Farm Update: Building Projects, Fall Shares, New Intern

I feel a little bit like spring busyness snuck up on me this year, maybe because we were gone for the week of spring break (yay for Legoland and Manatee Springs State Park in Florida!), or maybe because I was picking daffodils a this past weekend in a snowstorm.

Photo Credit: Anne Kingma

No matter the weather, I’m always happy for spring, even though this spring will be a little different for us here at Perkins’ Good Earth Farm.  The only thing we’ve planted so far is–gasp–our garden!  That’s right, the high tunnel is empty of green except for my winter kitchen herbs.  Why, you may ask, this dearth of spring produce?  

Our goal for this spring and summer is to build another high tunnel and a packing shed/walk-in-cooler, two structures we need to expand our Fall CSA program and move us closer to Dan transitioning into full-time farming.  And since there are truly only so many hours in a day, we decided to focus our energies on building structures for a season so that we can grow more delicious veggies for many seasons to come.  (Okay, okay, we are growing early cherry tomatoes, lunchbox peppers, and green beans for Valley Kitchen this summer.  We couldn’t help ourselves.)

So even though we won’t have spring produce, we will have garlic scapes in June, garlic for sale in late summer, and you can sign up for a fall share right now by visiting our storefront.  Oh yes, and we will also have kale for sale this summer!  Remember that biochar research project we were part of last year with Purdue University?  Well, we’re on to year two, and this year we’re growing Red Russian kale with the help of our new intern, Matthew Ford, who will be starting in mid-May after school gets out.

2016 Intern: Matthew Ford

Matthew, originally from Valparaiso, is a sophomore Economics major at Wabash College.  He’s the Social Chair of his fraternity (Beta Theta Phi), VP of the Outdoorsman’s Society, a Committee head of WAR Council (Wabash Acts Responsibly)–and farm intern at Perkins’ Good Earth Farm!  We’re really looking forward to working with Matthew, and we hope many of you get a chance to meet him throughout the spring and summer.  He has large shoes to fill after the wonderful intern we had, Sarah Lindvall, but we’re confident he’ll do a great job!