[Announce] Oklahoma City urban market gardening meeting

[Robert Waldrop]

We held our first meeting today to jump start urban market gardening in the western Oklahoma County area.

Today's meeting today attracted FORTY PEOPLE interested in urban market gardening.  We discussed organizing Small Plot Intensive urban market garden cooperatives ( www.spinfarming.com ), and we talked about marketing options for existing growers.  

Eleven are interested in starting a cooperative to grow market vegetables using the SPIN farming concepts.

Three are already growing vegetables for sale, and they are interested in starting a marketing coop for their vegetables.

Ten want to start growing vegetables for sale to the public, and are interested in the marketing coop and SPIN farming models.

Everyone was encouraged to subscribe to okspincoop at yahoogroups.com (which you can do at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/okspinfarmcoop/ ).   Everyone present seemed highly motivated.  We enjoyed some great chips and salsa made by Cathy Botchlet, who grows vegetables in Yukon and also processes some of her produce into a line of salsas, pickled beets, relish, and has a co-packer make tortilla chips for her out of corn grown in Oklahoma (without pesticides or herbicides even!).  Who knew?  

We talked about the SPIN farming model, the cooperative form of business organization, and the opportunities that the Oklahoma Food Cooperative offers for growers.  We also discussed the challenges of the present "once a month delivery day" that the Coop is for vegetable producers.  One thought I have had about that is that a producer could avoid the problem of our monthly schedule by growing vegetables that keep well to sell through the cooperative (potatoes, onions, garlic, winter squash) and "cut and come again greens" like chard. There also is a market for dried peas and beans for those with several acres.  These are allowed to dry on the vine, and then harvested with a combine. All these products would be in high demand in the coop, and have the virtue of being less perishable so the day they go to market is not as critical.  Anyway, there was considerable interest in organizing a marketing coop for existing growers in order to enable them to cover all the regional farmers markets, and maybe do a produce truck that would visit large employers and do roadside sales.

UPCOMING MEETINGS
The group set a second meeting for the last Sunday of August (the 26th), 3 PM, at the Channing Unitarian Universalist Church in Edmond.

The Norman meeting will be on Saturday, August 18th, at 3 PM, at the Norman Public Library, room A/B.

The eastern Oklahoma County meeting will be in September and we are looking at dates.

It was a most auspicious hour of seed planting for this organizing campaign.

Feel free to pass this report on to others who might be interested.

Bob Waldrop, Romero Catholic Worker House Oklahoma City
www.justpeace.org www.bettertimesinfo.org www.energyconservationinfo.org 
www.oklahomafood.coop
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