Agraria Journal Winter 2021

42 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 What’s Happening on Agraria AMY HARPER Agraria’s Huston Road field serves as an incubator for beginning and small scale farmers like Jeremy and Alicia Schleining of Calyx Flower Farms, shown here with their daughter, Mae. HUSTON ROAD CAMPUS Agraria’s white CNG pickup got quite a workout this summer hauling water to our Huston Road campus. Lots of it. The farm and land team used the garden hose near Agraria’s office on the front campus to fill up the two 125-gallon tanks in the bed at least once a day, sometimes twice, then trundled the precious liquid down Huston Road, where they used a solar pump to transfer the water to an irrigation line—and to the vegetables growing in the high tunnel and the sweet potatoes in our research plot. Getting the water from the tanks to the flowers growing on Calyx Flower Farm’s incubator plot required yet another creative step. That time consuming, laborious chore will no longer be necessary for fall crops in the Huston Road high tunnel. The well installed last spring, one of two on Agraria funded by a Natural Resources Conservation Service EQIP grant, is now in production. The county issued the long-awaited permit needed to bring the well on line in October. The well is in service just in time for fall production in the high tunnel. Having well water available on site also allows Agraria to lease more incubator plots to beginning, hobby or small-scale farmers looking to start or expand their operation. The plan for the coming year is to offer three or four more plots of a quarter to half-acre in size.