It’s only one-seventh of an acre, the micro-farm at the Schlafly Bottleworks, surrounded by apartment buildings and doubling up as the break zone for the facility’s brewing and kitchen staffs.
Despite the small size, this is a super-effective space, having produced more than 1,000 pounds of food for the Bottleworks kitchen in 2017 (as of a week back), with the potential for another 2,000 before the end of the fall.
The space, once a parking lot, was envisioned early-on as a garden by employees who stood on the rooftop for afternoon beers (and seemingly, some smart daydreaming). Over the years, a variety of gardeners/farmers have tended to this modest-sized plot, with the current farmer being Ally Kowalski. She and her husband had already been running River Hills Homestead in Pacific, Missouri, a farm describes as “a modern homestead growing fruits, vegetables, herbs, pastured poultry, heritage hogs, and natives.” (And, as of this year, turkeys.)
Kowalski was hired by Bottleworks general manager Charles Orear on the first of February and was planting the next day. Right now, her efforts are paying major dividends for the Bottleworks kitchen, helmed by Clayton Zagarri.
“Right now, we have 30 varieties of of heirloom tomatoes,” she lists, “about 20 varieties of heirloom peppers, chard, pumpkins, winter squash, cucumbers, and quite a bit of basil.” She pauses for a moment, looks around her and notes the presence of “summer squash and okra. We have apple trees, blackberries, elderberries, strawberries.”
In recent months, she’s added to the area’s “natural plant installations, which have really good pollination attributes.” Those native flower stands spill past the garden, along the sidewalks and seating areas near the venue’s expansive, outdoor patio. And they are, as you’d guess, a big hit with Maplewood’s bee population.
“We really took charge of that this year,” Kowalski (pictured below) says, “the native landscaping. Every year, we’re going to have better and better examples of perennial wildflowers.”
Despite a mid-July heat wave that sent temperatures north of 100 degrees for a week-long stretch, she says this calendar year’s been a relative treat, otherwise, which “has made me look like a great gardener. We had a wonderful spring, very warm. There weren’t too many challenges.”
From her first day breaking the soil on February 2, Kowalski says that she’s enjoyed “more or less total freedom" in what she's planted. "The kitchen has the freedom to make suggestions, but they’re very good in using every last bit of produce, whether those are specials or items that they integrate into the regular menu," she says. "I’ve been very impressed by chef Clay.”
In return, the kitchen provides pre-consumer waste to the garden’s large compost pits; once food hits the plate, any leftovers are sent to a commercial composting facility, but all the kitchen scraps from the prep process (for example: eggshells, onion peels, lettuce spines) wind up outside, usefully rotting away and becoming part of what Kowalski notes is a ridiculously rich soil environment.
“This is fluffy, black, rich soil,” she says, half-joking. “It’s almost too good, which isn’t a bad problem to have.”
In addition to the nuts-and-bolts of her job—all those hours of weeding, watering and harvesting—Kowalski, a full-time employee of Schlafly, tends to something other than the produce: curious onlookers. Visitors from the Bottleworks routinely round the building and walk along the oyster shell-strewn walkways of the garden, asking questions and becoming acquainted with the efforts there. She says that they “might come by for a beer or lunch, but then visit here. It’s always good to talk to like-minded folks.”
She says that this part of the gig is as important as the actual production work.
Kowalski believes that why more restaurants don't have their own gardens is because "they analyze the cost-effectiveness of it and realize that [they're] not making money, which deters some restaurants." She adds, "But by doing this, you’re at the forefront of supporting local eco-systems, supporting urban agriculture. This [farm] is a model for the future in my mind.”
In addition, “the kitchen gets to work with all these nutrients and flavors. A tomato grown here versus one from the store has a dramatic difference.”
On the day we visit with her, Kowalski was “in for a long day,” in that she was also hosting an evening seed swap in the Bottleworks’ Crown Room. Back there, dozens of local gardeners were found either trading seeds or simply taking small portions from others who’d left every manner of heirloom, non-GMO seed for sharing.
“That’s important to me,” Kowalski says, “and is something we’ll do three times a year.”
Based on the bustling group of seed swappers found there that night, the event’s found the perfect blend of audience, venue, and host.
