My Summer at Lansing Roots: Weekly Recaps and Thoughts on Food Issues: Starting Up

Hello again! Today I'm going to bring you up to speed on everything we've been doing out at the farm over the past couple of weeks. I'll also show you some pictures of our beautiful farm!

We've been doing mostly prep work out at the farm lately. Roots is brand new this year, so there was a lot that needed to be done to get the farm ready to go. The first order of business was to build our hoop house. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that term, a hoop house is just another name for a solar greenhouse. We assembled our hoop house in one day with the help of several AmeriCorps volunteers and a crew from a business called Nifty Hoops. Our hoop house is thirty feet wide and about seventy-five feet long. It consists of a series of metal arches covered in thin plastic called polyethylene. Here are a few pictures:

It was pretty amazing to watch a patch of flat ground turn into a complete hoop house in a few hours. It was a tiring, hot day, but it was fun!

Once we put up the hoop, we had to start prepping it for planting. We spent a few hours laying out the beds inside, and then we forked them out and spread compost on them. The hoop house is part of our demo farm, except for three beds on the end that we are leasing to one of our farmers. Once the beds were prepared, we planted cucumbers in them. Most of them have now sprouted. We planted several seeds together to make sure at least one would grow, so on Friday we had to go through and thin out the sprouts so they won't have to compete with each other for nutrients. After that, we watered the plants to keep them from drying out while they are young and delicate.

Cucumber plants before thinning

After thinning

We have also started planting potatoes. To do that, we dug several trenches that were about six to eight inches deep. Then we dropped in pieces of potatoes that had eyes on them. The eyes are where the sprouts will come from. Finally, we covered the potatoes back over with a few inches of soil. None of them have sprouted as of yet, but we should begin to see some come up in the next few days.

We have also done a few other things around the farm to get things ready. We have installed electric fencing around the plots, laid out more beds for melon and squash, and begun prepping the community gardening area that is adjacent to the demo farm. Some local farmers have also been kind enough to disk and till the field for us. We're very close to being ready to bring in the farmers and get going at full speed. Once everything is ready we will be doing much more work caring for the plants in the demo farm, putting on workshops for the farmers, and more.

I have really enjoyed being outside at the farm and learning a little bit about growing the produce so far. This is something that I never pictured myself being involved in, but I am loving it! I would definitely be interested in pursuing a career in this area after college. I find it very interesting, and I think this program will really benefit the Lansing area. Hopefully Roots can serve as an example for other communities to follow.

Thanks for reading! I will write again soon! Until then, here are a few more pictures of the farm. Enjoy!