Learn more about E.A.T. South by volunteering with us! First Saturday Community Projects are a chance to see what's growing and lend a hand on the farm. Projects are open to all ages, and we always appreciate your help.

Thinking about building a school garden or expanding one you've already got? Our Sprouts Garden Education workshop will get your garden growing. We'll cover the basics of managing school gardens, and our friends at Project Learning Tree will provide curricula for garden-based education. This year, we're adding a mini-grant writing workshop and tools and tips to keep your garden growing when budgets are tight.

Curricula, breakfast, lunch, and 5 hours CE credit all included. The workshop is free, but registration is required. 

Fall always seems to sneak up on us! Start planning (and planting) your fall and winter garden at E.A.T. South's July Farm in the City workshop. We'll cover planting dates, plant varieties and strategies to get seeds started when it's too hot to think.

What does Alabama have an excess of in summer? Solar power! The sun powers our food system through photosynthesis and can be harnessed to cook food and make electricity, too! This month, we're building pizza box solar ovens for cooking easy treats. We'll also have kid yoga and probably water-filled games, too, because it's hot.

What's eating your garden? Identify common garden pests and the bugs that eat them. Learn different ways to manage pests in your garden. We'll also spend a little time on managing weeds. You might just fall in love with a new weeding tool, too! Questions? Email farmer@eatsouth.org.

Family fun on the farm! Join E.A.T. South on the second Saturday of the month for songs, games, and farm-y crafts for the entire family. Spend time together outside on the farm! Questions? Email Amanda.

Enjoy good company and great food at VegOut, Montgomery's monthly plant-based potluck. Bring a dish to share. Free and on the farm. Families welcome.

Weed, plant, mulch, build beds...there is always something to do at the farm! Get outside, get some exercise, and learn as you help E.A.T. South keep is gardens growing. We have projects for all ages. There's always something to do at the farm! Questions? Email farmer@eatsouth.org.

April's Farm in the City workshop is going to the birds-backyard birds! Chickens and ducks can become a part of your own backyard farm. We'll cover breeds, housing, where to get chicks and ducklings, and how to keep them safe and happy. Free, but please consider a donation at the event. Thanks!

Enjoy a Sunday afternoon on the farm, eat delicious food, and support E.A.T. South's education and outreach programs. Our Spring Harvest Brunch features Montgomery's best chefs cooking up delicious seasonal dishes. Enjoy brunch selections from On a Roll/Super Suppers, Sinclair's, Cafe Louisa, and Jennie Weller. Get your tickets today!

March is here. The weather is warm. It's time to plant! We'll cover different garden bed preparation techniques (from tilling to double-digging), how to amend your soil, the garden gold that is compost, and how to get those transplants from the house to the ground. 

Join E.A.T. South on the first Saturday of the month for our Community Project. Each month, we tackle a different seasonal project - from garden bed construction, to planting, to weeding. Learn a new skill, make friends, support your urban farm. Join us!

Support E.A.T. South. Eat supper. You need something easy for supper on a Wednesday night, right? Eat at Urban Cookhouse ( 7712 Eastchase Pkwy) on February 28, and you get supper and a chance to support your urban teaching farm. See you there!

Meet neighbors, share seeds, and enjoy good snacks. Check out our large collection of garden and cook books, and take home a few. Bring the kids. Free coloring books for the first 30 kids, seeds story time with the Montgomery County Library, and free seed activities.

Seed you there!

Plan it and plant it! This hands-on workshop will cover things to consider when planning your garden, garden record keeping and ideas for rotating crops in your garden. We’ll have paper, markers, pencils and crayons on hand if you want to start putting your dreams on paper. After drafting your plan, get hands-on experience starting seeds. We’ll cover sources for seeds and soil and ideas for starting plants at home.

These workshops are geared more toward adults and older youth. There's plenty of hands-on but more talking than when we organize projects for kids. Please consider a donation of $5 to $10 to help us continue this work.

4 the Love of Farmers Mixer is hosted by the Tuskegee University College of Agriculture, Environment, and Nutrition Sciences at the serene EAT South Urban Garden located in downtown Montgomery.

At this event, farmers and potential purchasers will get a chance to meet over an evening of food and fun. Themed as a “Speed Date” type of interaction, farmers and market managers are encouraged to rotate and network robustly. Farmers will be able to meet local restaurants, chefs, grocery retailers, and caterers all looking to buy from local farmers.  Tuskegee University Extension members will be onsite to help assist farmers and retailers with any questions they may have.

For the Love of Farmers is free, but you must register to attend. 

Get your garden started right with soil tests and tool sharpening. Soil tests take the mystery out of amending the soil. Get hands-on practice taking a soil sample, learn where to send it and practice reading soil test results. We’ll also experiment with some of our favorite tools and learn how to keep edges sharp and handles from splitting. Practice sharpening our tools or bring your own. (We don’t sharpen lawn mower blades, just shovels, hoes, and pruners.) $5 - $10 suggested donation.

Bee prepared for 2018! The new year brings E.A.T. South new hives. Help E.A.T. South create a new bee yard, and meet bee keeper Gene Price. Activities include weeding, cutting brush, removing trash. We'll also tour the additional acres E.A.T. South will be developing into an orchard. We can create activities for all ages. 

Teachers and educators, join E.A.T. South and environmental educator Renee Simmons Raney for an afternoon of activities to engage students in the natural world.

While children are fully engaged with building a fairy house they are stimulated in many ways – creating, observing, collecting, exercising, communicating and imagining – all while having lots of fun. Learning flows easily as students use their imaginations to create micro-habitats for tiny magical beings who inhabit farms and forests. They begin to notice the tiny creatures that creep and crawl. They discern the many shades of greens and browns. Touching lichens, mosses, and other botanicals brings a deeper connection to their environment and a comfortable fearlessness in nature.

Thirty year environmental education veteran, Renee Simmons Raney, will use her newly released educational handbook from NewSouth Books, Hairy, Scary, but Mostly Merry Fairies: Curing Nature-Deficit Disorder through Folklore, Imagination, and Creative Activities, to teach unique and award winning techniques that connect nature to STEM and STEAM. This workshop has received recognition from the Southeastern Environmental Education Alliance, WildSouth, and Oxford University.

"Renee's fairy house workshops have inspired an enormous variety of activities in our school, including nature walks, artwork, writing,creative drama, collecting, researching, reading, writing, math and science activities, and best of all, cooperating! I am still hearing fairy house stories every day from teachers, parents, and students."   - Media Specialist  (Cleburne County AL)

"We implemented Renee's fairy house workshop skills in our fifth grade outdoor classroom. During this time students built, enhanced, created, wrote letters to the fairies, and more. We noticed an increase in their concentration skills, decrease in ADHD, and overall grades improved. We would recommend this workshop to all teachers and educators who enjoy creative learning." - Fifth Grade Teacher (Calhoun County AL)

Teachers can receive CE credit for participating in this workshop. The fee for the workshop is $15, and tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite.

E.A.T. South is an urban teaching farm that engages our local community by gathering around, learning about and growing food. We empower people to change the way food travels from the ground to our plates.

Join E.A.T. South and environmental educator and author Renee Simmons Raney as we explore the natural world through fairy houses.

Building fairy houses gives children, ages 7-107,  an opportunity to balance their play time away from the world of technology. A daily dose of nature will improve attention, focus, and memory. Nature also has a healing power, improving children’s cognitive development. Creative play in nature nurtures language and collaborative skills, awareness, reasoning and observational skills. Creative nature play helps to instill a sense of place and connectivity through observation.Renee says, “Fairy houses are excellent tools for increasing observation skills. Thinking on a small scale inspires children to look at everything more closely, whether it is a leaf, a flower, or a bug. Instead of looking at the forest or farm as a whole, they begin to see all the diverse components that make up the floor, the canopy, and the creatures that inhabit it. There is a whole new world waiting in the woods and the garden! ”

Copies of Renee’s book Hairy, Scary but Mostly Merry Fairies will be available for purchase at the event. Tickets are $20 per family and can be purchased through Eventbrite or E.A.T. South's Facebook page.

Welcome to your fall semester! Some tips and ideas for fall gardening with your little Sprouts gardeners. And some good food to share our ideas over. Bring a dish and join in the conversation to continue to grow and support a healthy Montgomery through school gardens.

Turn your kitchen and yard scraps into garden gold! Take home a free compost bucket! We'll cover how to build a compost pile, different kinds of compost systems, and why worms might be one of the best compost solutions for city living. Join us!

Join us April 1 and help beautify the downtown farm. We'll do a little weeding, plant some flowers, move some dirt and pick up a little trash that finds it way onto the farm from the park above. Questions? Want to bring a group? Email farmer@eatsouth.org.

Learn about water conservation while building a rain barrel. Our friends at Coosa RiverKeeper and the U.S. Green Building Council - Alabama will be teaching us how to turn old barrels into rain water saving devices. Everyone will have an opportunity for hands-on experience with rain barrel construction, and we will have a few barrels that people will get to take home. Make sure to register for this event. It's free, but we need to know you're coming. Register here. 

March means summer is just around the corner. Get your summer garden growing with this basic organic gardening workshop. We'll help you plan and prepare your garden beds, build soil health, make your own compost, and ward off pests, and more.

The VegOut Plant Based Potluck is a free monthly potluck dinner at the Downtown Farm. Bring a dish to share.

Plant some seeds, weed a garden bed, or help take care of the chickens. There's always something to do on the farm. Be a part of our First Saturday Community projects and see how the farm grows throughout the year.

We've rescheduled our Open House for Feb 18 immediately following the Farm in the City Workshop. Drop by the Downtown Farm between 12 and 2 for good food, farm tours, games and crafts and more fun on the farm. Learn how you can get more involved and find out what we're growing in 2017.

For our second Farm in the City workshop, we're exploring livestock for your urban farm. Guest speakers from Urban Hives, River Oaks Farm, and E.A.T. South will provide an introduction to raising bees, rabbits and chickens for food or fun.

VegOut is a free community potluck celebrating plant based foods. Bring a dish, and join us for a Valentines Day potluck on the farm.