Sowers Market offers home delivery of local produce | Centre County Gazette | StateCollege.com

2022-06-24 23:29:08 By : Mr. Victor He

403 S. Allen St. State College, PA 16801 (814) 238-5051

HOUSERVILLE — Houserville now has its own Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. Sowers Market supplies locally grown vegetables and greens to Sowers Harvest Café in State College.

Also, since May 2021, it has offered CSA subscriptions to the public for weekly or biweekly deliveries of vegetables and fruit.

“When we say it’s local, it’s truly local,” said general manager Joel Martin. “Sowers Market hopes to expand to sell other farm-totable foods besides vegetables and fruit in the near future, but we’re starting out with farm-fresh produce for now.”

“Part of our mission is to support other local growers,” said Hector Troyer, the farmer for Sowers Market. “Most farmers hate marketing. There’s a lot of growers in the area growing really nice stuff, but they have difficulty connecting with those who want to buy their produce.

“Everything we’re selling that we didn’t raise ourselves is from local farmers, mostly in Spring Mills, Belleville and Logantown,” Troyer continued.

Martin said the local farmers must meet Sowers Market’s criteria of being local, pesticide-free and grown in a healthy and organic manner. Farmers don’t have to be certified organic. Most of the CSA’s produce is grown on the 10-acre Sowers Market farm in Houserville using sustainable methods and non-conventional pesticides.

“Low-till, no-till is a big advance in agriculture,” Troyer said. “Less weeds grow and it improves soil health. We’re doing wide beds and using tarps to kill weeds. We do flame weeding using a torch machine and can see the weeds wilt. Mulching is pretty effective. Then you can plant into that.”

Electric fences around the fields keep out deer, rabbits and groundhogs. Troyer plants many crops in caterpillar tunnels, which have arched metal supports covered with white plastic sheeting.

“The tunnels are a huge tool to getting nice crops and make a huge difference with blight in tomatoes,” said Troyer. “You can see the blight moving in from the ends. The middle doesn’t usually get blight bad.”

If his other methods aren’t enough to ward off insects, he uses pest control chemicals that have OMRI listed organic certification. He said the cost is often much more than conventional pesticides.

Troyer uses drip irrigation and fertilizes the crops with alfalfa pellets, blood meal, lime and OMRI certified pelleted chicken manure. He plants seeds with a Jang seeder from Japan that has different settings for different size seeds. It spaces the seeds far enough apart that he doesn’t have to thin the seedlings.

His crops include greens, lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, tomatoes, spring onions, zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers and strawberries. This year, he’s adding cantaloupes and watermelons. He buys blueberries, asparagus and other crops from farmers for the CSA.

“We don’t intend to pursue organic certification,” he said. “We would need to have all our growers certified. Most of our customers want organic produce but don’t care about certification.”

Sowers Market is overseen by Sustainable Agricultural Solutions.

Martin said, “Sustainable Ag Solutions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and has been for about a year now. This is the parent company with a vision to do fair trade, local food and farm-to-table food.”

“The organization has a mission to transfer knowledge and look for solutions for agriculture that are sustainable for developing countries,” Troyer said. “We’re interested in how sustainable agriculture can help displaced people.”

Martin said that next month, Sustainable Agricultural Solutions (SAS) will start its first international project to help a group of Mayangna Indians from Nicaragua who have been forcibly displaced into Honduras. They have excellent agricultural skills, but no farmland or means to support themselves. SAS will work with them and other similar indigenous groups to seek a solution that allows them to sustain themselves with farming and fair trade.

“This will mean helping them create a market where they can receive appropriate compensation for their labor,” said Martin. SAS has already worked to help these Mayangna families secure a small tract of land and plans to send a team of three consultants in July to help them get the project started.

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