Our Farm
Several miles west of Columbia, the farm is in the rolling hills and woodlots of central Missouri, sitting atop a hill in a former pasture and hay field that slopes gently to the southeast. The garden plot is composed of permanent raised beds for both perennials (peony, narcissus, allium, crocosmia) and annuals (sunflowers, zinnia, marigold, amaranth, celosia, cosmos, snapdragons) as well as a small selection of herbs, which we incorporate into bouquets and wreaths.
Focused on improving the health of our soil, we apply our own hand-mixed hot aerobic compost and vermi-compost, both of which are produced from our residential compost business. We treat new beds with a deep treatment of bokashi — fermented food waste — that is used to improve both the quality and texture of the soil. We make our MO-kashi bran from organic wheat sourced from Janie’s Mill and have incorporated over 15,000 lbs of fermented food waste into the root zone of our beds, which provides accessible organic matter to feed the soil microbes to grow healthy plants.
Every bed spends a season each year in a diverse cover crop mix to provide insect habitat, provide a multi-species set of roots to feed soil microbes, and to add organic matter in the form of living plants. In the spring, we identify beds for our late-season CSA and plant a warm-season mix of 20+ species, including cowpeas, broom corn, vegetables, radishes, and buckwheat. For our fall/winter cover crop, we use a mix of hardy cereal rye, oats, and peas.
