Garden Farmacy prescribes produce from small plot

Down the lane, around the bend. Small-town directions for a small farm, manned by a land lover with big ideas about food production in that small space.

Taylor Yowell, 29, is the one man behind The Garden Farmacy, a small-scale natural-growing farm at the Town of Livingston in Madison County.

One sunny morning between twice weekly harvests, he treks slowly through rows of several gardens. A breeze toys with the tail of Yowell's plaid shirt. Ombre shading on his pants legs suggests dew-damp dirt wants to go with him on the survey.

The big-picture view holds a spring-fed lake that helps with irrigation. But ground level's where the action is. Muscular, verdant leaves shade tender young squashes. Tomato plants, supported by Florida weave trellising, reach toward the sky. Broccoli is crowning, and zinnias hold bright faces open to the sun.

"I don't have a lot of land. I don't have a lot of equipment. But I can get in there and make a 100-foot row bed, give it all I've got and produce a lot of food out of that one spot." He makes it work with techniques learned apprenticing with experienced farmers in California in the same low-budget, one-man situation.

"It really comes down to having a passion for being and working outside, and working with the plants. ... not necessarily just a passion for the broad-scale side of driving a tractor and cultivating hundreds of acres. It's about really an intimate connection within a small piece of ground and what the possibilities are."

Now in his second year farming the leased three acres at Livingston, Yowell's laid a foundation of what does well here and what he's comfortable growing. He continues to experiment. His spot, tucked just beyond Livingston's buildings and weekly farmers' market, has a country feel that's still within 50 yards of small-town amenities.

He's building his system as he goes, focusing on two 100-by-250-foot gardens, with aims for a third, and a greenhouse. Gardens can shape-shift over time and in response to plants' vigor where they're rooted. "It's something you never completely master. You just learn as you go, and just try to be as profitable and efficient as you can.

"This is really something I'm just hacking out," he says, trying to be as congruent with nature as possible. Yowell is also working on his own homestead of 6 acres outside of Clinton that he hopes to turn into a fruit orchard and family farm.

About 80 percent of his produce goes directly to families — vegetable share members — throughout Madison, Ridgeland, Jackson and Flowood, he says. "I want this to be a farm where people can bring their kids, but they also know that it's a farm where produce is coming straight from the caretaker ... fresher than it's ever going to be."

Livingston restaurant The Gathering and Jackson spots Lou's Full-Serv and Babalu are among eateries that have ferried his vegetables to diners. Yowell also has a table at the Livingston Farmers Market on Thursdays.

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The Gathering chef Paul Adair, a share member, says Yowell drops by weekly with his "latest and greatest" produce. And Adair will stroll out to the farm often to look at what Yowell's growing and talk about upcoming plants and what'll work with his menu, tweaked fairly often to accommodate fresh seasonal produce.

"We do our best to use what we can during the season, as long as the farmers can produce something that lasts about a week or two," Adair says, noting that Salad Days and Two Dog Farms in Flora are also sources. Yowell's farm's smaller size and focus on more specialty items are perfect supplements. "He surprised me the first growing season a lot. Now I just expect it from him," Adair says, recalling French sorrel, "beautiful breakfast radishes and some beautiful zephyr squash," baby fennel and green garlic.

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Yowell, who grew up in Madison, is the son of Donna Yowell, executive director of the Mississippi Urban Forest Council. "We both have a green thumb and an interest in being around plants."

His passion for whole food nutrition and natural health led to the farm career. "It's a very healthy lifestyle for me, to wake up, to work outside." Fresh air. Sunshine. And an extreme passion for eating naturally, and a love for plants.

"I really do love these plants. That's why I think they work the way they do," without spraying or too much control. "I just give them the basics they need," with water, nutrition (chicken manure), good drainage, "and these guys, they grow."

He checks on the progress of white scallop, yellow crookneck and Alexandria squash; their lush foliage is overgrowing radishes that were inter-cropped. Coming up nearby is a small patch of corn, including his first stab at Hopi blue corn and Incan black corn — both for cornmeal. "I have high expectations for it just because it's doing well so far, but it's really hard to say.

"Sometimes when you're growing things for the first time, you're just like, 'Am I wasting my time? Or is it gonna be, like, super cool?'" he says, chuckling fondly over the youngsters. It's a balance between larger-scale marketable efforts and smaller-scale experimentation with an eye to the future.

"Really, for me, it's a sport, and an adventure and a job at the same time."

Contact Sherry Lucas at slucas@gannett.com or 601-961-7283. Follow @SherryLucas1 on Twitter.