By Chris Callahan, Hans Estrin, and Andy Chamberlin
Efficiency and food safety are integral parts of running a profitable and viable farm, producing high-quality produce, and retaining valuable employees. This integration should start with a vision in the planning stage of all postharvest projects.
Continue reading “Planning an Efficient and Safe Wash/Pack Area”UVM Extension’s own television program Across The Fence did a segment on a project we’ve been working on related to greens spinners. You can watch the video clip here explaining why small farms are making use of washing machines as greens spinners and what we are doing to help make them more feasible.
Continue reading “Across The Fence: Mean Green(s) Washing Machine (TV Segment on Greens Spinners)”This blog post is for those using or considering a converted washing machine as greens spinner.
For background information on several different types of greens spinners and general thoughts on using washing machine conversions see this blog post.
There are a few things to consider when shopping for a washing machine to convert into a greens spinner. Like most things, it comes down to:
All of our resources are available here on this blog. However, if you are looking for a printed handout, here is a list. These are all of the PDF documents that we share during workshops, meetings, and presentations. All links will open the PDF in a new tab.
Have a washing machine that you want to convert into a greens spinner?
Have you already done the conversion, but want to improve it?
Join us for one of two hands-on, intensive workshops this fall focused on getting the job done and doing it well. Continue reading “Washing Machine Greens Spinner Workshop”
With innovative tools becoming more available for salad greens production from field prep through harvest, mixed greens are becoming more attractive for farmers. Postharvest handling and wash/pack still causes a bottleneck for many farms. Today we share some knowledge on a piece of equipment recently adopted at Jericho Settlers Farm in Jericho, VT.
This Greens Washline is made by China Joy Equipment. They call it an “Air Bubble Washing Machine.” This has been an affordable piece of equipment to allow their farm to scale up greens production for $13,900. Mark Fasching from Jericho Settlers Farm was gracious enough to share some of his experiences sourcing this machine from the other side of the world.
I had the pleasure of facilitating a workshop at the 2019 NOFA-MA Summer Conference about Ventilation in Greenhouses and High Tunnels. It provided an opportunity to collect information from various sources, ground truth observations with growers, and to revisit some fundamentals. The big takeaway, for me, is that there are many, many ways to ventilate a protected culture environment and opportunities for improvement abound. I hope this review provides a framework for troubleshooting some issues that may be common in the field.
Continue reading “Ventilation in Greenhouses and High Tunnels”
Danielle Allen and Ben Dana own and operate Root 5 Farm in Fairlee, Vermont. This organic vegetable farm on the Connecticut River provides over 200 CSA members, farmers market, restaurant, and wholesale customers with local, healthy food. Over 100 different varieties of crops are grown on the 38 acres that make up the farm. Continue reading “Wheels Keep Things Rolling at Root 5 Farm”
Last summer we had a twilight meeting all about Alliums at High Meadows Farm on July 12th, 2018. Continue reading “All About Alliums – Twilight Meeting Video Recording”
Last summer we performed a series of precooling trials using small-scale forced air coolers to cool eggplant, watermelon, strawberries, blueberries, zucchini, and roasting peppers. The forced air cooling was done in parallel with standard room cooling and was shown to result in cooling rates ranging from 1.2 to 2.2 times faster than room cooling. This test demonstrated the feasibility and benefit of simple forced air cooling systems to smaller scale farms.
