(Morrisville, NY – Jan. 2014) The “Buy Local” phenomenon has been great for businesses like GandM Farms in Morrisville. Ginger Scoville, who manages the farm’s day-to-day activities, works with her husband Mike and their family to plan, plant, grow, harvest and market naturally grown vegetables and raise chickens for eggs. She also prepares and sells a variety of hot sauces, salsas, and all kinds of jams and jellies with her own GandM Farm label. Theirs is the quintessential small farm, selling produce along with an assortment of value-added products.
Ginger is a familiar face at the Hamilton and Clinton Farmers Markets, as well as at the Winter Markets in Poolville, Cazenovia, Hamilton, and Morrisville. But as her customer base grew, she ran into problems storing produce for short and extended periods of time. Even the extra refrigerator and freezer in their garage couldn’t maintain the kind of environment needed, much less extend the shelf-life of the produce to be sold.
Add to that, the Scoville’s temporary root cellar in the basement, which consisted of bins of dirt and sand. It left much to be desired in preserving the carrot crop, in particular. And the trips up and down stairs grew very tiresome.
Luckily, a grant program launched statewide by Cornell Cooperative Extension and funded through New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets came to Ginger’s attention. As the grant program’s name indicates – “Increasing Cooling Space for Small Farms” – it was exactly what Ginger needed. So she applied and was one of 65 New York farmers awarded funding.
Her cooler is 6’ wide and 8’ deep. Its spray foam insulation is 6 inches thick throughout, so fluctuations in temperature and humidity will be a thing of the past. A wireless remote system constantly records the temperature and humidity, so it can be monitored without even entering the cooler. And when Ginger is away from the farm, all she has to do is call into the unit to check on its status. A great example of “Cool” technology at its best.
She estimates that cooler will not only extend the farm’s storage capacity, but will also give her more time to harvest and clean produce, reduce losses, and eliminate those tiresome trips to the basement.