On October 6th we visited Fifer’s, which was a super educational and fun trip.  It was crazy to learn just how large and in depth their production was; they farm over 3,000 acres of land, harvest multiple crops for all three growing seasons, and manage to do so as one large family unit.  Some of the crops the Fifer family grows includes pumpkins, apples, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, tomatoes, cauliflower, and sweet corn. All of these products are then sold to grocery stores, farm stands, or in the store they have on their property that they also have fall festivals at.  Fifer’s is a conventionally run farm that uses multiple forms of irrigation and growing methods. They have conventional fields as well as high tunnels; they grow their tomato plants out of the tunnels using drip irrigation.  We learned that their crop yield and success heavily depends on crop rotation, and a lot of time goes into deciding where to put everything each year.  We also had the opportunity to see some of the farm hands implanting some strawberry crops from the back of a tractor, which was super neat to see.  We got the chance to speak to two of the Fifer brothers, both of whom handle totally different ends of the business, so we got to learn about the actual farming end as well as the food safety and handling end as well. All in all, this trip was super neat, and we got to go home with lots of goodies (albeit the trip home was a little longer than anticipated).