As winter wears on, fewer and fewer vendors have been selling their wares at Signal Mountain Farmers Market. Yet Fall Creek Farms continues to offer fresh vegetables year-round.
Farm owner Dana Bleasdale said the secret to her and her husband’s continued production is low-tech protection of plants.
“We want to encourage other farmers market vendors and gardeners to do this,” she said.
Her husband Brad said they got started on the method after reading several books by Eliot Coleman: “Four Season Harvest” and “The Winter Harvest Handbook.”
“There’s a cultural norm that you can’t grow in winter. We figured if [Coleman] could do it in Maine, we could do it here,” Brad Bleasdale said of farming year-round.