This week, I had the opportunity to visit Bee Here Now Farm, which is another small organic farm in the Reno area. As a part of my independent study this quarter, I am researching differences between conventional tillage and no-till practices. Because Prema is a no-till farm, I thought it would be cool to compare some factors of their soil health to another farm that uses conventional tillage practices. Zach recommended Bee Here Now, and I was able to reach out to the farm managers, Nick and Christine Hill, and arranged a visit to their farm on Tuesday. I decided that the soil health factors I will test for are soil compaction (which I will measure by using a penetrometer- pictured below), organic matter content, and weed presence. I have yet to test Prema’s soil as a comparison, but I got some interesting data from the soil compaction test at Bee Here Now which I may share in future posts.

Zach and I continued the reorganizing of the wash and pack house this week and we put in some new root wash tables. We’ve also been working on improving the drainage of the wash and pack house because water tends to pool up on one side and sit there until we are able to sweep it out of the small drains that go outside of the house. Zach has been in contact with someone that may be able to come drill some bigger drains for us, which would be a huge help.

Our greens have been growing like crazy lately and we brought 100 bags of salad greens to market this week, which was the most we’ve managed to harvest during this winter season. Unfortunately, it was very rainy and windy at market on Saturday, so not as many people came by.