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Dear generous donors,
We can't thank you enough to contributing to our Buy a Bush campaign! In these challenging times, it's a heart-warming reminder that we are still a thriving community. Thanks to this fundraiser, we are able to develop our mushroom cultivation plans and are aiming for an early-March inoculation of four mushroom varieties. In addition to the plants put in the ground this fall, we will be carefully considering our forest garden to strategically decide what - and where - we will introduce new fruit, nut, berry, and herb plants to the landscape. We look forward to sharing our progress with you as we launch into an exciting spring season! And we wish you warmth and health over the winter holidays.
With gratitude and best wishes,
Terri Kempton
Outback Farm Manager
Happy November, friends of the Outback! I hope this season finds you warm and well.
Thanks to your generous support, our students were able to purchase and plant a demo garden full of berry shrubs (blueberry, huckleberry, and red goumi), hardy herbs, and perennial flowers. The bare dirt you see in between the perennials has been planted in red clover as a cover crop - this will protect the ground from erosion during the rainy months and build up the nutrient content in the soil for a more productive spring. This garden is located in a central area by the toolshed and hot house where we often teach classes, and will showcase what permaculture calls "guild" planting. Guilds are a collection of plants that benefit each other as they grow, like a form of companion planting that focuses around a central fruit bush or tree. One plant in the group may repel pests; a different plant may shade the soil to retain moisture; another might fix nitrogen for free fertilizer. Together, they work in partnership to form a flourishing and sustainable garden.
We appreciate all the donations that have come together for this special fundraiser. Please feel free to share this opportunity with friends and family as we prepare to wrap things up on November 5!
With gratitude and best wishes,
Terri Kempton
Outback Farm Manager
Hello friends of the Outback Farm,
Thank you again for your support of the Buy a Bush fundraiser! Because of your generous help, we are already starting to partner with local nurseries to bring new berry, herb, fruit, and nut trees to the forest garden. Together we're creating a dynamic, abundant, engaging, and educational space for WWU students and visitors.
This fall, behind the scenes, we have a team of students researching the best ways to grow mushrooms. The Outback has a wonderful ecosystem for mushroom production - and students, many of whom eat plant-based diets - are eager to have access to this healthy food source. We've already found logs and sticks covered in Turkey Tail mushrooms, experimented with inoculating a log with oyster mushroom, and have found more than 4 dozen varieties of non-culinary fungus (courtesy of the Fairhaven College mycology class). One of the goals of this fundraiser is to help us build out a mushroom cultivation system, including logs, wood chips, and the spores to inoculate them. I remain grateful for your support and look forward to adding this important diversity to the farm!
With best wishes,
Terri Kempton
Outback Farm Manager
Happy fall from the Outback Farm!
Thank you so much for joining our fall Buy a Bush fundraiser. It's been astounding to see so many people step forward to support our work to create a more productive, beautiful forest garden on the farm. Anyone who likes to garden knows how fun it is to get lost in a great plant nursery...and how expensive that final bill can be! With your help, not only can we improve our systems for cultivating herbs, flowers, fruits, nuts, and berries - but we will be able to clearly demonstrate the abundance, sustainability, and resilience of a food forest to students and visitors.
The $10 donation level empowers us to purchase a quality perennial groundcover, flower, or herb. These small but mighty plants often have more than one benefit. Low shrubs like rosemary and sage provide continual harvests for cooking and tea; their flowers feed pollinators; and in winter, the roots hold the soil in place. We all love nasturtiums for their bright color throughout the summer. They create tasty, peppery flowers, and their seeds can even be pickled to taste like capers! But these plants also "fix" nitrogen from the atmosphere to provide free fertilizer to the plants around them.
We can't wait to introduce more of these perennials to the Farm! Thank you so much for your support, and for being part of the Outback community.
With best wishes of the harvest season,
Terri Kempton, Outback Farm Manager
We need a lot of plant cover to block out weeds, retain soil, attract pollinators, and provide habitat for native birds and insects. Perennial plants like rosemary, sage, thyme, echinacea, agrimony, and sedum will help create a productive, and beautiful, forest garden.
The Outback has an ideal climate for growing berries, and we’d like to cultivate tasty fruit like blueberries, raspberries, huckleberries along with native plants like salmon berry and thimbleberry. We would like to offer lesser-known varieties too, like goumi and autumn olive.
We’ve identified areas for adding fruit and nut trees to the food forest. Some common fruits like plum, apple, and pear will be joined by special trees like quince, shipova, and cold-hearty fig. Filberts and chestnuts help bring in protein sources and diversify the forest.
In permaculture terms, a “guild” is a group of plants intentionally grown together in a way that benefits them all. It’s like companion planting on a larger scale! It’s common to have a guild around a tree with plants performing different roles, like a pest repeller, a nitrogen fixer, a ground cover, a pollinator attractor, etc. At this donation level, we would be able to cultivate an entire family of plants.
All this work requires tools! At this level of support, we would be able to acquire important tools to facilitate our planting and maintenance – including shovels, loppers, snips, and a new wheelbarrow.
An exciting new development on the farm is preparing space for the inoculation of a mushroom cultivation garden. Mushrooms are luscious, nutritious, and fascinating to grow. They’re also in high demand from students facing food insecurity, and we believe we can provide a seasonal supply of a variety of mushrooms – but we need to purchase growth medium, spores for inoculation, and containers for harvest and distribution.
Are you able to support the farm in a larger way? We’d love your support to convert two hillsides into productive, attractive, and regenerative forest gardens! One hill is hot and dry, allowing us to explore plants that might thrive in a more Mediterranean climate like Artemisia and fig. The other needs multiple guilds and berry patches.
