Johnson's Backyard Garden

I had a full work day at Johnson's Backyard Garden yesterday. This is currently a 15 acre organic vegetable farm that has an 800 member CSA program. It started as a small personal garden in Brenton's backyard about 5 years ago, and is now the largest CSA in the southeastern United States. They have plans to expand and just recently purchased a new plot of land.
During my work day we separated garlic, sorted tomatoes and transplanted cabbage. To transplant we sat on a tractor attachment similar to this one with a rotor in front of us that we dropped the seedlings into. It was pretty bizarre. Pictured above are pipes for their irrigation system.

I brought home one of the seedlings that got left behind when we planted. I think this is a russian red kale.
The interns and several of the workers were twenty-something college graduates. They were listening to the Decemberists and other hipster music. The other workers were all Hispanic (most likely Mexican) men in the 30-50 age range.

This is the first time I have seen okra plants. They look a lot like hollyhocks, because they are both in the Mallow family.

Oak Hill Farm and John Lash

Saludos desde Tejas !
After a summer working in a garden in Colorado I'm still left wanting, so here I am trying to find a job as a farmer (kind of). A week ago I visited Cora Lamar at Oak Hill Farm in Poteet, the Strawberry capital of Texas. Oak Hill (10-15 acres?) sells the majority of its produce to Central Market and other grocery stores. The farm is known for its spinach, which I have yet to try. Cora showed me around her farm where her dogs were running around peeing on lettuce (don't worry it gets washed, but you should probably wash it too). John Lash, of Farm to Table, was there picking up lettuce and offered to help me find a farm to work at. Farm to Table finds and delivers produce, meat, cheese, etc. from local organic farms and distributes them to restaurants and grocery stores. He was an interesting guy, always on his cell phone trying to make arrangements and very curious about whatever new produce Cora was growing. Cora introduced me around the farmers market but I didn't have much luck making connections there.