From a farmer to a community member: the farm grows!

Harvest Pierce County received some new funding this year that advanced our work of building out infrastructural needs at our farm sites – the Goss Incubator Farm and the Urban Farm Site. 

We received $68,000 from the WSDA Local Food Infrastructure Grant, and $75,000 from the Russell Family Foundation. This fiscal support has been used to install electricity at both sites, water infrastructure at the Urban Farm Site, and to purchase materials and equipment like three storage containers, three coolers, a riding lawn mower, shelves, bins, and a wash/pack station. These items have been requested by farmers and staff members, and will be of great benefit to the community using the farms.

We also hired a part-time seasonal assistant to help support farmers at these sites. We now support twelve farmers at the Goss Incubator Farm and two Urban farmers at the Urban farm site. This funding has helped transformed these spaces into productive small farms. One of the purchased coolers is also being used by our Gleaning Program and serving as a central distribution site for our Closed Loop Community program, which reduces food waste by harvesting fruit with pest and disease problems and passing it to value-added processors. We are grateful to our funding partners and look forward to building on these investments in future years as we continue to develop programming to support small farmers, reduce food waste and create a just and healthy food system that is accessible to all!