Episode 25 Beargrass Thunder Transcript - The Bluegrass Podcast

Have you subscribed yet?

Never miss an episode by subscribing on Itunes, YouTube, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

[00:00:01.290] - Elijah

Welcome to the bluegrass podcast. Today we're talking with Jody Dahmer and Dr. Maria Corso about

Bear grass Thunder, their community garden resource and seed bank. A quick show note before we

begin. There is a little bit of a problem recording the first minute. So we jump right into it today.

[00:00:22.850] - Jody

When we wanted to, you know, do the Louisville Seed bank, we wanted to try to make sure that people

that had never grown gardens before had free seeds, and more specifically, seeds that could survive

in downtown neighborhoods. So it's it's really been a lot of fun. And it seems like every year that we

do it, more and more neighborhoods and more and more community partners want to get involved to

help scale it. So it's a lot less work on us as it goes forward because more and more people are

supportive.

[00:00:57.570] - Elijah

Do you want to just talk about the yard instrument one more time? Because I love that, and I love you

talking about changing the laws to actually be able to do this. Could you talk about that a little more

too?

[00:01:08.950] - Jody

Yeah, sure. So just to backtrack what Bear Grass Thunder is, we are a Kentucky nursery plant nursery

that we specialize in what is called yardens. So being able to grow food or flowers on previously

mowed grassland and before in Louisville, up until March of 2022, for about 90 years, from the 1930s

onward, it was actually illegal in the city of Louisville to grow a garden higher than ten inches tall. And

if you were reported, then you would face a property lien and fines up until you cut your garden down.

And so from the 1930s up until 2022, we've had generations of farmers that have been punished for

trying to grow.

[00:02:08.240] - Jody

Food on the land that they live on.

[00:02:10.320] - Jody

And it was with the county merger in 2003 that meant that that farming restriction applied to any

farmer in the merged Louisville metro government. So any farmer on the periphery of Jefferson

county, that was actually illegal, what they were doing if someone called the code enforcement on

them. So when we started selling plants, we started getting clients that were being fined for the same

plants we were selling. Except in the wealthier areas of town, it was completely fine. But in a shotgun

neighborhood, people would get code enforcement calls, sometimes up to weekly complaints where

the fines would stack up and they would have to pay $500 to keep their house from being sold. So it

really got kind of ludicrous there. And so we decided to start calling all of the metro council people

and write some bluegrass songs. And we sent that to almost every single local politician we could,

and we even made it to the state level. And so the bluegrass song, we called it grassholes. And we

called any politician that didn't want to change that law a grasshole politician. And luckily, in March of

2022, they actually changed the law citywide.

[00:03:33.720] - Jody

So now there's over half a million families that can now legally, for the first time in 90 years, grow

food gardens as well as native plant gardens for the pollinators.

[00:03:45.430] - Elijah

I love that. And what are some of the ways you're looking at this spring now that you've sort of

unlocked the potential of being able to do this in the community? What are some ways you're going to

be getting plants and seeds out?

[00:03:58.510] - Mariah

Yeah.

[00:03:59.100] - Jody

So one of the ways that we like to do things is through this concept called place making. We do

choose a pro bono project every year in a different neighborhood, although it's usually Shelby Park,

and we pick a vacant lot that has been a dumping ground or a community light. And with the help of

the neighborhood association and the city government, we're able to change that vacant lot into a

community garden. Or just proving the concept of being able to grow flowers on, say, 3ft of alley.

Right. Of way just to show city officials that you can grow food and you can grow these flowers in

areas that if you've never done that before, it's very hard to kind of see that. You could have food in

downtown neighborhoods. You could have flowers on the rooftop of a parking garage and just getting

more and more city officials on board because the more people that allow us to, I guess, beautify

spaces that are city owned, that opens up hundreds of acres in a very short amount of time.

[00:05:19.030] - Elijah

What's the biggest problem that people bring up when you start talking to them that they might have

against this? Or is it just they're not open to the concept to begin with?

[00:05:31.370] - Mariah

It's the perceived property values. And we had the shift in the 1930s for cities to try to start emulating

what the suburbanites were doing, and that was large grass lawn. Now, for a lot of people, the idea of

a shortcut bluegrass or fescue glass lawn is like the height of what property value would bring. And

then you also have people who are so unfamiliar with possums and raccoons and just vermin in

general and how they ecologically exist within our city that there's this perception that if your grass

grows tall, then you're going to get varmint in your house, basically.

[00:06:29.150] - Elijah

Okay, so it's really just a perception of value and a perception of what it's going to be. Not any

practical problems people are bringing up about it.

[00:06:39.090] - Mariah

No. And the most practical problem was what if absentee landlords want to take advantage of this

because there is the situation in which you do have just regular grass that's being let go and not taken

care of because the property owners perhaps two states away and not doing maintenance. And we

were able to get that written into the code to where it's explicitly stated that if you're letting your turf

grass kind of go out of control, you can still catch a citation for that, but every other plant is planted

with intention is allowed to get taller than that.

[00:07:19.710] - Elijah

Okay, and are you seeing any sort of preference that people have when you talk to them about

planting more naturally and planting maybe something that might produce some food? Is there

anything that people gravitate more towards?

[00:07:34.850] - Jody

Well, you can't go wrong with the sunflower that kind of fills both niche groups because sunflowers

are gorgeous, people know what they look like most of the time. And you can save the seeds if you'd like for next year's production or.

[00:07:51.260] - Jody

You can roast the sunflower heads or use that as a food source. So it's a really easy way to kind of get

into the agricultural scene without calling it agriculture.

[00:08:03.870] - Mariah

Yeah. So our bear grass clients, I would say primarily they get flowers from us and then we do some

raised bed building. And then for the seed bank, I wonder if Jodie can remember off the top of his

head was the most popular seed was because we did collect data on what seeds were taken the

most of and then we'll have to round up the 2022 year data for you still. But in 2021, what was the