Urban Farming a Labor of Love

When hail pummeled the community of Utica, Neb. last summer, the siding on many homes was shredded, shingles were tattered, and windows were broken all over town.?The Struble house didn’t escape the storms either, but replacing battered exterior walls wasn’t the most important next step on the family’s list – replanting the garden came first.

Gardening is an understatement for Amanda Struble and her husband Josh’s “urban farm” that spans nearly every inch of their backyard and a good portion of their front yard too. For them, it’s about love for the land and growing food for their family and extra to share. It’s also about protecting all natural resources and trying hard not to be wasteful, “The boys love catching rainwater.?They get excited about how much water they get in their buckets.”

“Even the landscaping is edible,” she admitted.?“I want the land to all be useful and I don’t like bare spaces.?Anytime you see bare ground, a weed will come.?The weeds are telling us something, that ground wants to be covered.?Bare ground will always try to heal itself if we don’t have something growing on it.”

Struble has literally covered a lot of ground with her green thumb and also in her journeys throughout life.?She developed her industrious ways growing up near Fullerton, Neb. where her parents – Vern and Cindy Olson, operated a diversified farm, “On the livestock front, we had beef cows, sheep, and when I was very little, we had pigs.?At one point, we had 200 ewes and were lambing out every year.?We also had Angora goats and my sister got Boer goats in high school.?There were turkeys, ducks, broilers, laying hens, rabbits, cats, and a dog of course too.”

“On the crop side, dad raised corn, soybeans, and alfalfa,” she went on.?“He planted a field of sunflowers one year too, so there was a whole bin of sunflower seeds that we fed the chickens.?We lived along Highway 14 and dad said he planted the sunflowers because people needed something different to look at when they drove down the highway.”?

Cindy went to school to be a nurse, but management duties on the farm and raising a family became priority, “Mom truly worked on the farm.?She did a lot of the management, the bookwork, and was a major part of farm operations, helping with lambing season and working in the fields.?She has beautiful handwriting and was always making lists.?Her nursing came in handy working with the livestock, and I remember during softball one season all of the players were so hot, mom sprung into action.?She knew exactly what to do in situations like that.”

“I always say we lived in the middle of everywhere and nowhere,” Struble commented about rural life.?“We went to school in Fullerton, church in Genoa, St. Edward to the doctor, Albion to 4-H, Cedar Rapids for youth group, and Belgrade had a bar, restaurant, and a convenience store – I remember the bus would sometimes stop there and the kids who were still on would get to go inside and pick something out.”?

When Struble was a senior, her dad decided to pursue an entirely new direction in life and headed to the seminary to become a Methodist minister.?Her parents stayed on the farm for as long as they could, but with less help they eventually sold the farm and moved to St. Edward.?By the time her father retired, he was leading four parishes.?

After graduating, Struble headed to Southeast Community College in Lincoln, “There I realized my whole life up to that point had been teaching in some way – in places like 4-H and Sunday School, so I transferred to the University of Nebraska to pursue teaching.?I always had a love for agriculture, so I went through the Ag Education program.”

During this time, Struble also met her future husband Josh, who had served in the Marines and was working at a railroad job. Her independent nature was a good match for her husband whose career early on meant working away from home during the week and coming home on the weekends, “We did that for several years while Kimber was little and switched gears before Barrett and Heckler were born.”

Gardening was always a vital component of building a life in the small town they have called home since 2007, “I remember when Barrett was born in May, we had a longer stay in the hospital with him.?But the day he came home, I planted the garden that year.?Around Mother’s Day is always a good time to plant a garden.”?

Mothering, gardening, and never shying away from work has defined Struble’s life.?Her career path led her to teach Ag Education in Waverly, Neb. However, the commute was simply too much and there were no teaching jobs closer to home, so she headed to work for a global seed company as a seed tech and then took an administrative position.?Then came an opportunity to teach in Friend for a year when Barrett was a baby.?Once Heckler came along, three children in daycare and working full-time simply wasn’t going to work anymore.?Later, when the children were in pre-school, she went back to work part-time.?

During her part-time work, Struble started teaching at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, “I worked with a non-profit called Rise.?Their curriculum is both personal and professional development for people in prison.?It is designed to do the inside work first, on relationships and communication.?Then we worked on skills such as cover letters, resumes and how to interview.?The second half of the course is developing entrepreneurial businesses they could actually launch after they got out.?We ran all the numbers and figured out the marketing, everything they would need to start a business at the base level.?I also worked with the incarcerated individuals that had gone through the program and helped train them to be peer facilitators.?I have always loved classroom management and enjoyed passing that information on to them.”

Struble worked with Rise for three years and enjoyed every minute, but decided to take a position at St. Paul Lutheran School in Utica.?It works out well because her children attend the school, and the hours are conducive for balancing work and home life.?At the school, she is enjoying making improvements to the library and dreams of one day starting a school gardening program.

Struble is doing all of this and of course tending to her “urban farm,” “Living in town, you’re really only restricted by the town codes.?But we are able to do so much with what we have.?It’s all about the capacity that your land has to produce and trying to reach that capacity.”

Everywhere one turns in the summertime, the landscape thrives and Struble’s face lights up as she lists some of the plants that surround her home – everything from chives to oregano, sage, rhubarb, garlic, lemon balm, lavender and mint (that has the powerful dual purpose of attracting bees and keeping mosquitos away), “I like the perennials because I don’t want to dig my landscape up every year.”

Her list of plants continues to an entire bed of annual herbs too – Spicy Orange Thyme, tarragon, dill, basil, parsley, cilantro, rosemary and even stevia (to name a few).?There’s also the vegetable garden that includes many types of tomatoes, cucumbers, asparagus, kale, lettuce, radishes, onions, beets, carrots, lima beans, cow peas, asparagus beans, green beans, sugar snap peas, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, “And marigolds and zinnias around the garden for a good border.?I grow most of my vining plants and potatoes too at Josh’s folks who live outside of Utica because those take a lot more room.”?

There’s also hardy kiwi to grow, a strawberry patch, blueberries, raspberries, and Goji berries too, “All the variety has really helped the kids to eat very well and try a lot of different foods.”?

The Struble children all help in the garden too and she smiles thinking back to her own formative years, “There was nothing better than running around my grandma’s house, spending two days picking green beans while they canned inside and going barefoot all summer long.”?

Canning and processing their own meat are also part of the family’s chores.?The couple has built a complete “summer kitchen” with all the fixings to get the job done.?Josh is in charge of making all the compost and canning the pickles.?They buy bulk fruit like peaches and pears to can too.?You also may find Struble offering beef broth or homemade baked goods to friends and neighbors.?And, this summer, even more flowers will be grown and potentially sold as fresh bouquets.

“Everywhere I look there are ideas and opportunities,” Struble admitted.?“I really am a farmer at heart.”

She really is and she believes the world could use a lot more lawns turned urban farms like they strive to do, “I don’t want the things my parents and grandparents knew how to do to get lost.?All of this is something really quite simple and so very rewarding.?It’s really about the stewardship of the land for me and caring for what we’ve been given.?I want my kids to know where their food comes from and the effort it takes to get a meal on the table.”

A labor of love indeed she said, “It’s about what we can give back to the land instead of taking away.”