Message from Kate

Hi everyone! This is Kate Lainhart and I am one of the Green Edge farmers. I have been at Green Edge for 2 years and I love it! I’m a Nashville, TN native and a Kenyon College graduate. I live in Athens with my wonderful boyfriend, Matt, our dog, Annie and Jack the cat. We are moving to Columbus in 2 weeks so Matt can continue his medical schooling at Doctor’s Hospital. We are very excited about this new stage in our life, but I am having a very hard time finding a job. If anyone has any agricultural/environmental job leads, please give me a call at 615-598-0303 or e-mail me at lainhartk@gmail.com.

This past Thursday was an exciting and productive day. The day started out with weeding the sweet potato patch. These plants were shipped from Delvin Farm, in Nashville. This was the first farm I worked on and where my love for organics began. The sweet potato crop will be harvested in mid-September. They cure for a couple of weeks and then will be a part of the CSA share! After we finished weeding, we planted green beans and sweet basil in the field. We do successional plantings of those crops in order to have a consistent and fresh availability. After planting it was time to pick squash. Zucchini, patty pan, and yellow crookneck are amazingly prolific, so they need to be picked every other day. Planting swiss chard, kale and collard greens was the next task at hand. These fall crops are started in flats in our greenhouse and then transplanted into the field in September.

The last job of the day was to move the mushroom blocks to the compost pile. Our wonderful mushrooms are grown in a climate controlled room on compressed sawdust blocks. The mushroom mycelium is mixed with the sawdust to create the mushrooms. One sawdust brick will only produce mushroom flushes 3-6 times. Fortunately, composted mushroom blocks make fantastic potting soil. The mushroom blocks get piled up outside of the mushroom house, but the compost pile is down the hill on the other side of the farm. This means that the farm truck doubles as a mushroom block dump truck. As I was loading the truck with the blocks, I found a snake! The milk snake and her eggs were keeping cool underneath the block pile. I guess it is that time of year.

I have had such a wonderful time growing and packing your food over the past 2 years. Thanks so much for supporting me and the farm. We couldn’t do it without you! Please come to the OPEN FARM on July 27 so I can meet all of you.

Thanks again and best of wishes,

Kate