Many Thanks From a Growing Youth Farm

Exciting news! In the 2013 growing season we have an extremely generous person helping to grow the Youth Farm.  The Youth Farm’s neighbor, Lewis Matelich, has agreed to allow us the opportunity to incorporate his land to our farm, expanding the Youth Farm from a 1+ acre farm to a 2+ acre farm.

The Youth Farm expansion will allow us to improve our field rotations incorporating long term cover cropping, expand onsite composting, as well as have the ability to grow more food flowers and berries with Youth Homes teens, in turn creating more job opportunities.  So I guess It really does pay to have good neighbors.

Our new field borders our east fence line and for last decade or so, has been used for grazing a few horses.  There were several runs and enclosures of old wood fencing, a bit of barbed wire, a small dilapidated cattle shoot, and a hand full of other wood and metal left over from the fields previous life.

Last Wednesday before the cold front set in we were lucky enough to have Montana Conservation Corps come out and lend a dozen pairs of hands.  These gals and guys equipped with helmets and other safety wear promptly set to dismantling the fences, cut down a few scraggly trees, pulled posts, rolled barbed wire, and hauled everything to Eko Compost.  They were such a great crew to help us get started with our project.

There are so many folks who have been involved in the success of the Youth Farm over the last three years.  All these fantastic and generous people have helped the Youth Farm grow from a small 10 family CSA to a still small, but highly productive farm that this season welcomed 40 CSA members, included a winter CSA, and grew over 25,000 lbs of food.  Of that 25,000 lbs of food that was grown exclusively by Youth Homes teens, 12,000 lbs of food was donated to 13 different Missoula family service agencies.

With all that, we just wanted to say  Many Thanks From our Growing Youth Farm.  

If you would like more information about the Youth Farm and our goings-on, please check us out atwww.gardencityharvest.org and www.Youthhomes.com, and check out more blog posts!