Saturday Planting Day with Pictures!

Well, Saturday we had a planting day. It was great day for us. We got quite a bit planted. We had some miscommunications, but it will be o.k., but due to this we ended up with the following being planted.

• 800 Row feet of peas (1 variety)

• 400 row feet of cucumbers on 12” centers (4 varieties)

• 1000 row feet of pole green beans (2 varieties)

• 2800 row feet of bush beans (5 varieties)

• 1 – 4x16 raised bed of carrots (3 varieties)

• 52-75 tomato plants (various varieties of heirloom and some hybrids)

• Peppers (I still don’t know how many were planted but we didn’t get to them all)

The good news is that with the different varieties we planted we will have veg. always coming in at different times. So, not every green bean will be ready at the same time.

We still have more to plant this week and get irrigation in ASAP! We had Shakespeare Pizza afterwards. Pictures are to follow in the next few days.

We wish to express our immense gratitude to all who came and help to give us life! We couldn’t have done it without you! Now the rain has come on Monday I am reminded of this quote,

“Man—despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments—owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.” Unknown

Peas

Adam Saunders planting Cucumbers.

Adam again with helper.

Whitney making soil blocks for late season TP.


Laying out the grid for the tomatoes, Dr. Blevins & helper.


Watering the tomatoes in hoop house #4, Whitney & Abby


Finishing the layout in hoop house #5


Hoop house #2 -- cool season veg. is growing nicely!

The Challenges of a Start-Up

When I took the entrepreneurship class last semester, we discussed the issues and “hurdles” of starting a new venture. I didn’t know at that time how valuable those discussions would be.

A lot has happened since my last communication. While it was happening, it would probably have been more confusing than enlightening for me to try to explain what was going on. Now that we are mostly through it, I will attempt to summarize and bring all up to speed.

While our project has received much publicity and many think it a worthwhile endeavor, we hit our first big hurdle….well, more like a wall. But, being naive about University policy we did not realize at the time that we had hit a wall. I speak of the hiring freeze that occurred here at MU.

The hiring freeze eliminated the way we had planned to hire 1-2 full time students to help with the CSA. With no income from the CSA, and still needing to make rent, our help had to find other employment. We began the struggle for life, started to fall behind our planting schedule…, and had to pare back our goals. But, we have pulled together as a group and have plants growing in three hoop houses. We have work days scheduled for both this weekend and next weekend….and much additional planting will take place over the next 10 days.

We have benefited from the counsel of Dr. Garton, Lisa Wimmenauer, Tim Reinbott, and others. With their help we have made several changes.

1. We are becoming a student group. The name will be Students for Community Agriculture.
2. Once club status is granted on April 28, we can receive a waiver from the hiring freeze, and hire if we still want/need to do so.
3. We will probably not operate a CSA model this year.
a. We CAN sell crops we grow at Olivet; the “How” is still under discussion.
b. Members of Olivet Church can work in the fields with us students, if there is interest on their part….pending a couple of legal issues.
c. Donations of food to the Food Bank are still permissible and encouraged.

We sincerely appreciate the support we have received as we “slogged” through a number of unanticipated issues. We value the extracurricular learning this project is giving us (most of the time). But, I must admit there are times it felt like the hurdles were pretty high.

More later,

Andrew