Intro Post: Welcome to The Beet!

There are so many ways to show the impact of the work CCUA does: pounds of food grown,  square feet of new garden space, time spent cooking and gardening with family members, nutrients, calories, revenues, expenditures…the list goes on. Most of these things are quantitative and serve an important role in showing the impact that urban agriculture and home food production have on health, economics, community and the environment. Although, there is something all of these numbers lack…heart. Pie charts don’t have heart and frankly many people find them boring. Even an explanation of how our programs work can get readers/listeners lost. So, we’re taking a different angle with our new blog; stories. We want to share the stories of urban agriculture, of our city’s gardeners, of how the smallest of gardens can make the biggest impact on community, environment, economics and health. New and amazing things happen every day to gardeners and food eaters in Columbia!

Starting in the new year, we will share stories of CCUA’s work in the community. We are excited to share the endless ways that gardening touches people’s lives. You’ll hear stories about refugees in our Opportunity Gardens program, volunteers at the Kilgore’s garden, chickens at the Urban Farm, service-learning projects, garden pests, potlucks, community gardens and much more! Hopefully, you’ll be following our posts and give some feedback as to the things you’d like to hear about in weeks to come. This week, I thought I would share a story about my life, about love and about figs.

In 2006, while attending school, I stumbled upon a volunteer fair. Among the booths, pamphlets, free pencils, and idealistic students a friend points out an organization he recognized, Heifer International. I learned that you can volunteer full-time at one of Heifer’s Learning Centers and pretty much have your basic needs covered: food, housing, entertainment. The next thing you know, I had my airfare booked and I was committed to volunteering at the Heifer Ranch for one month. What an amazing place the ranch was. Twelve hundred acres of rolling hills and flat river bottom in the Ouachita Mountains of central Arkansas. The ranch had two “global villages” where groups come to learn about poverty, agriculture and the work Heifer does. These villages have housing representative of places where Heifer works and facilitates group experiences living in this simulated setting. In addition to these villages, the working ranch donned a 10-acre organic vegetable CSA, cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, llamas, pigs, donkeys, camels, water buffalo, bees, pine forests….the list goes on. I butchered my first chicken here. The ranch’s staff mostly consisted of full-time volunteers who worked with groups of visitors, cared for livestock, gardens, and grounds. Cool, right? So, obviously one month was not enough to quench my thirst for this place.

Here is where the story really starts, the following summer. A recent college graduate, I was excited to begin my career in agriculture. So, I bought a one-way ticket to Arkansas, knowing that it would take something fantastic to remove me from this 1,200 acre paradise that was the Heifer Ranch. That summer was great, chasing cows, stringing fence, milking goats, picking green beans, hauling scrap metal, fishing, swimming, eating good food and meeting fun like-minded people. I fell in love at the Heifer Ranch, these beautiful surroundings and the right woman bred the beginning of the rest of my life with the woman who is now my wife, Carrie.

Carrie and I lived in the same house at the ranch, which meant we shared a kitchen. Outside of our daily lunch provided by the ranch’s cafeteria (which was excellent and used meat and veggies from the ranch), volunteers had to fend for themselves, but had big gardens, and kitchens to accomplish the task. Together, Carrie and I discovered another delicious way to feed ourselves. It literally smacked many people in the face daily, but few noticed that this poorly pruned bush was a fig tree. Some wise volunteer must have planted the tree years ago knowing that residents of Valley View House would appreciate it. Thank you, whoever you are.

This tree provided many conversations, curiosities, jars of jam, and stomachaches due to its abundance of infructescence. An abundance of what?! This discovery fueled much of the conversation and curiosity. A fig is not actually a fruit, but a fleshy structure which houses many flowers that bloom inward, only accessible for pollinators through a small opening at the end of the fig. Our research into the subject led us to learn that the crunchies inside of figs can not only be seeds of the flowers, but eggs of the wasps that pollinate it! Carrie and I made many meals out of these figs: pizza, sandwiches, oatmeal, paired with cheese, pies, and jams to name some. You could say these figs fed our burgeoning love.

That fall, things were winding down at the ranch, groups stopped coming and the gardens stopped growing. Carrie had already left to finish her final year of classes at Columbia College. I made a leap of faith and decided to move to Columbia too. I secured an AmeriCorps VISTA position in CoMo and in the Spring of 2009 we began our first garden as a couple. It was at this time that we also began our involvement with this energetic group of urban pioneers who called themselves the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture. It has been a wild ride working for such an active, dynamic organization. Something that hasn’t failed though all of these years, is our love and passion for good, fresh food. Until recently, we had negligently forgotten one of the foods that helped build our relationship.

June 1st of this year, Carrie and I got married. At the event were two friends who we knew from the Heifer Ranch, Jared and Benji. Not only did they drive all the way from Little Rock to witness our ceremony, but they brought with them the most thoughtful gift we received that day. In a four inch pot, with a neatly tied bow, a young fig tree was planted. Neither of us had eaten a single fig since we left the ranch four years ago and here before us was a lost idea of our past. Last week, I transplanted the tree into a larger pot and gave it a bit of organic fertilizer. This morning Carrie discovered something. There are figs. Yes, in a matter of weeks, Carrie and I will once again be able to travel back in time using one of our strongest sensory memories, taste. Until then we will keep watch over the young tree to ensure its success. Whoever planted that tree next to the porch at Valley View House knew something, they may not have known that their tree would feed the beginning of a couple’s life together, but surely they knew that food is good.

For more information on growing figs in Missouri, check out this concise yet informative piece from the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Until next time…

Billy