The propagation greenhouse or prop house is a warm, sunny place for seeds to germinate and grow until they are ready to be transplanted into the field! I will start my seeds in plug trays:

The majority of the prop house was built from reused materials! We decided to build it off one side of the barn, so we only had to construct three walls!

The city greenhouse my dad made for me became the corners and middle of the prop house.

Removing walls in the barn left us with a pile of plywood and 2 x 6 boards that made up the rest of the prop house frame and walls!Horse stall pads are now the prop house floor. They are super heavy!

Both end walls have sliding glass doors and the triangle above the door pops out for ventilation

Now the tables have been added and I am ready to start seeds!!

A huge THANK YOU to my dad for all his planning, material scavenging and work!!

Thank you to our friend, Satch, for his help constructing the tables!

Meet my new tractor! My barn was set up for horses. I took down a wall between two stalls to make one big stall. Now my tractor has a nice place to spend its down time!

As a bonus, the wall turned out to be made of sturdy 2″ x 6″ boards…which my dad converted into the frame of my propagation house!

I just sent in my business license application and registered a domain name! I am so excited to start a small farm! So far, it has been a blast to watch the farm grow and transform from a place where horses lived to a place where food will grow. I have ended up in a place that I never imagined for myself and I am so thankful for all your support in this journey! I thought for my very first blog post I would recap how I got here!

After completing my Masters in Social Work, I took a job working for the State of Washington in child welfare policy. I was quickly promoted and doing well, but the job was emotionally very hard on me. In addition to the difficult work, I found it challenging to sit at a desk all day long. I grew up on a Christmas Tree Farm in Arlington, WA and ate many meals from our family garden. I missed working with my hands and doing work that I could see concrete results from. I began spending all my free time gardening and raising chickens in the backyard of my house in Ballard. To better understand plants and growing food, I absorbed all the information I could from classes offered by Seattle Tilth and the Horticulture program at Edmonds Community College.

After seven years of working for the state, I took a job with a residential landscape company. Although I really enjoyed the work and was thrilled to be outside, I decided that I was really passionate about growing food. I wanted my next job to be related to urban farming in Seattle and felt that spending a full season as a farm intern would give me the experience I needed to get that job. I moved into a cozy cabin on Hogsback Farm on Vashon Island and spent the season immersed in a small scale farm. As I completed my farm internship on Vashon Island, it became clear that I needed to keep farming and was ready to move out of the city! I was curious about larger scale farming and interested in living north of Seattle, so I sold my house and moved to Whatcom County where I completed a second full season farm internship at Cloud Mountain Farm Center.

After much thought and discussion about what I wanted my next steps to be, I decided to look for some land to start my own farm. My dad helped me find a beautiful piece of property on Camano Island. It fit perfectly my visions of starting my own farm and I look forward to becoming a part of the community here!

Check back to see my progress and for updates on my farm stand that will open Spring 2015!