Growing all Year Round
We have several varieties of tomatoes almost ready for harvest in one of our high tunnels. We are excited to see how far we can extend the season with the varieties we are using. There are also some tomatoes and peppers in our high tunnels that were planted much earlier. We will get one more harvest from these and begin preparing these tunnels for winter production.
Both in our outside fields and our tunnels, our late fall and winter production will be focusing on brassicas, (kale, broccoli, collards), carrots, spinach, scallions, and baby lettuce mixes.
We are also happy to report that our fall cover cropping is going well, with several large plots of winter rye-grass germinating quickly and evenly. These plantings are key to organic production as they hold the soil in place through the winter, relieve compaction in the soil, scavenge nutrients, and will add essential biomass to the soil prior to our spring planting when mowed and tilled in.
Community Outreach
Sprouting Farms attended the Festival of Rivers in Hinton with an info table. We passed out information about the farm and were able to talk to a lot of people about what we are growing, where it’s going, and our mission. We hope that our whole community will come to know and support our mission to help the economy by producing more farmers who can produce more locally grown food that can circulate through our region and help provide food access.
We also brought the farm’s produce to a kid’s farmers market at Smoot Elementary School! Greenbrier Extension, Fruits of Labor, and Sunset Berry Farm teamed up to help provide food for the kids in a fun learning environment. The kids practiced their listening and math skills by spending tokens in exchange for the prices of the fruits and veggies. Kids went home with watermelon, peppers, squash, zucchini, beets, green beans, apples, and more!
Our CRAFT Tour went well thanks to the WV Food and Farm Coalition. The Coalition helps put together tours of farms across the state so that new and beginning farmers can learn new skills and knowledge from other farmers around the state. This farmer to farmer educational tour had it’s 4th stop at Sprouting Farms, where we showed them around the farm and talked about season extension. We showed the group how we grow and what we are growing in our high tunnels, so well as how we manage our field crops. Greenbrier Valley Grown spoke about where our food travels to along with other farmers in the region, as well as how their aggregation system is working. Appalachian Headwater gave a talk about the bees they have on the top of hill at the farm. This program helps bees and people by teaching anyone who is interested how to take care of bees and gives them the bees and equipment to do so. If you haven’t been able to see the farm yet and you have a group of people interested to coming to see us, then don’t hesitate to give us a call at 304–573–4242.
Incubators and Education
We have some new Incubator Farmers working at the farm! It’s their first week and we hope to hear more about their plans and goals soon, but at the moment they are working hard on the high tunnel they began renting. The couple learned about our Incubator Program from our recent CRAFT Tour. We hope they enjoy their experience here at Sprouting Farms and we wish them all the best. Anyone interested in renting our land or high tunnels can give us a call! As an incubator farm we rent our land and high tunnels to anyone wishing to start their own farm business.
We are creating a Volunteer Internship that will invite people to work with our crew and learn hands on skills in farming. We are always open to inviting volunteers and groups to see the farm and learn more about food and farming. The Internship will be unpaid, but you will receive food packages to take home. The program can tailor itself to your time availability and interests. We hope to unleash this new program very soon!
