Visiting my favorite urban farming family

Dave and Shauna Wolfgram a la American Gothic

Its the exception, not the rule that families are able, have the wont, or succeed at growing anything more than a salsa garden these days. Meet Dave and Shauna Wolfgram, urban farmers in Ogden, Utah. The Wolfgrams, however, are exceptionally successful at most things they set out to do. Their home sits near the heart of downtown Ogden. Their lot sits on about half an acre, surrounded with tall, old trees, complete with a white picket fence. The perimeter of trees adds a warmth and protective layer for their family, their gardens are an urban oasis.

As you walk up to their front door, strawberries, bamboo, perennials, and herbs peek out from their winter beds to greet visitors. The white picket fence encloses the wood stores for their wood burning stove, and just beyond that begins their gardens.

Springtime in permaculture gardens, such as the Wolfgrams, calls for preparing the land for the growing season. Dave opts for techniques, such as sheet mulching, for weed control and to keep the soil moist in the arid climate of Utah. Dave saves his cardboard all year in order to repurpose it in the garden. Once all the cardboard is laid down on the ground, the leaves that fell the season before can be raked on top. His gardens are free of weeds without any need for noxious alternatives. He

Repurposed pizza boxes

bypasses the back breaking tedium of weed pulling by simply employing the old pizza boxes collected over a winter.
Not only does the cardboard get mulched back into the dirt, the Earth receives the benefits of the nutrients that decaying matter offers, by the very act of decaying. The return of the leaves and yard clippings to the soil enhances the nitrogen cycle and the opportunity for increased biodiversity is encouraged.
Dave's commitment to permaculture techniques go on in his gardens. He employs the method of companion planting. This is not a new method. The Old Farmer's Almanac says that the Iroqouis tribe employed this method of farming three centuries prior to the arrival of the Europeans. The trio of plants are symbiotic. The Almanac describes their relationship with love and affection, personifying the trio, when planted, as a real set of sisters helping each other to breathe and grow. They have to planted in order, a few days apart.
                     "As older sisters often do, the corn offers the beans much needed support.
                       The beans, the giving sister, pull nitrogen from the air and bring it to the soil for the benefit of all three.
                        As the beans grow through the tangle of squash vines and wind their way up the cornstalks into the sunlight, they hold the sisters close together.
                        The large leaves of the sprawling squash protect the threesome by creating living mulch that shades the soil, keeping it cool and moist and preventing weeds." (The Old Farmer's Almanac, 2014.)
 

If you look closely at these pictures, you can see the three sisters growing up together right before your eyes. These pictures are from the last growing season. It is a return to stewardship and symbiosis with the Earth that permaculture provides to urban farmers. So much of that has been lost in modern society as the quest for the almighty dollar replaced the simplicity of living in rhythm with the natural world.
Dave and Shauna make the garden a family affair, just like this course has discussed. The renaissance of close family ties and reinstallation of farming as a way of life work symbiotically, just as the three sisters do in the garden. The Wolfgrams' children are also involved in the life of the garden. Their playful laughter rings through the corridors of the food forest growing in this urban setting. Their hands work the dirt and harvest the vegetables, sneaking cherry and pear tomatoes in the heat of the summer. Their boys have grown up in this garden, not as a relic or some token plot of tomatoes and jalapenos for salsa, but as their way of life. It would not seem so strange and inspiring to learn about all the ways to simplify for those that have only known that.
                                                                                                  
Dave has been my friend for 22 years now. I have always admired his commitment to living a life in rhythm with the natural order of things. Shauna, his wife, is the perfect compliment for him. Their relationship is as symbiotic as the three sisters. Their children understand how to work the land in the age of technology and how to provide food for themselves when the vast majority of the world is dependent solely on the produce section that offers their travel durable fruits and vegetables. It may sound a bit like romanticism and embellishment, but this is the light that shines on this family in my eyes. I hope to find a place to settle in with my own children and teach them to provide for themselves in this manner before the age of technology divorces them any further from their only home, the Earth.