The WEI farm campus is beginning to fulfill the educational and social justice mission of WEI: a farmer learning campus, a demonstration organic farm, a student/internship learning place, a training center for new Growing Power urban farmers, a farm-stay-over retreat center, and a high functioning CSA farm and orchard. So what happened?
This year we decided to hire local residents to support our local farming community and to staff our farm crew and farm office. It could not have been a better decision, one that helped to bring WEI closer to our local residents. We were blessed by a high spirited and very hard-working farm crew – with Larry Palmer, Gina Sapp, Charlie Hatch, Andrew Robins -- along with Jacquelyn Zita and Hilary Sandall as long-term farmers. A special thanks should go to Beth Hatch who took over the farm office with immaculate grace and power. Student farm internships this year were limited to six week residency sessions organized by the seasonal periods on the farm with a season-specific farm curriculum, on-site training, a special project of the intern’s choosing, attendance at Organic Farm School, and a limited number of farm work hours. We were again blessed by a creative and positively progressive crew of interns, Nancy Taff, Liz Richardson, Jessica Comerford, Emma Paskewitz, Holly Engel, and Carissa Glatt.
The season was a great challenge for all of us with the dry spring, the severe summer drought, and the early frost but Mother Nature also helped us produce and furnish organically certified produce for 165 CSA members and 12 bushels for Harvest for the Hungry and Open Arms every week for 18 weeks. We were astonished to see that this amounted to over 3000 boxes of produce and that we laid over 10 miles of drip tape to during the summer’s drought, and, wouldn’t you know it, we had to replace the well pump half way through the summer. The apples loved the drought, flourishing without the competition of heavy feeding pests and fungal attachments. Plans are already underway for next year’s season as our fever for farming is already stirring.
WEI’s North Circle Project also took off with a small but dedicated group of local farmers and producers marketing their produce and value-added products through our CSA and Farmer’s Market deliveries. WEI participated most consistently at Mill City Market on Saturdays, along side our local Sunrise Organic Flour Mill, and in the Almelund Apple Festival in the fall.
In the coming season, we will be expanding our farm educational program (hopefully to include our new Girl Farm project) and begin transforming our farm campus into a Growing Power Regional Outreach Training Center in which we plan to build a new 100-foot hoop house heated by composting piles and passive solar and begin plans for building an aquaponic organic greenhouse system for fish, vegetables and herbs. Near the end of the 2009 season, we started a large composting project on the farm and a worm depository which we hope to use employ for worm castings next season.
We also plan to support several small plot heritage farming research projects next year which will include Minnesota grown peanuts, Hmong vegetables and herbs, sweet potatoes and okra, Native American tobacco, amaranth and squash, and Mexica herbs and vegetables.
Growing has been a motif at WEI, and in walking-the-talk of organic agriculture, food justice and alternative ag education, we keep the work going. Income from our CSA farm, grants and individual contributions, and Organic Farm School help support these efforts, and our volunteers are as always our most cherished gift to the farm. We thank you all and look forward to the coming farm season.
“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.” Wendell Berry
