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Outpost HistoryThe Last Organic Outpost started simply as the backyard garden of Joe Nelson Icet. Joe, a refrigeration mechanic by trade, was living in Baytown, working in chemical plants by day, and getting up at 2:30 a.m. to meditate each morning. He was looking for direction and a sense of community, so he studied permaculture and with the help of his son, Keldren, he began to create a backyard garden. Soon the garden expanded onto several adjacent, abandoned lots that at the time were being used as an unsightly dumping ground. Joe began putting all of his free time and money into transforming the piles of stones, concrete, tires, and other waste into an urban agriculture oasis. He bought a tractor, his dad bought a trailer, and his brother loaned him $5,000. “If the garden ever needed anything, I just did it,” says Joe. He dubbed his style of gardening/urban farming “regenerative agriculture” and spent $1,000 on building a shed and nearly $17,000 over a six-year period to bring in dirt to build raised beds. Teachers from the community pitched in to teach classes such as live foods preparation, yoga and Spanish. A community of friends and volunteers grew up around the activities, and in 2003 The Last Organic Outpost officially became a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting health through urban agriculture. In 2007, Joe and a growing army of volunteers began the biggest project yet: The Emile Street Farm, xx acres of weeds next to the abandoned Comet Rice Mill. (just a sentence or two to say what it looked like and what you did) In 2008, Huntsville artist Dan Phillips donated a gazebo he’d made of recycled materials, and the traveling art group Transit Antenna climbed atop the old rice warehouse and painted a giant onion mural and the words “Farm Art,” a design that later became the group’s logo. The fusion of farm and art had begun. By 2009, Mayor Bill White was so impressed he asked the city to turn over an adjacent lot to the Outpost, and the farm kept growing.
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Joe
and Marcella Icet at The Last Organic Outpost