Incubator Farm Frontage Planting Project

Project Summary: The Incubator Farm is a cultural site providing beginner farmers access to agriculturally rich soils. The site is currently heavily exposed to Highway 40 and would benefit beginner farmers for generations with a well-established frontage planting. The frontage planting requires labor intensive site remediation from one of the most noxious weeds impacting US agriculture, Johnsongrass. This remediation work will refuse chemical controls and help enable the county to once again lease the southwest plot at the Incubator Farm. This part of the project helps the county meet all objectives within Goals 1, 2, and 4 and Goal 3.2 of the County Food System Plan. The remediation will also provide two beginner farmers the opportunity to develop a more longitudinal proof of concept for Johnsongrass remediation for possible further research through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education branch of the USDA. The frontage planting itself will provide a wind/pollution break, scenery for those traveling Highway-40, a carbon sink, and a polycultural habitat for wildlife, pollinators, and beneficial insects. 
Scope of Project: 

1. Prairie, woodlands, waterways, habitat restoration/preservation, cultural landscapes, and trails.

2. Agriculture (working farms, heritage farms; high quality agricultural soils) Historic structures, Historic Sites, Archaeological Sites, and/or Historic Cemeteries. 

3. Elevating under told stories: Magnifying the narratives from indigenous communities, immigrant or refugee populations, or marginalized groups. Giving visibility to little known places. 

Establishing a Frontage Planting

The first part of this project established a frontage planting at the City of Lawrence’s Incubator Farm. The final selection of plants included: Hazelnuts (Corylus avellana L.), Elderberries (Sambucus nigra var. Adams & York), Marshmallows (Althaea officinalis), Nanking Cherries (Prunus tomentosa), Forsythias (Forsythia suspensa), Lilacs (Syringa vulgaris), Eastern Red Buds (Cercis canadensis L.), Buttonbushes (Cephalanthus occidentalis), Mockorange (Philadelphus coronarius), a Crab Apple (Malus sylvestris), and a Chicago Hardy Fig (Ficus carica). The planting was carried out without the use of fossil fuel machinery and utilized no-till, organic planting methods. All of the plants adapted well to their new home and there were no losses after the following winter. 

Plants were selected for multiple reasons including: regional adaptability, use as a windbreak, ability to help mitigate flooding, use for wildlife and beneficial insects, aesthetics, food and medicine for people, and to provide a living propagation station for beginner farmers at the Incubator Farm. This planting was something I wanted to do to give back to the Incubator Farm site in my application for access to land. As I started my farm with hardly any financial mobility, I would not have been able to fund the project without this grant. 

In addition to all of the benefits above, these plants reflect experiences from my life. One of my earliest memories growing up in a near century-old farmhouse with a quarter acre backyard surrounded by a relatively dense residential neighborhood in southeast Topeka is of the long, lilac-lined driveway. That thicket was likely as old as the house itself. When we moved away, the new owners ripped every last one of them out. Fortunately my father and I transplanted a row to our new house. Though we don’t live there anymore, I drive by every other year or so to see them thriving. One year I’ll muster up the courage to send a letter to the owners to see about doing some maintenance in exchange for a few transplants. 

Though I’m not incredibly well-versed in tree identification, Eastern Red Bud trees were one of the first trees I could identify. They most definitely played a role in my fascination with nature growing up. We had one just outside the backdoor of the old farm house. I was always in awe of their blossoms that would spring out from everywhere, trunk included, in bright pink clusters. I loved their heart-shaped leaves and the way they fluttered in the wind. It’s probably the first tree I could identify as a sapling. To this day I have the urge to ensure the survival of every single Red Bud sapling I see. 

Crab apples remind me of playing with my sisters when we were kids. The nameless residential road off Burlingame was the place we learned to ride our bikes and it put some distance between us and the busy road if we wanted to venture out into our neighborhood. Though the wildly thorny honey locust was likely the greatest tree spectacle along the way, the crab apple was the most interactive. We gathered them up, occasionally taking a regretful and mouth-puckering nibble, and we waited for there to be no cars on busy Burlingame Road. When the coast was clear we would take turns rolling them out into the street, cheering as they survived our game of fruit frogger or screaming with laughter if they did not.  

Mockoranges are a plant I first learned about while living in California. I first experienced their fragrance co-directing a food security non-profit called Spiral Gardens in South Berkeley. Leadership there took a chance on a Kansas kid who could not seem to stay away from popping in to volunteer doing whatever needed to be done. I am ever grateful for Kanchan, Daniel, and the entire Spiralista community for providing me with plant knowledge and many lessons in People Power. Though certainly included for their citrusy notes, they are also a reminder of offshoots of my agricultural roots.  

There are many things I miss dearly about living in California. One is certainly the astounding assortment of figs you can grow. I’m still amazed by their ability to adapt to containers and greatly miss their breba and main crops. Enter, the Chicago Hardy Fig. I have yet to eat a fig from this tree but it definitely tried to fruit in 2022 and most don’t fruit until year three or so. Still, it’s a welcome reminder of the gifts living in California had to give. 

If my couple of years surviving and barely affording East Lawrence had one theme, it was bulldozers. The Marshmallows in the planting are survivors of East Lawrence development. I caught wind that the BonBon garden was slated to be demolished for a mixed use housing development. For those who had never seen it, we lost a truly beautiful and bountiful space. One day I saw someone working there and I struck up a conversation. They were more than happy for any and all plants in the garden to find a new home. The frontage planting seemed to be the perfect fit so that a piece of the BonBon garden gets to live on. 

Forsythias are both a childhood memory and an adulthood reminder of plant perseverance. I loved their glow as a kid and had a few in the backyard of a house I rented in East Lawrence. The row provided a nice visual break from the alleyway and industrial backdrop. It also served as a windbreak as I had most of the backyard in cultivation for market production. One day, my landlord’s brother decided the forsythias just had to go. Without warning, he came over and bulldozed them to pieces. Though dwarfed from the bushes they once were, two survived. They continued to bounce back over the next year until my landlord’s brother came back again and leveled the entire backyard, including everything I had in production. He did so again without warning. I’ll never quite understand his violent and intrusive nature. 

Traci of Little Blue Stem Farm is to thank for introducing me to Nanking Cherries. At the time, all of us incubator farmers knew we had expiration dates on our access to land via the three, three year lease policy. This uncertainty forces production decisions that go against doing things like planting cherries. As such, Traci asked if she could plant some Nanking Cherries in the frontage planting. My original plan left room for additional plants and they fit perfectly into the overall structure of the frontage planting. For me, it’s a symbol of beginner farmers sticking together and a new era of resource sharing. 

The Buttonbushes were donated by farmer and florist Jenn Martin. I have Jenn to thank for introducing me to the source of these plants: the Kansas Forest Service. To be honest I didn’t know much about these plants going in, but now I know of their love of low, wet soils, which is perfect to enhance the frontage planting's ability to mitigate flooding in our incubator farm sink. They are also great nectar sources for butterflies, hummingbirds, and honey bees. If you ever get the urge to plant a non-native butterfly bush, go for the buttonbush instead. 

The last two plants represent that which is lesser known to me. They represent my desire to be an eternal learner. These two are elderberries and hazelnuts. Elderberries offer medicine and natural plant dye. I am most interested in finding ways to utilize the elderberries as a pigment for linocut printmaking. Elderberries are also easy to propagate and one incubator farmer has already taken and rooted successful cuttings. In lieu of having the space to plant a pecan forest, I decided to give growing hazelnuts a try. I am interested in their ability to form thickets, be easily propagated, and grow a relatively low hanging tree nut. If only we had a cold hardy cacao…

Though still in its early years, the frontage planting is already acting as a pollution buffer for the Incubator Farm. Debris from the highway, mainly consisting of plastic bags, are cleared from the frontage planting on a monthly basis. These debris would have otherwise gone into farm plots. The planting is also already proving effective for mitigating flooding. The area was covered with an 8 inch layer of wood chips prior to planting. As such, rain water is no longer found standing in the bordering plot and is instead directed towards the drainage culvert. 

The thick layer of mulch that was applied to the planting area was not entirely effective in mitigating Johnsongrass. However, the removal of Johnsongrass in these areas was significantly easier than in the remediation plot. The broadfork proved effective for loosening the Johnsongrass from the wood chips and the Korean 호미 (ho-mi), a short-handled traditional Korean farming tool dating as far back as 800 BC, was effective for following the long rhizomes and for digging down to the base of the plants. 

Johnsongrass Remediation (Literature Review Here)

This part of the project investigated under-researched Johnsongrass remediation methods by first testing a mix of winter rye and vetch as cover crops in the fall. After scything the Johnsongrass to the ground, cover crop seeds were applied in September. Local temperatures in September are on average in the upper 70s and lower 80s. However, in 2021, average temperatures for September remained well above average for 63% of the month with above 90-degree days claiming 3 of the last 7 days. The first week of September, just after the cover crops had been sown saw over 2 inches of rain. No further precipitation fell until the 29th/30th (0.18 inches total). Though there was a lot of evidence of cover crop germination, the cover crops did not germinate as well as they would have if we had an average temperature and precipitation year. The well-established Johnsongrass easily outcompeted the cover crop in the fall. 

Fossil fuel free, manual removal was the primary focus during the study. Areas where Johnsongrass was colonizing in clusters were the first test subjects. Digging alone with a shovel proved to be very effective though the most time consuming and difficult. Excavation in this way required digging around a foot away from the nearest sprout. Some of the rhizomes were recorded reaching up to 4 feet deep. Five out of six clusters were completely removed utilizing this method. The sixth was remediated after a second digging. 

As broadforking and using the Ho-Mi were proving effective in the frontage planting, this was the other main method of manual removal in the remediation plot. Broadforking took less time than digging, but colonies often needed a second or third pass. While the broadfork is exceptionally good at loosening the soil, it’s nearly equally as good at breaking the rhizomes in the soil – opposed to wood chip – setting. Mixed methods were also employed by doing an initial sweep with the broadfork and Ho-Mi and then a follow-up by digging with a shovel. Further remediation of the thicket was done using solarization. The colonies were slashed with a scythe and then covered with 6.0 mil greenhouse poly film. This method was effective in keeping the Johnsongrass from going to seed, but did not prove particularly effective in termination after a summer season. 

Manual removal of the areas that were colonized in clusters was effective enough to plant out winter squash. As spring and early summer efforts proved effective, there were also successful harvests of these areas. This was a major milestone in the path towards remediation and eventual leasing of the land to a new beginner farmer. Continued efforts will be required in the main thicket though the population of Johnsongrass is steadily declining. Through discussions with other land stewards, there may be resources provided to this project to attempt smothering with a silage tarp in the 2023 season. 

Underrepresented Voices: Disenfranchisement

The 2021 growing season was particularly difficult for a number of reasons. As a BIPOC producer I continued to face much of the same barriers I have faced since I started my farm in 2018. Unpaid to this day invoices from a local restaurant, facing racism within and being shamefully discarded by the National Young Farmers Coalition, a continued lack of acceptance as a “real” farmer amongst farmers and community members, wildly unaffordable housing and eventual displacement from East Lawrence, a continued lack of access to affordable healthcare, and an ever-looming farm expiration date due to operating on a 9 year non-renewable land lease were a few of the lowlights. Intensive fruit and vegetable farming is tiresome enough, and the weight of systems of oppression just adds insult to injury. Every leg up that’s offered to BIPOC producers by nonprofit agencies requires a detailed explanation of how you’ve been beaten, poked, and prodded; and yet the grant chasing must go on to survive. Every writing is more than pen to paper; it’s reliving it all. I may farm alone, but those who know my shoes and share any of these struggles across class and/or race – those for whom I truly write – will be just fine with me abruptly ending this section with: We’re tired.

Improving a Working Cultural Site

Access to land at the Incubator Farm continues to show the capacity to strengthen local agriculture while contributing to the natural and cultural sustainability of our county. I’ve carried the idea and mechanisms for what make this cultural and natural space possible into many conversations with people across the nation. Be it at farmers market, through global social media, or in cohort through two national food systems fellowships, the model we have here has proven as unique as it is inspiring to others. As we reimagine land stewardship into an era of unprecedented agricultural land transfer and permanent agricultural land erasure, I believe the site will continue to have the capacity to foster a policy and advocacy piece for others to aspire to and replicate.

For those who are unfamiliar with the model and/or for those who want to see if it can work in their area, I’ve thought long and hard about how to break it down as simply as I possibly can. Your local government (city or county, for example) has land that it must maintain. Maintenance costs your local government and ultimately you, the taxpayer, money. Instead of paying to maintain this land, your local government should consider allowing others to take on the stewardship of this land in the form of growing food and/or for ecological restoration projects. This ultimately strengthens local food production and/or local ecology and removes financial maintenance burdens paid by taxpayers and your local government. Once your first incubator farm has allocated all of the plots to land stewards, more commons can be opened to even more land stewards. Just be sure to do one thing differently than we did...

When I started this project all of us incubator farmers had farm expiration dates. We were originally only allowed three, three year leases to start and establish our farm businesses. August 2027 was constantly on my mind and that date wove itself into many decisions I did and did not make on the farm. This is why I have been advocating for longer, ideally indefinite leases since I began. Farmland is outright prohibitively expensive to people who were not born with familial and/or generational wealth. $1 million plus loans from lenders aren’t something everyone can access; particularly millennials who are in the first generation of people to be saddled with economically crushing student loan debt never perceived by previous generations. Simply put, the terms of the timeframe and the composition of what it takes to go from leasing land to buying just don’t mathematically make sense; especially for socially disadvantaged farmers. Furthermore, if you’ve got people willing to steward public lands long-term while improving local ecology and food supplies, what more could you possibly want? 

I worked tirelessly to explain over and over why we needed permanent access to land. For one, it’s mentally exhausting to know everything you’re working on is headed towards a cliff. It takes four to five years for sustainable, no till practices to pay off in rejuvenated soil benefits. The monetary investment required to do right by the land in this way is another issue. The years of lower yields compared to turn-and-burn vegetable cropping are yet another. Investment in carbon sequestering perennial agriculture such as orchard work is nearly nonsensical. Trees aren’t cheap and even if they were, what of them when the clock runs out? The time investment in that also requires a minimum of three to five years for return. Land stewardship should be longitudinal and those who take their time to do right by the land should be rewarded with longitudinal stewardship. 

I felt as though I was constantly fighting a narrative of response that continued to place emphasis on an arbitrary incubation period. There’s so much more to all of this than that. We already had mechanisms in place to deal with any potential “bad actors” and the incubator farmer community we have out there has been nothing short of kind, helpful, and nurturing. Through constant efforts and discussions with the Douglas County Sustainability Office, we finally had our term limits removed in the waning months of 2022. The site is fully leased and it’s a model that’s working for a lot of people. With that in mind and a scarcity mindset at rest, the next pragmatic step is to open another. 

Death of the Farm

On November 2nd, 2022 I celebrated and announced the death of the farm. Mexica culture has a very specific outlook on death that many people do not understand. Death is something to be celebrated joyously. Much like life embedded in agriculture, death is but a piece of a cycle; a necessary (re)evolution. Mexica culture believes that the world as a whole has already died five times. I believe we are moving through the purgatory of the death of this fifth world now. It is up to us whether or not we as humanity get to move on to the sixth world. 

The announcement of the death of the farm brought alarm to the many people who support the farm in many different ways. Messages came pouring in: 

“Are you done farming?” Never. 

“Are you dropping your lease?” Not unless they make me. 

“What happened?” A lot happened.

Messages of pride and love followed: 

“Thank you for these words and your loving labor.”

“Holding space for you.”

“Very proud of you and all the badass stuff you did there, mane.”

“I’m excited to see what you’re going to do!”

“I am so grateful for you and all of the love and hard work you put into helping produce such wonderful and nourishing life”

“Strong.”

I found a deep sense of purpose and accepted many things in 2022. I accepted, with a child on the way, that you cannot support a family on $8,000 in produce sales plus ephemeral grant opportunities and back of house kitchen shifts on top of an 8 to 10 hour farm day. I accepted that value added isn’t an option without sufficient processing space. I accepted that I cannot afford to sell to direct markets as long as the State of Kansas still has a sales tax on food. I accepted the fact that I am most passionate about land advocacy, food as a human right, and seed sovereignty work above all. The farm died that day and in its death new life was sparked. I wrote: 

Inie tlecuilixquac, Inie tlamamatlac. Already at the edge of the fire; at the stairway. 

The onset, a four year journey into the depths of Mictlan. Onimitzpanti, onimitzteteuhtli. I have given thee thy banner; thy spotted paper. 

May the farm meet Mictēcacihuātl’s embrace. Motzontlan, moquatla nitlapachoa. I protect thy hair; thy head. 

I refuse to mourn in insult. Quauhiotica, Oceloiotica. With Eagles, with Ocelots. 

I celebrate its life; its wonder; its honor. Intlil, intlapal in vevetque. The Black, the Red of the Ancient Ones.

I celebrate the dejection; the hardship; the despair. Tetl oatococ. Quavitl oatococ. The torrent hath washed away the rock, the log.

I celebrate the end of its first world. Intlacouh, inxacapech in vevetque. The twigs, the straw beds of the Ancient Ones.

Riding the cut ahuehuete, tlachinollitli and centli in hand recalling: That which is kept called by name never dies. 

The Peoples’ Farms.

The Peoples’ Farms.

The Peoples’ Farms. 

Maseualkualli Farms. 

Tlazocamati. Nimitztlazohtla.

Land & Food Advocacy

Since accepting the grant, I have continued to work towards enacting more just food systems. The main project I focused on is called Food as a Public Work. I have often imagined what systemic change of our food systems could look like while farming. 

I think about how less than 2% of farmland across the nation is owned by BIPOC producers. I fully understand that this is by design through historical and ongoing systemic racism. My shovel thrusts deeply into leased dirt. 

I think about the 34 million people – 9 million of whom are children – who go hungry every day in a country with an over 23 trillion dollar GDP. I harvest crops that I cannot eat myself because the landlord does not accept payment in vegetables. 

I think about the systems that we have in place; systems like SNAP that have helped keep me and many others I know afloat. My tax documents indicate I should be on SNAP, but regulations in Kansas for self-employed, ABAWDs (Able Bodied Adults Without Dependents) deny me. 

I think about the fact that over the past 30 years our populations facing hunger have hovered around 11-14%. The price points I must maintain in order to survive allow me to help feed people or respect my labor, but not both. 

No real changes in over 30 years is longitudinal evidence that something isn’t working, or more nefariously that something is in fact working very well. The systems we have in place that are supposed to help people do so by subsidizing consumption. In other words, we constantly attempt to buy our way out of this hunger issue and that ultimately only funnels tax dollars into the pockets of gargantuan, corporate agribusinesses. 

Food as a Public Work is an alternate path and the money is there. Instead of attempting to buy our way out of this issue, we should try producing our way out. The hundred times over rehearsed and pitched elevator pitch goes: “16 food systems workers on a $1.2 million annual operating budget can produce between $5-6 million in free fresh produce and prepared meals while offering below market rates to producers to utilize value added kitchens and animal processing facilities.” 

The long-form answer includes cost plans, alignment with nearly all of the county’s Food Systems Plan, and further information on how this project could also be one that centers racial justice in agriculture. It’s a plan that has been presented to more people and organizations than I can count. Each time I put it out there I have one request: Rip it to shreds and rebuild it with me. The full report as well as multiple audio recordings from many different independent podcasters – including our local Lawrence Public Library – can be found on MaseFarm.Org.

My advocacy efforts over the past two years have garnered the interest of the Douglas County Food Policy Council. I presented twice to the council during this project. In September of 2022, the council penned a letter of support for the project citing land access, economic development, and food security as three major points of interest. They also indicated that “promoting environmentally friendly jobs that support a culture that fosters a robust agricultural sector and supports the emerging local and regional food systems is explicitly stated in Plan 2040.”

I continue to say this as people get caught up on what $1.2 million no longer is in 2023. It’s a drop in the ocean and I’ll say it again, the money is there. To put it in perspective, Food as a Public Work could be enacted in every state, DC, and Puerto Rico for 4.3% of what the US government spent on agriculture in 2020 alone. To add further clarity, that amounts to 52, $100 million Food as a Public Work farm endowments on projects that cost $1.2 million annually. 4.3% of that kind of money, which was spent away and gone forever in just one year alone mind you, could fund 52 Food as a Public Work projects for 40 years each assuming a 3.3% rate of inflation. 

As impossible as getting the federal government to move might be, let’s put this into a more local perspective. The City of Lawrence adopted a nearly $440 million budget in 2022. Funding Food as a Public Work in Lawrence at $1.2 million per year would require 0.27% of the annual budget. Just over a quarter of one percent of the budget. Douglas County passed a $148.5 million budget for 2022. Funding Food as a Public Work as a county would require 0.8% of the annual budget. I say it again, the money is there. 

The money is there. The plan is there. The policy is there. And seeing as how the City of Lawrence already owns – and to a large extent leases for agricultural use – around 60 acres of agricultural land on the south side of the Lawrence Municipal Airport, nearly 50 acres next to the compost facility, 37 acres west of Green Meadows Park, 23 acres off North Folks Road, 30 acres off N 1500 Road & E 1625, 30 acres off N 1300 Road and K-10, and over 200 acres surrounding the Wakarusa Water Treatment Facility, we can confidently state that the land is also there.

The next chapter of this story is one of political will and people power. Will you join me?