As the number of guests in our retreat program has increased in recent years, so has the volume of food scraps that our kitchen produces. For decades, our chickens, goats, garden hot heap compost piles, and vermiculture (worm) bins were sufficient for processing our kitchen compost, but as we’ve ramped up our integrated food system, […]
After a long Covid hiatus, on-site tours of the gardens led by real live humans will resume this April! Join us 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month at 1pm, starting at the nursery (upper driveway) April – October. More info on in-person tours here. Or watch a new virtual tour! On a very hot and dry day in the summer of […]
For over 2 decades, OAEC has had a deep collaboration with Food For Thought (FFT), a food bank in Forestville that serves over 700 clients living with HIV/AIDS and other critical illnesses. After many years of volunteering with FFT, Doug Gosling, OAEC’s Mother Garden Biodiversity Program Director, helped to establish the garden there in 1999 and […]
The OAEC non-profit nursery is the outward face of our 45-year-old esteemed Mother Garden and represents an outreach into the community from the experience, work and wisdom we’ve gained by working the land in the same place since 1974. The climate is changing and so is the OAEC Nursery! When we produced our first Plant […]
What will the climate be like 20 years from now? How can we breed food crops that will thrive and adapt to change? With an increasingly unstable climate and a continued collapse of agricultural biodiversity, OAEC is mixing and planting together over 2,000 varieties of bread wheat from all over the world, in […]
What if a food bank distributed not just canned and donated goods, but fresh, organic produce grown right onsite? The Food For Thought (FFT) Food Bank in Forestville, one of OAEC’s Strategic Partners, is doing just that. Their robust one-acre garden—which OAEC Mother Garden Program Director Doug Gosling helped to develop in 1999 and still […]