Scouting the next leg of the journey

"If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been." Sam

We've been blessed with some incredible outside community grant support that helped us develop the Growing A Future School Farm. However, such blessings cannot be relied upon alone for operational survival, let alone to complete the important goals with have for the Growing A Future Community. We went into this project knowing that the school district did not have the short or long-term funds to support a full-time school farm program and staff, and that we would need to find a way to cover operational costs until such a time in the future they could help.

As a small and rural community, there is limited opportunities for local business sponsorship. To adjust for this, we've created income generating programs to help offset our operational costs with CSA Box sales, Harvest Festival Events, and various fundraising program opportunities. With the maturing of our fruit trees and berries sections (now in year 3 of growth), we will be expanding the amount produced and the number of CSA boxes we can provide our community. We are also exploring the use of an additional 5 acres of unused school property to develop a year-round growing center (greenhouses) that will provide healthy food and for school lunch programs.

While the above will cover the costs of "The Shire" farm, we will need to secure additional funding support to continue the development of the Growing A Future Fellowship program. This will include the School Farm Toolbox program for current and future school farm development, the online School Farm Learning & Training Center operations, Box of Learning curriculum writers to cover the costs of creating and developing a shared curriculum for School Farm Fellowship members.