Bigfork Eagle News: Julian Cunningham started Swallow Crest Farm in 1999, a few years after moving his family to this scenic area on LaBrant Road. He taught a preschool for three years before deciding his heart was in farming -- and he wanted to grow the healthiest food possible.
Local wildlife helps him control pests, for instance. He’s put up 40 “swallow houses” to attract swallows and bluebirds, which eat almost all the insect pests that might threaten the three gardens full of vegetables and berries. Hundreds of swallows swoop through the air overhead, fearless of the humans in their midst.
“We have no mosquitoes,” Cunningham said as the birds flitted around, catching insect prey.
The fertile Creston soil is “as good as it gets” for raising produce, he said. To lengthen the growing season, he starts his cool-season crops in greenhouses and “hoop houses” that look like mini-greenhouses made of white plastic sheets draped over half-circles of plastic piping anchored in the soil. Hoop houses allow Cunningham to plant directly in the soil while providing the protection of a greenhouse.
Indeed, the hoop houses are full of mature mixed lettuces, arugula and other salad greens by early May. These are the first crops that will be delivered to more than 100 families who subscribe to the bounty of Cunningham’s farm. He and Kip Drobisch of Raven Ridge Farm in Kalispell are partners in a “community-supported agriculture,” or CSA, enterprise.
In a CSA arrangement, families and individuals pay a fee at the beginning of the growing season. Each week they receive a box full of locally grown produce harvested within hours of delivery. Deliveries start in mid-May and continue through October. Cunningham delivers in Bigfork, Lakeside, Polson and Kalispell. Most customers come to a central location to pick up their “shares.”
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Posted by: rhonda pena at June 14, 2008 4:27 PM
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