The town hosted a ribbon cutting for Full Well Farm on Halloween to celebrate the opening of its new "climate battery" greenhouse. "We're super grateful to be farming in Adams and have the chance to celebrate with the town," said Meg Bantle, the farm's co-founder.
Bantle and Laura Tupper-Palches founded the East Road farm in 2018 and currently manage three-quarters of an acre of permanent, no-till beds. The new greenhouse, which uses the thermal mass of the soil below ground for heating and cooling, was funded via grants and loans by the state, Berkshire Agricultural Ventures, and the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service.
"The greenhouse was a long time coming. We had been anticipating it for well over a year by the time we got the funding all together," Tupper-Palches said. "There were a lot of pieces that came together to make it happen. And now we'll be able to go produce year-round."
The project, Bantle, and Tupper-Palches explained will allow the farm to use less propane in the winter when growing cool-weather crops like greens and kale. Currently, the greenhouse is growing spinach, radishes, hakurei turnips, and kale.
"The fans push air down through tubes that go under the ground, and the heat is stored in the ground under there, which is why it's called a climate battery; the storage battery is the ground," Tupper-Palches said. "And then when it's cold, we can draw the air back up as warm air."
Read the complete article at www.iberkshires.com.