On Friday July 8th, the crew spent the afternoon at the Zajac Family Farm 2022 Farm Fest. The Farm Fest was a farm based event for the Corry area and surrounding communities that was organized by Julie Zajac of the Zajac Family Farm, LLC. The goals of the festival were to increase awareness and understanding of the agriculture-related issues and opportunities for education, technical assistance and funding support from Pennsylvania Governmental and nonprofit agencies for new and existing farmers; and introduce the farm setting to the community-at-large as a place for family fun, education, health, and well-being to enhance quality of life.

Our group was invited to talk to farmers and participate in the conversations being had at the event. In preparation, the crew created

Additionally, we worked with Jill Varner with PSU Extension to find mental health resources that we would hand out as part of our Growing Roots of Understanding project.

Friday included several presentations by farmers, PSU extension, and others who supplied relevant information to those who attended. The garden crew was also able to conduct interviews with farmers for our Growing Roots of Understanding project. We were delighted to be able to speak to local farmers and to participate in the event! Thank you to all who made it possible!

As you may have seen on our social media, the garden crew is participating in the Soil Your Undies challenge by the PA Soil Health Coalition and PASA. We have buried cotton underwear 3-4 inches deep in the CORE Garden, the high tunnel, and the Dobbin’s beds and marked where they are. In 60 days, we will dig up the undies in hopes that they will mostly be gone! This challenge will help test how healthy our soil is and how active the microbes and bacteria are!

Last week, the garden crew was able to visit several local farms and begin conducting interviews with farmers discussing their daily lives, stresses, and mental health. We’ve started to sift through our interview materials with those farmers and hope to be providing you all some great content via podcast-style, video, and written mediums.

Keep an eye out on our social media and website for that information to be published soon!

Our garden spaces are currently flourishing! In the Dobbins beds, we are beginning to see tomatoes and peppers. They are not quite ready to harvest, but they should be shortly. We are looking forward to trying out what we grow and hope to continue with our growing success!

The crew also placed newspaper, cardboard, and straw around the pumpkins at the high tunnel. This will help solarize and prevent weeds from popping up, making our jobs at maintaining this area much easier.

Everyone make sure to do a little rain dance this week in hopes for some July showers to help our plants grow!

Don’t forget to check us out on social media to stay updated on our daily progress!