In early December 2024, I was so, so, so freaking thrilled & honored to open my email to find that Schul Farmstead had been selected for one of 102 grants from the For Farmers Movement.
There were hundreds of applications & my project was funded. I couldn’t believe it!
So what is For Farmers Movement & what’s the grant going to do for Schul Farmstead?!
Read on to find out why I’m so excited that we received a For Farmers Movement Grant.
For Farmers Movement
For Farmers Movement is a website, media, and movement founded by Dana DiPrima.
The goal is to help farmers “be seen, understood, supported, and more central to the answers” of
- What’s for dinner?
- What can we do to save the earth?
- What can we do to make our communities more economically viable?
From a farmer’s perspective, I see the For Farmers Movement as an ally – someone who toggles the hat of the consumer and the hat of the farmer in their hands – and can speak the language of the consumer back to them to help understand that their “small” actions have big impacts.
(Buying from & supporting local farms is no “small” thing. It’s one of the most important things you can do in your day-to-day.)
I also love their campaign of encouraging folks to donate $1 to their For Farmers Movement Grants.
That’s easy. That’s accessible. And it’s a tax deductible donation.
And that’s exactly how we received our grant of $500 – through small donations that will make an impact on our farm.
Purpose of the Grant
The For Farmers Movement Grant will off-set costs of building a seedling nursery hoop house.
Once it’s finished being built this spring, it will increase the protected growing space available to start heirloom variety vegetable, herb, and flower seedlings for the farm and our seedling sale at the farmers market.
As seedlings are sold during the May Seedling Sale & transplanted into the field after the last frost, it will transition to a curing space for our storage onions, garlic, and winter squash.
I might even use the space as a wash area for my salad greens for November and December farmers markets…since washing, drying, & packing veggies in a 33*F degree garage in Western New York isn’t as fun as it sounds.
>>> Related: Join our Seedling Sale Pre-Order List
Why this Grant Matters
In 2024, I started the season with about an acre in production and planned a garden seedling sale.
I started more than 10,000 seedlings under grow lights in the basement of my house, 11 miles from the farm.
I quickly found that scaling up from the previous year put a huge strain on what I could start & grow beneath the grow lights.
In March, on warm days, in previous seasons, I was placing trays of hardy onions and kale out on my back porch, to be brought in at night before the temperature dropped to freezing.
However, this past March was much colder than average and there was about a 3 week span where there was not a day above 50 degrees, where I could take advantage of the spring sun to help the seedlings grow.
Adding this hoop house as a seedling nursery will add about 360 square feet of growing space vs. my current 168 square feet – more than doubling the space I’ll have available to start and grow seedlings for my farm and for the garden seedling sale.
Having this seedling nursery hoop house will be an immense time saver for this one person operation.
Moving plants from my basement for the day and then bringing them back in at night for 6-8 weeks in March and April, takes 1.5-2 hours each day.
Knowing the plants would be at a safe temperature in the nursery would give me more time to devote to other tasks around the farm and provide peace of mind.
>>> Related: Heirloom Seeds: Their Stories & Significance
The Impact of the Grant
I realize some folks will see $500 as a drop in the bucket, especially in a small-scale farming operation.
And when you look up how much a hoop house or other farm equipment costs, you’ll likely really have that reaction too.
But I choose to apply & feel so grateful to chosen as a recipient for this grant because to me it’s affirmed:
- other folks recognize the hard work it takes to operate a farm that feeds its community (especially, Rachel of Three Little Hens Baking Company who originally nominated me & the members of the grant review committee who chose my application from a pile of 900)
- that growing my farm at a scaleable pace might not be the most sexy, but it’s working
- telling my story as a farmer, even if its vastly different from those who receive media & social media notoriety, is the work & I should continue to do it
- $500 can be season-improving on a farm – ex: at the end of 2023, I purchased a greens cutter for my salad mixes (which was a $750 purchase). In 2024, I was able to double the production, harvesting, & sales of my mixes because of that purchase. A $500 grant would have nearly covered the entire expense of that piece of equipment that accounts for about 30% of my business.
Connection to the Farm’s Past
You might recall that the land I farm has been a farm since the early 1800s.
My grandfather purchased the farm in the 1950s and turned it into a small dairy operation that he and my dad ran until the mid-1990s.
The area where the hoop house will sit was a small barn that my grandpa built in the 1960s. It housed calves and horses in it’s 20 feet of stanchions.
When I was a kid I don’t recall there ever being animals in the barn, but it was a place that I would explore in the summers and while dad was milking in the evenings. I even remember finding a piece of concrete in the gutter where there was an imprint of my dad’s kid-sized hand from when my grandpa laid the foundation.
This fall my dad cleared the space with his tractor, leveling out the ground and removing debris left from when the barn collapsed years ago.
In early December we started building the hoop house as weather was still mild and the day-to-day tasks of the farm were slower than in the wild sprint that is April to October.
>>> Related: My Journey to Farming
Needless to say, I’m very excited about building this hoop house & seeing the lush life of seedlings in the new space this spring.
I’m very thankful for For Farmers Movement, my friend Rachel for the nomination, and for my dad, brothers, and husband who are helping me erect this new piece of infrastructure for my farm.
Want to keep reading more about my farm?
Schul Farmstead 