Every year there are new things happening on the farm, as I’ve grown it from 1/4 acre to nearly 1.5 acres of growing space.
I try new crop varieties, I try new markets, etc. as I find out what works for customers & for me as a, mostly, one-woman show.
Below is my round up of 6 new things that happened on my farm in 2025.
(If you want to see 2024’s round up, use this link)
Expanded the Farm’s Class Offerings
Last year, I dipped my toes into offering & hosting classes when I collaborated with Jess Senek for the Autumn Equinox 2024 class.
In 2025, I expanded the farm’s class offerings to….wait for it….. 14 classes!
From teaching folks how to build a bouquet like a florist to designing with dried flowers to creating holiday evergreen decor, I taught & hosted 14 classes across Western New York.
And unlike some other classes, all of the materials used were grown on my farm or locally-foraged.
That means 100% spray-free products!
I’m so grateful to the small businesses who opened their space & collaborated with me:
🍻 Wandering Gypsy Brewing Company
🪴 The Plant Shack by H.Co
📚 Wilson Community Library
🧘🏻♀️ Senek Botanicals
🎄Shawnee Country Barns Antique Co-Op
📚 Lewiston-Porter Community Education
🎄 Youngstown Yacht Club
Built a Hoop House for Seedlings
In late 2024, I applied & received a $500 grant from the For Farmers Movement to help off-set a part of the cost of building a small hoop house to serve as a nursery for the farm’s seedlings.
After investing almost $6,000 & plenty of hours between myself, my dad, my brothers, & my husband, a 20 foot x 20 foot hoop house was erected in between snowfalls & frozen temperatures from the end of 2024 to March 2025.
Once built, I added sand to level the ground (it’s on the foundation of an old horse & calf barn my grandpa built in the 60s) & built tables for seedlings to sit on.
This year I grew seedlings in the hoop house for both the farm & my garden seedling sale.
I also cured (a drying process) this season’s garlic & storage onion crops in the space too.
My goal is to find uses for the space year-round, especially since it serves as a nice wind blocker & can get quite cozy on a sunny winter day.
Microgreen Expansion
This year I quite literally grew more.
I started experimenting with microgreens in 2023 as a way to add more variety to my farm’s traditional, weekly CSA shares and took some bags of microgreens to the market in 2024.
This year, not only did I grow more microgreens, I actually bought another farmer’s microgreen business.
Savannah of Wilder Greens in Lockport, NY was selling her microgreen business & equipment as she transitioned full time into massage. So I reached out to see what equipment she was selling.
Not only did I end up purchasing her equipment & grow-room set up, I ended up with a weekly wholesale agreement for sunflower microgreens with Craft Coffee House in Pendleton, NY.
Built a 88′-Long Tunnel for Season Extension
Originally my plan for 2025 was to apply for an NRCS grant with the USDA to purchase & build a 30’x96′ hoop house.
Last summer my dad had started to clear away the brush, tree stumps, & overgrowth from the area we thought would be best suited & protected for a real hoop house to extend the growing season on the farm.
However with all of the changes & cancelled contracts at the USDA that took place in early 2025, I was very, very hesitant to purchase a $20,000 hoop house without a guarantee that the money would be reimbursed by the USDA contract.
So my plan was to hold off, again.
But then in late March 2025, my farmer friend Erin of Root Down Farm reached out asking if I’d like one of their caterpillar tunnels.
The answer: a resounding, zero hesitation YES!
On a rainy, chilly evening in early April, I rounded up my “infrastructure crew” (aka: my dad, my brothers, and my husband) to take down the tunnel at Root Down Farm & bring it back to my farm.
I am so, so, so grateful to Erin & Steve for offering this tunnel!
And then, my dad’s friend had a 14’x20′ tunnel that he was also looking to off-load.
The hoops from the two tunnels were almost identical, so they were added to one another to build a 14’x88′ caterpillar tunnel.
By September the tunnel was up & we found a nearly windless day to wrap the greenhouse plastic film over the aluminum structure.
About a week later, I transplanted spinach, bibb lettuce, kale, & radicchio & seeded spinach, lettuce, arugula, mustard, & Asian spinach inside on a rainy day.
Although the greens inside this unheated hoop house didn’t last all the way through the December farmers market dates because of the unseasonably colder December temperatures that reached 9F, I did learn a lot about growing in the tunnel throughout the fall that will help me in 2026 and beyond.
Added a Loose Leaf Herbal Tea Line
I love loose leaf herbal tea & ever since I had a garden I grew herbs that I could dry to make into herbal blends.
This year I started using certified organic New York State-grown herbs & pesticide-free herbs from my farm, to craft tea blends for when you need them.
A year in, I offer about 7 different blends that can be found at the farmers market & in my seasonal, online store in the winter & early spring.
I’m hoping to be able to offer the teas in a more year-round capacity at the farmers market & during the seasonal launches of the online store front.
Planted Fruit Trees & Bushes
While I’ve planted new fruit trees & berry bushes on the farm in previous years, this year I took it to another level.
I ordered 20 heirloom varieties of apple & pear trees from St. Lawrence Nursery to expand the “grove” of fruit trees that line the lane that goes down to the creek at the back of the farm.
My grandpa is probably rolling over in his grave, considering he ripped out acres of apple & pear trees that were originally on the farm when he was turning the space into cow pasture. Sorry!
I also added hazelnut bushes in hopes of being able to offer both spray-free English Walnuts & Hazelnuts in a few years at the farmers market.
And then I did a real flex – and planted close to 300 raspberry bushes – 5 varieties that should allow for berry harvests from late June to early October in a few years.
Fingers crossed in a few years (ok, like 5-7) there is a real bounty of spray-free fruit & nuts being grown on my farm.
I can’t wait to see what 2026 holds for my farm!
>>> Related: 5 New Things that Happened on the Farm in 2024
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Schul Farmstead 