farm.

When we started our planning and conversations with Phil Lozano,  Associate Director of Facility Services for our school district, we initially told him that we wouldn't be asking them to pay for the water. Since our PTA works magic at raising funds and figuring out ways to get things for our school and students, we told him that we would just pay for a water meter and that the bill would come straight to the PTA. He immediately shut us down on that thought with great reasoning.

He asked us to change our thinking. Rather than teaching the kids to just turn on a faucet and water plants, we need to teach them about sustainability as well as water conservation. In the past, settlers and farmers didn't have hoses to run when they watered their crops. They needed to be resourceful and collect water to save and use sparingly. He had a good point and so we changed our thoughts and set off to learn all that we could about rain water collection.

Our 1,000 gallon rain collection tank

Since we like to do things BIG, we went straight for the 1,000 gallon tank. Jeremy came out and set us up with everything we needed to get our rain harvest system up and running. His company is Rainwater Harvesting Systems and they are located in Denton, Texas. They are able to provide rainwater collectors in all shapes and sizes. Jeremy and Rainwater Harvesting Systems come highly recommended by our Farm Team! 

                    

Jeremy is an expert in rain harvesting.

 Special gutters were installed on our barn to collect the rain.

We are proud to be green!