Piglets and the new hoophouse!

Well, this time of spring is about as busy as it gets for vegetable farmers, not that summer and fall aren’t super busy too. It’s just something about spring, with the greenhouse to tend, transplants and direct seeded crops in the fields to plant, water, and weed, tractor work (like spreading compost and tilling the soil), as well as many other preparations to make, that give the spring a busier feel.  As one farmer recently asked me: “are you enjoying the onslaught of spring?”

And of course, like many farmers do, we at Garden City Harvest’s PEAS Farm like to add and try new things each year, which when piled on top of the already existing list of things to take care of in the spring can kinda make you a little crazy!!!!  But despite this issue, we ARE doing new things!

This year, we have eleven new piglets!  I just picked up these little guys and gals today from a pig farmer in Potomac.  The piglets will live at the farm and help educate Missoula students about pigs and where meat comes from, as well as gobble up a whole boat load of vegetable parts we humans don’t eat.  Feel free to come up to the farm and visit them if the front gate’s open, just make sure you keep all your body parts on the “people side” of the (electric!) fence.

Another addition is a new hoophouse (shown on the right side of the picture to the right).  This space will be used for early season veggies for our CSA members and was made possible through our partnership with the University of Montana Environmental Studies department and the KRELF program at the University.  We are very excited about using this hoophouse to extend our short growing season, and passing on those benefits to the our CSA members!