Case Western Reserve University's Squire Valleevue Farm has evolved from a facility for education, research and recreation to providing food to university dining facilities and the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
(Peggy Turbett, The Plain Dealer )
HUNTING VALLEY - Case Western Reserve University's Squire Valleevue Farm, which provides food for campus dining halls, is now making deliveries to the kitchens at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
It has mushrooms growing in a former root cellar and employees are planning a worm farm and will add fish to an aquaponic growing room of plants.
The university has owned the 277-acre farm since 1919 and later acquired a portion of Valley Ridge Farm across Fairmount Boulevard and a few small parcels.
The Farm Food Program was established in 2009 with the help of Bon Appetit, the food service at the college. Private donors helped build a greenhouse, which is used to grow plants for the four acres of growing space available. There's also a section of the property with berry bushes.
Christopher Bond, the farm’s horticulturalist, approached the zoo last fall about providing food.
“Animals, like humans, get diabetes and heart disease,” said Bond, in a university release. “They need to eat healthy.”
The zoo has placed a weekly order that includes 57 pounds of endive, 78 pounds of dandelion greens and 209 pounds of romaine lettuce. Bond plans to dedicate 20 acres to produce hay for the zoo’s grazers.
The farm’s original hillside root cellar is filled with a hanging garden to grow blue oyster and white pearl mushrooms. Slow-growing shitake mushrooms will also be cultivated throughout the year.
The mushrooms will be used on campus and sold this summer at the university’s weekly farmer’s market or to Community Supported Agriculture subscribers.
The worms will convert plant matter into rich compost and “a liquid tea” that leaches through the layers of soil to produce a nutrient-rich organic fertilizer for the farm.
Bond plans to introduce tilapia fish in the farm’s hydroponic growing system. The fish thrive on the plant material, and the plants benefit from the nutrients left by the fish. And as fish grow, they can be also be harvested as food.
While the farm is owned by the university, the food-producing program must raise money for its own projects.
It does that by growing and selling food to the school’s dining halls, to customers at its farmers markets, and by offering educational programs led by the staff.
Staff of the Farm Food Program started a Kickstarter campaign to raise $32,091 by Saturday to establish a pilot program to give five farm jobs to people who have difficulty getting to places where fresh produce is sold, or who have difficulty affording it.
The campaign ends Saturday afternoon and about $17,000 has been pledged. The program is explained on the Kickstarter website at kickstarter.com/projects/cwrufarm/farm-to-food-desert.