The grove of trees in the background is our new land! Our pack shed will go in the clearing in the center of the photo.
We’ve been working on this for awhile and we’re happy to announce that it’s official: we purchased 6.7 acres in Waseca County adjacent to our produce farm! You may or may not know that our farming situation for the past 5 seasons has been a little different than what you’d expect. We’ve been driving about 30 miles southeast of Mankato to our 2 acre vegetable plot and hauling all of the produce we’ve harvested back to our home near Mankato for washing, packing and temporary storage until it ends up in your Farm Share, our Farmers Market Stand, or the Saint Peter Food Co-op.
This farming setup hasn’t been without it challenges. We’ve had to be very diligent about the amounts of produce we harvest. Going back for more produce because we didn’t harvest enough wasn’t really an option for us because of the time required. In addition, we spend about an hour every harvest day driving. That’s a lot of time we could be using for weeding, harvesting, washing and other farm tasks. The weather also poses a challenge; the weather at our house isn’t necessarily representative of the weather at the plot and we’ve had a lot of issues with jobs that require certain conditions that were hard to predict. In addition, we’ve had to haul coolers and ice on our harvest days to help keep our produce cool. You get the idea, farming like this was really hard. We spent a lot of extra time because of the distance between our home and our farm.
What’s Next?
The land by itself doesn’t really help us solve any of the problems mentioned above. That’s why we’re investing into infrastructure and a brand new pack shed. Our pack shed will be a dedicated building for washing, packaging, and storing produce and it will be located on our new land. Our pack shed will have a number of features that we’re really excited about:
A rough, to scale, sketch of our pack shed floor plan.
Floor drains: We wash a lot of produce and floor drains will help us keep our shed clean, dry and safe by moving muddy wash water out of our shed.
Insulation and heat: Our last harvest of lettuce was on November 8th this year with temperatures hovering around 30 degrees, just below freezing. Insulation and heat will help us maintain comfortable temperatures as we continue to extend our harvest season.
Larger walk-in cooler with space for another walk-in cooler. We maxed out our 8’x8’ walk-in cooler several times this season. Our new pack shed will have a 12’x12’ cooler with room for a second cooler if needed.
On site bathroom: this might seem silly but it’s going to be really convenient to not have to walk up to the house to use the bathroom. It will save time and help keep mud and dirt our of our house.
We hope to start on the pack shed first thing in Spring 2020 with an anticipated completion date of early August 2020. We have a lot of work ahead of us but we’re so excited to be making this investment into our farm, our community, and into providing great tasting, healthy, sustainable produce for you!
p.s. If you know any electricians, plumbers, masons, or other contractors let us know! We’re working on gathering bids for our project and any additional leads would help us out a ton.