More than 25 people – from Bear Creek, Pa. to Australia – interested in organic farming and sustainable agriculture, attended a SPIN farming workshop at Wilkes University. It was the first workshop of its kind to be held on a college campus. SPIN stands for Small Plot INtensive farming and is a commercial organic-based farming system for land areas under an acre in size. It takes the challenges posed by urbanization and turns them into the farmer’s advantage by capitalizing on limited space and resources. Wilkes’ SPIN farm is located at the site of a recently-demolished building at the corner of South River and Ross Streets.

 

The participants established and built the farm including forming and shaping the beds, seeding and installing pathways, and planting natural insect repellants. Crops grown at the Wilkes site will include greens and herbs such as dill, cilantro, spinach, arugula and vegetables such as tomatoes.

 

In the future, the Wilkes plot will be a working farm for workshops and will be designated a national SPIN farming site. Many local markets and restaurants have expressed an interest in purchasing the crops grown on university land.

 

For more information on Wilkes University’s SPIN farm or future workshops, please contact Dr. Ellen Flint at Ellen.Flint@wilkes.edu.

 

The following story recently appeared in The Scranton Times.

 

Staff Writer

 

A small corner lot that once housed a delicatessen serving sandwiches, chips and soda will sprout up-from-the-roots food in a new educational experiment at Wilkes University.

“Urban farming is really becoming not just a trendy, nice thing to do, but it’s becoming a real significant way to address issues related to the environment, food safety and food security,” said Ellen Flint, Ph.D., an associate professor of music at Wilkes.

About 25 people turned out Monday and Tuesday for a workshop at Wilkes on an agricultural method customized to produce multiple annual harvests in confined areas.

“It’s a commercial farming system for subacre spaces,” said Roxanne Christensen, president of an organization that is a partner in Somerton Tanks Farm, a prototype urban farm in Philadelphia whose sales doubled to $52,000 in 2005 from its first growing season in 2003. “It is the sequential growing of crops in a bed, one right after another.”

Fenner Farm, the 2,200-square-foot plot at Ross and South River streets, will be a lab for the school that produces organic food for the community and self-sustaining income.

Wilkes coordinated the workshop with Ms. Christensen and Wally Satzewich and his wife, Gail Vandersteen, who farm urban spaces in Canada. All three teach the small-plot intensive method, called SPIN farming.

“We’ve just perfected our craft to make it work in cities,” said Ms. Vandersteen, of Saskatchewan, as her husband directed workshop participants while they planted rows of tomatoes, summer squash, chard, radishes and spinach. “People are dying to get to our retreats.”

Bob Thatcher didn’t give up his life, but traveled 10,000 miles to attend.

“The big lessons I’ve learned is to work smarter, and more intensive and sensible use of land resources,” said Mr. Thatcher, of Western Sydney, Australia.

Mr. Thatcher, an administrator for a community agency that works with refugees and immigrants, found out about SPIN farming on the Internet. He came to the workshop to help his clients start a community garden, feed themselves and possibly make a living.

“It gives you a lot of confidence going forward,” Mr. Thatcher said.

About a year ago, Wilkes administrators came up with the idea to convert the vacant former deli lot into an agricultural space.

“We will be able to use this farm on campus as kind of a laboratory,” said Dr. Flint. “We need to be aware for every convenience we enjoy, there is a cost involved.”

With SPIN farming, the costs could be outweighed greatly by potential financial benefits. Workshop organizers said some SPIN farmers generate sales of $50,000 annually from half-acre plots.

“It will depend on the market and what they are growing,” Ms. Vandersteen said. “You could literally live off your own backyard ... if you can get a niche market where there’s demand for exotic vegetables,”

Organizers predict Fenner Farm will record $10,000 to $15,000 in sales this year.

“We expect that the farm will become financially sustainable after this first growing season,” Dr. Flint said.

Some people who paid the $250 fee to attend the sessions see career-changing possibilities in the SPIN method.

“My wife and I both want to quit our jobs,” said Mike Gent, of Floyd, Va., who hopes to convert his organic gardening hobby into full-time work.

“We’re kind of on a three-year plan,” said Mr. Gent, 58, a crane operator. “It will take about two years to fix the beds the way I want them.”

Five Wilkes students will be paid through a grant to work at Fenner Farm seven days a week into November. Lee Rinehart, regional director of the National Center for Appropriate Technology, a nonprofit corporation that promotes sustainable agriculture and has an office in Shavertown, will oversee them.

“There’s a historical disconnect between food eaters and food growers,” Mr. Rinehart said. “We’re trying to raise that awareness.”

Awareness about Fenner Farm’s produce, though, isn’t lacking.

“We’ve had interest expressed by a number of market segments and we haven’t even hard our first harvest,” Dr. Flint said.

Interest also is expanding into vegetable production, reflecting soaring grocery prices and the growing popularity of locally produced foods.

“Farming had been regarded as a downwardly mobile profession,” Ms. Christensen said. “It’s starting to make sense to people that food production should be re-localized.”