farm

A Verdant Spring

July 9, 2025

After a long, cold winter, Rural Studio Farm in the spring is always a revitalizing place to be. And nothing heralds the new cycle of growth like our fresh strawberries, which began to bear fruit in February.

Three students each hold a basket with ripe red strawberries freshly picked
Two students pose with baskets full of ripe strawberries

Since late May, we have been harvesting hundreds of pounds of blueberries and blackberries. It’s been such a treat to see how much the plants have produced this year compared to last.

Three baskets containing ripe blackberries that were just picked
Two rows of trellised blackberry vines covered in white blossoms
A student holds several plump and juicy blackberries
A closeup of green, red, and ripe black blackberries against a clouded sky
A cluster of blueberries in varying states of ripeness: from pale green to pink to dark-bluish purple

Flowers also signal the changing of seasons. We always grow a lot of flowers for cutting and for pollinators, and this year we are trying some new varieties: poppies, lion’s ear, mullein, flax, moonflower, hyacinth bean, violets, and butterfly pea, to name a few.

Pale pink Chinese aster blooms
A closeup of a sunlit violet in bloom
A closeup of bright orange California poppies
A closeup of a bright red broadleaf poppy
A closeup of blue and white bearded irises against a background of the dawn-time sun through the trees
A row of pinkish, reddish broadleaf poppies

Along with flowers, we are trialing some new varieties of various crops that the kitchen team has requested, like golden acre cabbage and scarlet kale. The golden acre has a nice, sweet flavor and both have been beautiful and productive, even in the heat of the South.

A couple dozen seedling trays in the seed house, each brimming with seedlings of varying shapes and colors
A closeup of dark green mint
Students are gathered in the seed house, both harvesting microgreens and sowing new seeds into freshly prepared trays
Four rows of neat, crisp green heads of salanova lettuce
A plateful of food from the RS kitchen loaded with farm produce
A volunteer smiles as she displays a massive cauliflower leaf that is at least three feet long
Two students pose in front of tubs of recently harvested vegetables: leeks, fennel, zucchini, carrots, summer squash, potatoes, and herbs
A closeup of an emerald green anole lizard perching on a leaf that is only a slightly less brilliant shade of green
An overhead shot of several harvest tubs loaded with fennel, potatoes, herbs, leeks, zucchini, and carrots
Five 7- and 10-gallon tubs full of farm produce in the kitchen, awaiting preparation
A sidelong view of the blackberry row with the hanging vines speckled with white blossoms
A closeup of a full head of pale green broccoli romanesco with its swirls like fractals

To help reduce weed pressure, we are testing a new paper mulch that will also help hold water before finally degrading into new soil. Several months in and the mulch has been effective and surprisingly robust. We hope that, throughout the season, this will remain more effective than other mulches, like straw, while reducing the need for synthetic fabrics.

Five students kneel in the aisles between rows, cutting holes in the paper mulch and transplanting seedlings through
A fellow fits a support cage over a recently transplanted seedling through the layer of paper mulch

Finally, we celebrated the bounty of the Farm and new season of growth with our fourth Spring Dinner, a gathering of friends and neighbors, as well as new folks who work in small-scale, sustainable agriculture and local food. It began as a tour of Rural Studio Farm and culminated in a shared twilight meal in the Great Hall, prepared by our friends and Santa Fe residents Brad Hart and Johanna Gilligan. Johanna created Grow Dat Youth Farm in New Orleans and was instrumental in Rural Studio Farm’s reboot in 2019.

Guests and neighbors of the Studio gathered around a long outdoor table at twilight, conversing and eating farm-fresh food
The director addresses the gathered crowd of guests and neighbors of the Studio as they await dinner service
Guests and neighbors of the Studio gathered around a long outdoor table at twilight, conversing and eating farm-fresh food with the street-light-illuminated farm in the background
Guests and neighbors of the Studio gathered around a long outdoor table at twilight, conversing and eating farm-fresh food
The sun is setting in the sparsely clouded sky beyond a well illuminated place setting, causing the fresh flower arrangement to be silhouetted, awaiting the farm dinner
Guests and neighbors of the Studio gathered around a long outdoor table, conversing and eating farm-fresh food
A lovely salad fresh from the farm with asparagus, greens, dill, goat cheese, and mandarins

Among our guests were architects and consultants Frank Harmon, Phil Szostak, Dan and Julie Wheeler, Mike Newman and Katrina Van Valkenburgh, and Mary Margaret Jones. Others included John Dorsey and Jennifer McMillan from Project Horseshoe Farm, Jovita Lewis from Hale County Extension, Nicole Dugat and Natalie Wulf from Schoolyard Roots, and Emma Chapman Busby from the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network.

Now summer is here, the most productive time of the year. We are excited because we are emphasizing tomatoes this year, growing 19 different varieties of heirlooms, cherries, and other specialty tomatoes. Oh, the dishes our kitchen will cook up and all of their nuanced flavors. More importantly, the lessons students are learning about the value of agricultural diversity, especially the role it plays in farming resilience and sustainability. Stay tuned!

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All About Flowers

September 19, 2024

A bucket full of beautifully colored cut flowers from the farm: zinnias, celosia, sunflowers, and tithonia

When most people picture a farm, they envision a single crop stretching out into the distance. Not here. Let’s uproot that image and make room for a bigger, healthier picture of what a farm can grow and do. Rural Studio Farm primarily grows vegetables, fruit, and herbs, but we also grow a wide variety of flowers during the warm season months.

A dew-covered red rose
A bucket full of vivid blue "Grandpa Ott's" morning glory flowers
Red celosia spires
A bouquet of farm-fresh cut flowers, zinnias and sunflowers
A row of variously colored zinnias in bloom
Dwarf sunflowers blooming in a row
A red sunflower head
A white scabiosa and purple gomphrena
A bouquet of farm-fresh cut flowers, mostly zinnias
A delicate yellow, blue, and white dahlia bloom
A celosia flower that looks like an involuted velvet brain

Over the summer, most of the crops we harvest are continuous producers of fruits—peppers, squash, okra, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, melons—and the same plants bear over an extended period. As such, these crops require relatively less space to produce a lot of food (for example, nine linear feet of cucumber plants have produced over 200 lb. of cucumbers). Since we don’t want to grow food we cannot use, and because we want to foster good soil health by having plants growing at all times in our cultivated beds, flowers make an excellent alternative. They add color and vibrancy to the farm, and we grow varieties that make good cut flowers for Studio events and for students and staff to pick and enjoy. Some of our favorite, easily grown, and long-lasting cut flowers that we grow each year are zinnias, cosmos gomphrena (globe amaranth), sunflowers, morning glory, tithonia (Mexican sunflower), salvia, celosia (cock’s comb), calendula, and marigolds.

Some red spider lily blooms set against vivid green foliage
spider lily
Black-purple velvety scabiosa flowers
scabiosa (pincushion flower)
Blue spires of salvia flowers
salvia
Bright orange African marigold blossoms
African marigold
Blue gladiola flowers with nicotiana in the background
gladiolus
Eggplant flower
eggplant blossom
Dill flowers
dill flowers
A bright orange daylily flower
daylily
White cosmos flowers
cosmos
Orange calendula with a black center
calendula
Some orange-yellow teddy bear sunflower blooms
sunflower
A closeup of a vividly orange tithonia flower
tithonia
A bright yellow squash blossom
squash blossom
A brilliant pink dianthus bloom
dianthus
Small yellow sunchoke flowers
sunchoke
A massive jumble of gomphrena flowers of deep purple, soft white, and pale pink
gomphrena (globe amaranth)
A closeup of an orange-green zinnia whose petals are spiraling outward
zinnia
A striking bouquet of farm cut flowers: zinnia, daylily, celosia, dill, salvia, nicotiana, gomphrena, and rudbeckia

This year, for the first time, we also grew many dahlias from seed, as opposed to starting them from tubers. They performed very well, and we were able to dig up some tubers this fall for planting next year.

A pinkish red dahlia bloom with streaks of yellow
A beautiful dahlia flower
A yellow centered dahlia bloom fading to creamy pink on the petals

Flowers also attract pollinators that are essential to produce many of the warm-season crops we grow, like corn and squash.

A bee visits a red dahlia flower

In addition, highly aromatic flowers, like marigolds, can help to deter damaging insect pests from nearby crops, such as squash bugs. Flowers also provide habitat for butterflies and other insects important to the ecosystem. This year, we planted a special pollinator habitat bed with a variety of flowers, many of which are perennial and native species, that are designed to bloom at different times from spring until fall: rattlesnake master, New England aster, butterfly weed, milkweed, swamp sunflower, garlic chives, abelia, chives, and tithonia. Stop by and treat yourself to a vision of the farm in bloom.

Purple New England aster flowers
New England aster
Rattlesnake master flowers
rattlesnake master
Garlic chive flowers
garlic chives
Milkweed flowers
milkweed

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Looking Back and Moving Forward

November 27, 2023

A student sits calmly in the rows of strawberry plants

As the weather grows cooler and the days shorten, Rural Studio Farm is preparing for the cold wet winter when most of the field operation will rest as cover crops replace food crops. It has been a busy year of growing and expanding what we do.

A student worker is hoeing in cover crop seed
A wide shot of the farm on a hot summer morning with ripening peppers, tall cornstalks, spreading summer squash, and verdant eggplant
Some kids and student workers are busy between the rows of different brassica greens: collards, kale, lettuces, and red mustard greens,
A large heap of moist, recently washed carrots with long skinny roots of yellow, purple, and orange
Students and a couple of kids spread garlic cloves across the soil in preparation to plant them
Two baby watermelons sit on the vine near a melon mound with the early summer sun's light shining across them
Two neat rows of enormous kohlrabi roots are on display
A student smiles exuberantly as she holds up a small French melon
Two orderly rows of bright green, savoyed Chinese cabbage with full tight heads
A closeup of emerging flower seedlings in their cells
A single long-stemmed sunflower is open with its yellow face against the backdrop of Morrisette house
A shot of many deep green, heavily savoyed leaves of lacinato or dinosaur kale
The storehouse is stocked with commodities harvested from the farm: garlic, potatoes, onions, and butternut squash
A student measures seeds in her hand as she prepares to plant out some trays of soil blocks
A grouping of various harvested vegetables and fruit: potatoes, basil, sage, parsley, banana peppers, butternut squash, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, French melons, mint, and Seminole pumpkins
A closeup of several bicolored green-yellow summer squash ripening on the vine
An assistant manager spreads a thick layer of hay that is acting as mulch around the newly planted seed potatoes
A bunch of harvested flowers are resting in a blue harvest tub: gladiolas, zinnias, rudbeckia, chives, and garlic chives
Students plant out onion sets into the cold, prepared ground

In the spring, we hosted our 2nd Annual Spring Farm Dinner along with friends and consultants Brad Hart and Johanna Gilligan. It was a beautiful outdoor evening of sharing an excellent meal—prepared by Brad using farm produce—with our neighbors and friends.

An evening shot showing people gathered and drinking some kind of toast at a long wooden table covered in a white tablecloth with place settings
A closeup of some of the tantalizing food plated up for the 2nd Annual Spring Farm Dinner event
People of all ages share an outdoor meal together at a long wooden table on an elevated deck space

Now that Patriece’s Home has been completed, Laurel Holloway has left Hale County and her two-year role as assistant farm manager. While we are sorry to see Laurel go, she has been replaced by Jake Buell from Austin, Texas, who is part of the team designing and building the 18×18 House. Jake has joined Ambar Ashraf (Rural Studio Bathhouse), and now they are scheming to bring chickens back to Rural Studio Farm. We also welcomed our Project Horseshoe Farm volunteer fellow, Jenna, to the team.

An assistant manager and the farm manager smile as they pose before some tall green tomato vines inside the solar passive greenhouse
A farm volunteer looks serious as she picks basil
A shot of two of the students who are acting as assistant managers posing in front of some tomato vines inside the greenhouse
A smiling assistant manager makes soil blocks
Students gather ripe strawberries in the field

We introduced two new crops to our regular rotation: strawberries and microgreens. Over the course of the summer, we produced around 200 pounds of fresh delicious strawberries—so good that many berries were eaten in the field. The microgreens are our first hydroponically produced crop, and they have been a welcome addition to the salad bar.

Several students and volunteers are gathering and spreading handfuls of microgreen seeds across wetted burlap in a large PVC tray this part of the hydroponic system for growing microgreens
A shot of four trays of growing microgreens of different kinds
A basket brimming with bright ripe red strawberries harvested from the field
A closeup of microgreen sprouts growing abundantly
A student smiles exaggeratedly as she prepares to devour her microgreen-covered lunch
A student is piling microgreens on to her plate in the lunch line
A student is smiling as he brings a forkful of farm microgreens to his mouth and more microgreens can be seen on his plate

During the summer, Rural Studio Farm hosted kids who were participating in Project Horseshoe Farm’s Summer Youth Program. The students had fun picking cherry tomatoes, digging up potatoes, and pulling cabbages.

Someone holds up a handful of small yellow potatoes before a small group of other people there to visit the farm and pick produce
School children walk between rows checking out potato plants and digging for potatoes
Some visitors are picking cherry tomatoes off the vine
School children walk around the farm on a sunny day, picking produce and exploring
Several school children are gathered around the cherry tomato vines picking the ripe orange-gold fruits

Looking ahead to 2024, we are planning on introducing ginger, turmeric, and Jerusalem artichokes to the Farm. We are also changing some of our accessory flower and herb growing spaces to specifically support pollinators, as well as developing a sensory garden which will be filled with plants of varied textures, colors, aromas, and growth habits. Finally, we are planning on reintroducing both honeybees and chickens back to Rural Studio Farm. It’s going to be a great year!

Two raised beds with beautifully colored heads of lettuce with colors ranging from bright green to bronzy red
A curtain of bright green foliage, illuminated from behind by sunlight, and hanging green cucumbers
A full, vibrantly green head of cabbage sits in the ground
Some students and kids all help to plant cloves of garlic in raised beds, the cloves of which came from last year's garlic harvest
A student worker is weeding around some collards and mustard greens and is being helped by an eager toddler
A cluster of bright purple bell peppers on a plant
A student is busy collecting flowers from the farm for an arrangement
Four large plastic gusset bags are full of ripe sungold cherry tomatoes
Many eggplant eggplants of varying colors, shapes, and sizes, lay together atop a mesh table
Students spread hay mulch over rows of seed potatoes
An overhead shot of several cucumbers oriented like a large heart surrounding several ripe red tomatoes, all of them atop a wire mesh table
A blue 7-gallon bucket filled with miniature butternut squash that were just harvested
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Preparing the field for spring

February 15, 2022

Spring is just around the corner, and here on the Farm we are preparing our beds out in the field so that we can hit the ground running with crops once the weather warms.

A smiling student seems to enjoy shoveling mulch

Most organic and conventional farms till their soil in the Spring and Fall, mechanically turning the soil to mix in crop residues and weeds into the soil. Not only is this an effective weed control technique, but it brings carbon to the soil surface where fungi and bacteria feed on the carbon and release nutrients that help newly planted crops grow. However, the surface-level carbon also combines with the atmospheric oxygen, forming greenhouse gases and thereby contributing o climate change. Tilling also makes soil more vulnerable to weed seeds, and it destroys the structure of soil layers, which negatively impacts the delicate ecology of beneficial bacteria, fungi, and other organisms in the soil. Since Rural Studio Farm’s philosophy is rooted in moving toward sustainable systems and regenerative agriculture, we strictly practice a no-till system. This means that we must prepare the soil differently for the Spring.

This process began back in the Fall when we cleared out the old crop residue and sowed cover crops that would overwinter in the field.

A process sketch of bed preparation: clearing crops
First, remove crop residue.
A process sketch of bed preparation: cover crop broadcasting
Next, broadcast cover crops.
A process sketch of bed preparation: cover crops
Then, watch them grow.
Two students pick carrots in the field
Two students pick carrots in the field, an alternate view
A view of the winter cover crops on the farm

Cover crops help build healthy soil and protect against erosion during the long rainy winter. Once students returned in January, we spread large silage tarps over the cover crops to begin to break them down without needing to turn them over with the tiller. Next, we used a tool called a broadfork, which has long tines that push deep into the soil and open it up for water, air, and organic matter to reach deeper down, allowing for root systems to develop more easily.

A process sketch of bed preparation: tarping
Step one: tarping the cover crops.
A process sketch of bed preparation: broadforking
Step two: broadforking the beds.
Two male students prepare to push the tines of the heavy broadfork into the soil
Two male students broadfork together
Two women students handle the heavy broadfork in the field

After broadforking, we added pine bark mulch and other soil amendments to the bed before tarping it again. The final step was to smooth out the soil surface and then transplant out the new seedlings.

A process sketch of bed preparation: shoveling amendments
We started by adding amendments.
A process sketch of bed preparation: tarping
Then we tarped the beds.
A process sketch of bed preparation: transplanting
Finally, we could begin transplanting.
A process sketch of bed preparation: the complete cycle
A student, standing before the dawn light, shovels pine bark mulch from a wheelbarrow into a bed
A student shovels a load of pine bark mulch onto a bed
Students are dragging a large tarp over prepared beds

While the bed preparations have been going on in the field, we have been busy in the seed house starting all sorts of new seedlings: lettuces, spinach, beets, kale, collards, cabbage, broccoli, chard, onions, leeks, shallots, herbs, fennel, celery, turnips, mustard, and more.

A student plants seeds into prepared seedling trays
Two students fill seedling trays with soil at the soil table
Two students are seeding several seedling trays
A student is picking seeds to be planted into prepared seedling trays
A view of the seed house and all the new seedlings in trays that are growing, waiting to be transplanted to the field

So stay tuned for when the soil warms up and we can begin moving the new crops outside!

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Heads up! “Neckdown” Week is complete!

February 1, 2022

Last week was a busy one out in Newbern. We kicked off the semester with the time-honored tradition of “Neckdown” Week. “Neckdown” is a week where the thinking caps come off and the gloves go on for a week of physical tasks working in the community and on the Rural Studio campus. It’s also a time for current 5th-years to meet the Spring 3rd-year crew.

The week started with some housekeeping around home base where teams worked to replace boards on the Great Hall, tidy up the pods, and help out on the farm.

students gather for break on campus
students loading wood
students replacing boards at great hall
students broad-forking on the farm
students and faculty gathered after lunch

We also took some time to spruce up past projects like Lions Park, which was started in the early 2000s. The baseball fields at Lions Park have some brand new bleacher seats, the bathrooms are back in working order, and to everyone’s delight, the concession stand opens as well as ever!

Additionally, a small group ventured out to Perry Lakes Park—Rural Studio’s first large-scale, multi-phase landscape project—to do some work on the bathrooms (still the best loo view in Alabama!). The park is open again after a brief hiatus due to storm damage, so go check out the view for yourself!

We rounded out the week with a helping hand over at the Newbern Library, the town’s main social center and source of technological amenities, thus ending a long week of hard, but worthwhile work.

P.S. Next time you speed into Morrisette House’s driveway, send a thank you to our fearless leader, Andrew Freear, who took to tamping the driveway like a champ. (We hear his bones are still rattling as we write this.)

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