Springing Forward at Adventure Farm

Things are picking up here at Adventure Farm.  Guy has had a number of tree-climbing events in the St Louis area and is busy helping prepare for the upcoming TREEmendous event at the MO Botanical Garden, April 30-May 1.  Come out and join the celebration of trees and forests at the garden.

Banners for the TREEmendous event outside the main entrance to the MO Botanical Garden

The picture in the Forest Festival banner was taken at one of Guy's events and is a friend's daughter. 

We are excited that Laurellyn is getting her moment of fame and that Guy is involved in this great event. 

Hope to see you there. 

The urban farming and homesteading piece of Adventure Farm is also busy this spring. This past weekend Bill Wilson, co-founder of Midwest Permaculture and one of my instructors at the permaculture design course I attended this past fall, was here to do a talk at Schlafly Bottleworks on April 2. Part of the day included a Walk About at Adventure Farm.  

This is the first public event for the permaculture portion of Adventure Farm and a very exciting event it was.  There  were 16 people who chose to spend a few hours of a beautiful Saturday afternoon touring this small urban farm and giving feedback and suggestions. 

We met and started in the front yard 

I was particularly looking for suggestions for the front yard, which is just beginning its transformation into a working part of the space. Notice the hill. This has been a design challenge for me. During the walkabout,  I got many ideas on things to do to make this space productive while still being attractive in an urban setting.  Stay tuned for future entrys on its evolution. 

We then headed to the back

I imagine that the backyard was a little more helpful to folks who were looking for examples of urban permaculture since not much is going on in the front yard.  I got quite a bit of positive feedback and some good design suggestions for back here, too. I was a little nervous about opening up this space to others even though that is our intent. It's always a little scary to put myself out there in this way, especially this early in the season when things don't look quite as nice as they will later. 

Bill doing his design thing 

We worked our way from the front of the house to the back with me introducing everyone to the space and explaining what I was attempting to accomplish. 

We then worked our way back around to the front giving people time to give design suggestions

Overall, the Walk About felt like a success to me. The bonus to this event was the opportunity to meet like-minded people in the area. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with many of these people. For those of you who might be interested in learning more about permaculture design, please take a moment to check out Midwest Permaculture at http://www.midwestpermaculture.com/


There is also a weekend permaculture training coming to St. Louis in July.  I'll be posting details as soon as they become available. 

The Good Gardening, Good Food series that Bill’s talk was a part of is being hosted by Slow Food St Louis, Schlafly Bottleworks and Brick City Gardens. Check out their 2011 Schedule of events at 

http://brickcitygardens.com/


Happy Spring, 


Deanna