Harwill Farm

On Friday September 21, Norwell LEAF students had the opportunity to visit Harwill Farms, owned and operated by Luke Hartung and his wife Crystal. Both of them work off the farm at different jobs with Luke being the local Agronomist at North Wellington Co-op, and Crystal working at Listowel and Palmerston hospital’s. Harwill Farms is a cash crop as well as market garden that uses the CSA program meaning, Community Shared Agriculture on their 1 acre market garden as well as 3 acres of 7 different varieties of pumpkins. Luke and his wife carry a wide variety of vegetables spanning from carrots, swish chard, all the way to kale, for a grand total of 40 or so. Luke has an extensive knowledge of agriculture in soil and plant production and knows what plants need to be prosperous and it showed off this year with his excellent production of fruits and vegetables. It was sunny and dry in the month of July and he could use his irrigation system to water the plants when they needed it. Luke says “every successful season starts with a good plan” and he is right. Luke taught the LEAF students methods to weeding in all areas and situations and to have the most success you need to have the right tools. Luke took the LEAF students into the top level of their barn where he had skids and boxes full of pumpkins and squash and showed us the proper way to dry garlic. Luke was kind enough to allow each LEAF student to take home one pumpkin from his pumpkin patch since it was an incredible year for pumpkins and he had so many. Luke also touched upon crop diseases that impact the grading of the plants with diseases like Downy Mildew and Gibberella ear rot. Luke has helped LEAF students from the beginning to further our knowledge on plants and soil and many other parts of agriculture. For this we are  very thankful for his time, effort, and knowledge. We would like to thank Harwill Farms for allowing us to visit their farm and market garden and sharing their knowledge with us. We would like to wish them all the best in the future. Ian J