small scale agriculture – Page 3 – LaFarm, The Lafayette College Community Garden & Working Farm

: After just one week, many of our tomatoes have been weaved through a second string on their trellises and are tall enough to mulch with straw,

: The flowers and herbs we planted at the back of the farm are taking root,

: We put down some rows of hot and sweet peppers,

: We set up a cute little perennial garden,

: The asparagus we planted two weeks back is thriving,

: And our kale and swiss chard look absolutely beautiful!

June 20th, 2014
As my third week this summer draws into a close, the future is looking bright. At the farm we have plenty of plants growing,

So this growing season is shaping up to be a very green one for the farm. But it’s also becoming more obvious that the further future of LaFarm is going to be very green. As my research on farm infrastructure has gotten underway, the potential for expansion with even small additions to the farm makes future growth seem very within our reach.

Right now, I’m working with our farm manager Sarah, as well as my faculty advisors and now USDA extension educator Tianna DuPont to learn what I need to plan our packinghouse and greenhouse by going out and visiting other farms as well as doing some good old fashioned book learning.

So far, I’ve visited Pennypack Farm and Education Center in Horsham Pennsylvania. Their 12 organic acres were very nice to see up and running with the help of their Farm Manager Devin Barto and their interns like Jenny and Josh, whom I met and who were nice enough to talk to me about Pennypack and farming in general as I helped weed for an hour.

I’ll hopefully be making more connections with more farmers soon.

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar 2014

June 4th, 2014
After a hiatus for my second academic year at Lafayette, I’m finally working out at LaFarm again, and this year I’ll be out here a lot more, doing a lot more.

In only 2 days I jumped right back into work weeding, laying cover crop, planting and transplanting potatoes and asparagus, and watering our strawberries, rhubarb, horseradish, and pleurisy root. I also got to meet three of my co-workers for this summer: Jenn, a recent graduate and aspiring farmer; Kelly, a fellow rising junior; and Serim, a rising sophomore.

In just these two days, we have already done so much.

: We planted a large space with asparagus. In the back, you can see some older asparagus we needed to transplant from one row to the other.

: We planted more potatoes! Featured planter: Kelly Carpency

: We covered some empty plots with Crimson Clover and Sunflower Seeds. It doesn’t look like much now but in just a few weeks this whole plot will be green with helpful legumes and flowers!

Rhubarb, under a tarp. you can see the leaves poking up where there’s straw!

Here is what will be, in a few years, a (hopefully very productive) strawberry patch!

And we cleaned up our new beds of rhubarb and strawberries.

Much of these patches just look like indiscriminate dirt with maybe some straw right now, but it won’t be too long until these plants are recognizable and even producing food. That’s the magic of agriculture, with a little help from humans, nature does the hard part (actually growing into food.)

I wasn’t able to post anything here until this week (the week of June 20th) so I’ll be posting everything up until this week right away, but from then on expect weekly updates!

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar 2014

LaFarm, The Lafayette College Community Garden & Working Farm

LaFarm, The Lafayette College Community Garden & Working Farm~ A digital garden all about your college farm

Tag Archives: small scale agriculture

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