MONROE - Bountiful Hope Farms, a nonprofit farm that donates the produce it grows to area food pantries, is always experimenting. But experimentation is costly and planting and growing the produce comes with the aggregated cost of labor, irrigation and general upkeep.
Volunteer workers help mitigate the labor cost, and now a grant awarded to the Bountiful Hope endeavor by the FruitGuys Community Fund will help offset some of the other costs.
Melissa Burch, Bountiful Hope co-founder and director, applied for the grant in February at the insistence of a friend. Burch said she will use the $2,750 grant to set up drip irrigation around the produce, which includes rutabagas, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash, basil, turnips, spinach, bell peppers, pumpkins, peas, beans, and a few rows of flowers for color.
Burch said all the produce grown is donated. She and her husband Gary started the farm about six years ago, and they have grown annually to where they can harvest about 2,500 pounds of produce to donate.
The grant will afford new fans and raised plots in the farm's new "hoop house," where Burch planted broccoli, kale and lettuce. The green house gets very warm in the summer so the fans will keep the vegetables from drying out and dying.
Just outside of the green house is her favorite spot to view the farm.
"From here it looks like we know what we're doing," she said.
"It almost looks like our rows are even," her husband added.
Burch said she will also use part of the grant money on outreach in the form of brochures and literature to bring around the community. She has plans of putting up a banner at the farm to make it more visible.
Burch has a list of goals going forward, including getting other communities to start their own farms, but time is always an issue. She and her husband are out at the farm almost every evening and get about 50 different volunteers each year. Burch said she only wishes she could get things done with limited time like television's Jack Bauer from the show "24."
"I was thinking how it took me an hour just to clean out the tiller," she said. "He (Bauer) saves the world in an hour and I spend it all on a tiller."
Volunteer workers help mitigate the labor cost, and now a grant awarded to the Bountiful Hope endeavor by the FruitGuys Community Fund will help offset some of the other costs.
Melissa Burch, Bountiful Hope co-founder and director, applied for the grant in February at the insistence of a friend. Burch said she will use the $2,750 grant to set up drip irrigation around the produce, which includes rutabagas, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash, basil, turnips, spinach, bell peppers, pumpkins, peas, beans, and a few rows of flowers for color.
Burch said all the produce grown is donated. She and her husband Gary started the farm about six years ago, and they have grown annually to where they can harvest about 2,500 pounds of produce to donate.
The grant will afford new fans and raised plots in the farm's new "hoop house," where Burch planted broccoli, kale and lettuce. The green house gets very warm in the summer so the fans will keep the vegetables from drying out and dying.
Just outside of the green house is her favorite spot to view the farm.
"From here it looks like we know what we're doing," she said.
"It almost looks like our rows are even," her husband added.
Burch said she will also use part of the grant money on outreach in the form of brochures and literature to bring around the community. She has plans of putting up a banner at the farm to make it more visible.
Burch has a list of goals going forward, including getting other communities to start their own farms, but time is always an issue. She and her husband are out at the farm almost every evening and get about 50 different volunteers each year. Burch said she only wishes she could get things done with limited time like television's Jack Bauer from the show "24."
"I was thinking how it took me an hour just to clean out the tiller," she said. "He (Bauer) saves the world in an hour and I spend it all on a tiller."