Collin Thompson manages Michigan State University’s North Farm near the village of Chatham in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The North Farm hosts a two-year residential incubator program in the extremely short season of the Northwoods, with their last frost in the first week of June, and the first frost right about now, in the second week of September. We talk about the ins and outs of running a market farm as part of the University, practical successes for overwintering crops in high and low tunnels for early spring production, and ways Collin has worked with and around the 190 inches of annual snowfall in Chatham. We also had a chance to get into the culture of root cellaring in the north, and I had a chance to take a nice rant about food safety and barrel washers.
The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.