Sunday, March 25, 2012

What's in store for 2012....

Hi everyone and welcome to a brand new growing season!  We're excited to be gearing up for our third year, and looking back, it's incredible how far SEEDS Farm has come in the past couple of years.  For starters, last year we built a 30'x60' greenhouse and a glorious root cellar. Both of these structures will be incredibly useful this year for starting our season with seeds in the greenhouse to extending the season with long-term storage for our root vegetables.

Well, for starters, I'm Monica, the new Farm Manager this season, and I am very excited to get the season rolling.  I come to the farm with experience running my own farm, managing a farmers market, and as an education and community activist.  We've already hired a wonderful family as our full-time employees, the Riley's with husband John, wife Jena, and two wonderful children, Matthew and Jane.  We have a crew of three interns from St. Olaf for the spring semester: Gabe, Lara, and Melina and a crew of three farm mentees from Carleton College: Anna, Sara, and Sophie.  It's been a blast getting to know everyone that's involved with the farm this season, the more the merrier!

This season we'll continue to share our land with the Rural Enterprise Center's, "Agripreneur Training Center", it's a wonderful non-profit that is focused on creating economic opportunities for rural Latino families.  You can learn more about their approach and their "Grow a Farmer" program here.


We are also excited to be sharing our land with a new farm, Laughing Loon Farm, that is run by farmer Dayna Burtness.  LLF grows wonderful vegetables that are sold at many restaurants in and around the Twin Cities, you can learn more about the farm here.

SEEDS Farm this season will be farming approximately 3 acres of tasty sustainably grown vegetables as well as raising some pigs and 50 laying hens.  We will be selling most of our produce to Bon Appetit which serves St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges and will also have a Market Stand on-site at the farm.  This year we'll continue to grow our Communal Farmer program, so every week many individuals and families will be logging work hours on the farm with the wonderful return of fresh picked good food.  There will also be some community garden plots, 20 of these plots are folks coming over from Faith Gardens, a community garden run by the Community Action Center.  Oh, and we're establishing a beautiful "Children's Garden" and are excited to extend our outreach and education opportunities for students of all ages (including us adults, one can never stop learning!).  And so so so much more... !

We've started our seeds, the onions are growing strong and eggplants and broccoli raab have just germinated.  This season's been unseasonably warm, it's wet outside right now, but as soon as we get a short dry spell we'll be out in the field planting some cool season crops already, these are our peas, radishes, spinach, kale, etc.
Seeds started in the greenhouse this season (mid-March)

So, come on down to the SEEDS Farm anytime!  And you can always reach me at our email, seedsfarm@gmail.com, please drop a line with any questions or thoughts/ideas or just to say "Hi".