Lindsey Ofcacek is a person whom you could safely call an authority on the so-called “farm-to-table” movement, having worked on a farm and at a food distribution center for local farmers called Grasshoppers Distribution, and most recently at the high profile farmer-owned restaurant Harvest. As a champion of small farms and urban agriculture, Lindsey has been involved in bringing the philosophy of permaculture (a design system for ecological sustainability) to parts of Louisville that need it the most. This summer, she helped lead a team of young artists in the West End in the creation of the BANG! Perma-Sculpture Project, which transformed a downtrodden stretch of Portland Avenue into a literal garden of optimism.
Do you consider yourself a gardener or a farmer?
I’m a gardener. I used to work for Grasshoppers Distribution, working with local farmers, and after two years I realized that I really wanted to understand the day-to-day farming side of things. So I did a farmer apprenticeship this past summer on a permaculture orchard in Paoli, Indiana, but I didn’t stay for the whole season.
What made it a permaculture orchard?
They do a lot of tree-grafting, and they use rain barrels to collect all of their own water. The owners of the farm live in a straw bale house, almost completely off the grid. They do use some electricity, but in their farming practices they don’t use tractors or petroleum—it’s all by hand. They actually can’t be completely off the grid because technically it’s illegal to live that way in Indiana, I guess because you’re not paying for energy, and the state wants you to.
How did you get involved with the BANG! Perma-Sculpture Project??
Last year when I was working at Grasshoppers, Hallie Jones [from Center For Neighborhoods] was trying to recruit people that worked in the neighborhood to do a project planting community garden beds. Portland is located in a food desert; that neighborhood doesn’t have any grocery stores. So, she and I got together and came up with the idea to do something with food and art, and something that tried to give kids the experience of making good choices, and just showing them that growing food is something that people do. It was really interesting: the smaller kids were the most excited about growing food. I think they learned a lot about what you can grow in what season, too, because at first they were like, “I wanna grow strawberries and peaches!” We ended up planting a lot of lettuce, kale, and beets. It was a little difficult to get them excited about growing beets!
Portland is a place that has been really economically depressed
for a long time. Obviously the kids were excited about the project,
but what about the adults?
It was kind of funny, at first they thought the garden beds were for garbage cans, because in the beginning they were empty. And that totally makes sense, because that sidewalk is notoriously a dumping ground for mattresses and everything you can imagine, and we had installed all these “no dumping” signs. Even though they weren’t garbage cans, everyone started picking up trash and putting it in there. So that was really nice because it did help us clean everything up!
Do you have an art background?
It’s funny, I don’t. But a few years ago I started the Buy Local First Fair at the Louisville Visual Art Association with Savannah Barrett [formerly the Education Manager at LVAA and Creative Director of Salvo], and I guess that’s really how I got into pairing art with agriculture. We felt that people who liked to support local art or agriculture liked to do vice versa, so we had this huge fair where we invited local farmers, local food producers, and local artists to sell in the same avenue, and the first year we were overwhelmed with over four thousand people!
The Salvo Collective, the Bluegrass Green Company, and Grasshoppers are just a handful of the local businesses in Louisville that are encouraging people to place value in sustainability and repurposed materials. Do you see the permaculture lifestyle as something that is increasing?
I do, and I think it has a lot to do with… well, really working smarter. I work at the restaurant Harvest, and Salvo Collective made all of our tables out of wood salvaged from an old tobacco warehouse on 18th and Main. That’s how farmers made their money in Kentucky–from tobacco–and so as a restaurant that celebrates locally farmed food, we wanted all of our tables to be made from that warehouse, which was once kind of the center of commerce for Kentucky.
What are you growing at home right now?
We do a lot of beans and squash, and eggplants, radishes, lettuce, tomatoes…
and beets!
– Julie Leidner
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