2010 Student Organic Farm

Abstract

<p>In 2010, the ISU Student Organic Farm (SOF) completed our fifth season at the ISU Horticulture Research Station. This was an exciting yet challenging year for the SOF as we began selling Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares for the first time. This was done in order to address some of the perennial problems identified by SOF participants, particularly the challenges of successfully managing an acre of organic vegetables on a voluntary basis. We learned a lot in this first year and overall the CSA was a great success! We had more committed involvement from participants, more food was produced and distributed to new outlets, and several improvements to infrastructure and soil fertility were made, including purchasing and installing drip irrigation and the planting of a winter cover crop.</p>