{"id":6272,"date":"2016-10-20T13:57:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T17:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/?p=6272"},"modified":"2017-02-14T10:38:25","modified_gmt":"2017-02-14T15:38:25","slug":"alumni-spotlight-kyle-long-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/alumni-spotlight-kyle-long-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Spotlight: Kyle Long ’14"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After growing up in a farmhouse that dates back to the 1800s, Kyle Long had a connection to farming from childhood. Kyle was a student farmer at the college farm and then after graduation, was an apprentice for 6 months. After departing the Dickinson College Farm, Kyle realized he just couldn\u2019t shake the farming bug. <\/span><\/p>\n

Kyle has since started his own farm, called Bearfoot Farms, on his parent\u2019s land in the fall of 2015. The name was his mother\u2019s idea and is a combination of a play off of being barefoot, hippies, and her nickname for Kyle, \u201cbear\u201d. \u00a0The first thing planted on the farm was garlic in the fall of 2015, and production on the farm soon followed in March of 2016. Kyle\u2019s community has been very supportive. He currently runs a CSA that has 5 members and runs on a weekly basis; he has started out by trying to grow a little bit of everything, in order to get a feel of what he is really interested in. He has dabbled in melons, grains, corn, tomatoes, and many others this season. The farm has even put in some specialty crops such as Ostrich Ferns and some fruit trees. <\/span><\/p>\n

Next year Kyle hopes to scale it down a little bit by sticking with about 20 different crops, such as tomatoes, greens, radishes, carrots, beets, tomatillos, etc. He wants to focus on these crops as they are productive and popular, with a quicker turnover rate. The young farmer feels good about where he is right now, and reflecting on this year, feels as if it has been a very successful first year. The groundwork has been created and he is excited to see what next year\u2019s season brings. Goals for the future include being able to feed himself from his own land year round, to obtain livestock, and to continue to work on the forest that exists in the back of his property to provide pasture and to grow other specialty crops such as ramps, mushrooms and trees. <\/span><\/p>\n

We are so excited for Kyle and his farm! Keep up the good work Kyle. PIctured above is Kyle’s barn, painted by fellow Dickinson Alumna, Emily Lehman ’14.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  After growing up in a farmhouse that dates back to the 1800s, Kyle Long had a connection to farming from childhood. Kyle was a student farmer at the college farm and then after graduation, was an apprentice for 6… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87475,38258],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-spotlights","category-farm-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/845"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/farm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}