Preparing for Permaculture, Connecting with Campus

Farm management: that’s what September means we are focused on at Merry Lea Sustainable Farm. Agroecology students have left for the summer, cooler weather is coming, and there are many projects to tend with the first frost not so far away. It is a month of cover cropping, fall plantings of lettuce and radishes, and this year, it means staying on top of our first-ever fall CSA (community supported agriculture) offering for Goshen College students and faculty/staff! We began this program with just ten households, meaning each household pays money up front and receives a weekly bag of produce that happens to be in season.

Tuesdays are our CSA drop off day, and Fridays continue to be a day where we sell produce on campus at Goshen College. This colors our week significantly! As our WWOOFer Ryan Minter had earlier requested, there are lots of opportunities througout the week for harvesting veggies. The okra, for example, need to be picked about every other day, as is true of the summer squash and cherry tomatoes. Ground cherries abound this year, given our decision to plant two sixty-five foot double beds! We will have plenty this fall, even enough to freeze, ensuring public programs at Merry Lea can offer ground cherry pie this winter.

By farm management I am not referring exclusively to managing our annual vegetables. There is much work to do in our perennial plantings, as well! The Woody Perennial Polyculture field, we realized after doing soil testing, needed some TLC. We discovered soils are in significant need of phosphorus, and the abundance of weeds in some areas meant we’ve spent time mowing the borders of our planted rows, adding low-concentrate phosphorus and cover cropping with additions of mowed grass clippings. Slowly but surel y, we are working to build soil tilth in this worn-out field that someday will be a breathtaking food forest. Wait and see!

– Jon Zirkle