Agriculture

Agriculture Training Center| P-Patch | Market Gardens

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) 

Goats happily munching away at the Ag Training Center.

A build­ing block of com­merce, agri­cul­ture has played a major role in the his­tory of Green­bank Farm. Begin­ning as a dairy, then trans­form­ing into the largest logan­berry farm in the coun­try, the role has shifted yet again, but agri­cul­ture remains a vibrant part of our iden­tity today.

While you’re at the Farm, you’ll see a small rem­nant of the logan­berry oper­a­tion, but you’ll also see four dif­fer­ent scales of agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion – All organ­i­cally certified!

• Ag Train­ing Cen­ter
• P-Patch 
• Mar­ket Gar­dens
• Live­stock Pas­tures

Produce from the Training Center goes to farmers markets, local restaurants, food banks - even the hospital.

The Ag Train­ing Cen­ter Field - this area is reserved for stu­dents enrolled in either the experiential/academic pro­gram or the farm­ing incu­ba­tor pro­gram. What you’ll see are pri­mar­ily row crops. The pro­duce has var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions, how­ever. Some goes to Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Agri­cul­ture (CSA)share­hold­ers, some to farm­ers mar­kets, some goes directly to retail out­lets like the Star Store or the Goose, some goes inten­tion­ally to seed (seed is itself a cash crop), to local food banks, or is grown for exper­i­men­tal pur­poses. Through the use of these dif­fer­ent mar­kets, our stu­dents learn about dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­els. For more infor­ma­tion about the Ag Train­ing Cen­ter, click here.

P-Patch – to quote the Seat­tle P-Patch pro­gram (Seat­tle is where the first such endeavor was launched!) a P-Patch is “a place to share love of gar­den­ing, cul­ti­vate friend­ships, strengthen a sense of place, increase self-reliance, wildlife habi­tat, fos­ter envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, relieve hunger, improve nutri­tion, and enjoy recre­ational and ther­a­peu­tic oppor­tu­ni­ties.” Our plots are fenced, and have soils amended over time by pre­vi­ous p-patchers. There are cur­rently 6 (out of 26) plots avail­able for indi­vid­u­als to rent for per­sonal food pro­duc­tion. For more info, con­tact us at operations@greenbankfarm.com

Mar­ket Gar­dens – these are areas avail­able for lease by those want­ing to grow in larger quan­ti­ties to sell at local farm­ers mar­kets. For more infor­ma­tion on these oppor­tu­ni­ties, con­tact operations@greenbankfarm.com

Just like the Farm, the Fergi is historic but still does its job well.

Live­stock Pas­tures – these are fenced areas avail­able for lease for pas­tur­ing horses, alpacas, and other crit­ters. Live­stock own­ers are respon­si­ble for feed­ing and water­ing their ani­mals, and for mak­ing sure that fenc­ing is appro­pri­ate for the breeds being pas­tured.  Use is rotated through­out the year to fol­low best man­age­ment prac­tices for pas­ture health and water qual­ity. For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Michael@greenbankfarm.com