MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — An award-winning Monongalia County farm received some new equipment Tuesday.
The Mountain Harvest Farm, which was named the 2023 West Virginia Conservation Farm of the Year, welcomed a new John Deere tractor in a Tuesday ceremony.
Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture were on hand Tuesday to tour the farm.
Mountain Harvest is located on the grounds of the Owl Creek Farm on Goshen Road and is operated by Mary Oldham and Chico Ramirez. Oldham and Ramirez rent the ground from the Yoder family and have been in operation and growing for about the last 10 years.
“We use organic practices and we grow about 30 to 40 vegetable crops and a few fruit crops like strawberries and melons,” Oldham said.
The natural process includes rotating crops from year to year to preserve the fertility of the soil, contour farming, no-till farming and water conservation methods like drip irrigation. When it comes to additives to the process, they all must be natural.
“Drip irrigation, so it waters the plants in small tubes really close to the roots of the plants instead of spraying water from above, which results in a lot of evaporation and water waste,” Oldham said.
As part of farm management, the couple uses cover crops like buckwheat or rye to keep ground covered in between crops. The practice keeps the soil in place and improves the capacity to hold moisture and nutrients.
“What we see sometimes is that when it’s been dry for awhile and we get a heavy rain, we’ll get a lot of heavy water washing through and eroding things,” Oldham said.
The farm can also host groups or organizations to look at the operation and understand their approach to food production. Products produced on the farm are regularly available at local farm markets and stands.
“We have a couple of community days here where people come for tours, and I also do smaller group tours for homeschool, preschool, or school groups,” Oldham said. “We teach them what we do and how we do it here.”
Mountain Harvest also offers a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program where people pay a pre-season fee in exchange for weekly or bi-weekly boxes of vegetables from the farm during the season. Through the website, customers can select what they want, decline what they don’t like, and have access to recipes and cooking ideas.
“I think what keeps people coming back to buy from our farm and other local farms more than anything is the quality and freshness they get because it’s usually picked possibly that morning or even up to a week before,” Oldham said.
In addition to the use of the tractor from Middletown Tractor Sales of Fairmont for three months, or 200 hours, Oldham and Ramirez also received a check for $1,000.