Building a Small-Scale Family Farm One Year at a Time

Wolf Gap Gardens, Berea KY -- July 9, 2024 -- 9 am - 12 pm ET

Launching a small vegetable farm requires much more than keeping the crops healthy: recordkeeping, finances, marketing, ongoing learning, and countless decisions can overwhelm early farmers. Melinda and Maggie Wilder of Wolf Gap Gardens in Madison County make the process seem smooth and enjoyable. This mother-daughter team launched their certified organic* vegetable production in 2020 on 1/2-acre, adding infrastructure and evolving their crop and product offerings on a consistent and intentional scale. Join this Field Day to visit their DIY greenhouse and high tunnel with rainwater catchment, walk through their summer field crops and rotational cover crops, explore their post-harvest wash-pack area and cold storage, and hear their success stories of securing financial assistance, developing value-added products, and dividing their labor so it fits their individual skills and experience, as well as their off-farm lives. Maggie and Melinda will highlight the production tools they use on their human-powered farm, explain the crop fertility they implement with cover crops, nutrient management and reduced off-farm inputs, and share their whole-farm management and planning activities outside their vegetable production. *The Wilders will also share their farm certification process and experience with the Kentucky Department of Agriculture and the Real Organic Project. Grow Appalachia and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture provided support for this Field Day.

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