our spring succession of crops (just the stuff we put in the ground in early spring) is pretty much all planted at this point and everything is thriving! yay! the cabbage in particular is doing great but we will also be able to harvest lettuce soon and most things should be starting to be ready for harvest around late may (onions, broc, cabbage, peas, beets etc).

this is a little later than I would personally like (everyone on campus now, including seniors, will be long gone by then!) but unfortunately we still deal with some infrastructure hardships like no access to water at the beginnning of the season, a greenhouse with a couple holes in it :) and no money for good potting soil (we use a mixture of mushroom soil and topsoil). all these little things add up to slow growth in our seedlings, although probably the biggest obstacle was not having the water on at the house until a couple weeks ago. and currently, it is off :(

we have had a bunch more volunteers lately which is great to get to know everyone and see some new faces!

we also had two of our exec board members recognized for their work with the campus farm (and other things) by the SGA with the Student Sustainability award. yay! it is always nice to be appreciated :)

there was an article in the point news about the campus farm's SGA bill passing and an opinion written about the campus farm, as well as the campus farm being brought up in conjunction with student fee opinions, so lots of publicity lately. which can be both good and bad.

just to clear up any misconceptions...

it seems that some people think that the fee increase will go ALL to the campus farm. this is absolutely untrue. the campus farm's budget would be totally covered by a fee increase of $2.50; this fee increase is $25. we have gotten a grant and funding from the ENST office and the sustainability office, also, so really the money the farm gets from the SGA would be even less than $2.50 per student/year.

to put things in perspective: the SGA paid more for the ice rink in the spring than it is contributing for two students to have summer employment at the farm and the rest of the farm's operating budget for a year.

the student fee increase is more about how general fees haven't gone up at all for a long time. the majority of the SGA's budget goes to programs and clubs, things that benefit pretty much everyone who does anything. I personally very rarely fully support how the SGA spends my money. but I recognize that other people do like to go see comedians, enjoy world carnival, participate in club sports and all sorts of other things.

the SGA is unwilling to fund any new projects without having a fee increase. unfortunately the campus farm falls under a new project so despite the relatively tiny amount of money we are asking for, fees do need to go up in general.

hope that clears things up!

also

the student fee increase referendum is coming up next week. PLEAASE vote YES to increase student fees. student fees haven't gone up for a long time (more than five years and I think close to ten years), and without a fee increase, the campus farm most likely will not be funded after this year....which would mean no more campus farm :(

so VOTE and VOTE YES for student fee increase.

hello! this past week and a half we have gotten a lot done at the farm...notably the electric fence is up and working for the first time in a long time so if you go out there please make sure to turn it off before you touch it! I hear it delivers quite a shock....

we have transplanted all of our broccoli, cabbage and most of our lettuce, as well as seeded some spring greens (broccoli raab and mustard greens). We also have weeded most of the truly wild areas of the garden, where in one case, baby rabbits were nesting! oh no! but we moved them outside of the garden where they will not eat all of the spring greens, and made a secure gate so no more animals can get in.

the peas and onions are up (sprouting), which is exciting, but we may have to re-seed some of the carrots, since they have not yet come up.

tomorrow (thursday) is eat local day at the great room! we will have a table up and hopefully some of our produce will be specially featured but please stop by and say hello and try some spinach and kale from the farm.

we will also have a table at World carnival this weekend and if you'd like to help paint some of our signs, make hot pepper wreaths, or seed tomatoes please stop by!

Aaron French's SMP, the church community garden located right next to the campus farm, was recently featured in the St. Mary's Enterprise, a local newspaper. It was a really nice article about the importance of community gardening especially for faith-based organizations, and there are pictures of the campus farm. for more information on that project please see the website: http://www.smccommunitygarden.blogspot.com/


unfortunately, in some bad news, we have had to abandon the community garden by DPC. we don't currently have the time or resources to make it all that it can be and some administrators felt that it was not helping the area's aesthetics. however, this will allow us to really focus on the campus farm and have a wide diversity of flowers, herbs and vegetables in one place.

summer positions

fyi:

Resumes and Cover letters can be sent to Lisa Neu, the Sustainability Fellow, at eneu@smcm.edu, who also sent out via all student email the job application for the positions for over the summer.

the general description can be found here: http://emails.thepointnews.com/smcm/2011/04/01/work-at-the-campus-farm-this-summer

please contact lisa for the extended description if you missed it the first time around!

spring is really here!!

up until today it has been really cold and wet this past week and for a while it felt like spring was never going to come. this past week we planted fun jen chinese cabbage seedlings, some of our lettuces, and finished the first part of our fencing! we also got fluffy new straw to put down to strangle out the weeds. we're waiting on the soil to warm up so everything we've planted grows faster....and the water is still off at the house, which could turn into a problem if it doesn't rain this week :/

we're looking at planting beets, broccoli and more greens for the spring, we also have potatoes and more onions to plant. we are going to start our summer succession of crops in the greenhouse soon also: lots of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and okra hopefully!

we also have received funding from the SGA for our summer workers (and officially the campus farm is a line item in the budget for the next year) and we sent out the application. Hooray for funding! this was quite a debated issue in the SGA and we're just extremely thankful that we did receive funding (as without summer workers the farm would not survive). please, thank your senators for voting for that if you can.

Lisa Neu, the Sustainbility Fellow, sent out the application for the summer workers this past week and the deadline is April 11th. Please check out the job description and send a resume and cover letter (saying why you're interested, what your experience is, etc), and then we'll conduct interviews and hopefully get two people hired by the end of april!

we will be at the farm every week day at 4 and weekends at 2 so come out, bring a friend and enjoy the warm weather :)