By the end of September the students had completed the final harvest at the orchard site. During the last two classes of the month they harvested 1.2 metric tons of squash, potatoes, corn, carrots, and apples.
It felt like a substantial harvest after spending much of the summer working on the campus terraces. The terrace harvest was spread out over six months, peaking in July, when we collected 140 kg of produce.
The orchard harvest was over in two weeks, but was more than three times as large as all six months of campus harvests combined.
The difference was due to the fact that we had 1,000 square meters to work with at the orchard, but just 288 square meters on campus. The yield per square meter was the same at both sites.
Once the harvest was in, we spread manure from a horse farm located about 350 meters from the orchard site. Our manure spreader holds about 750 liters, and we emptied it every 35 meters. We fertilized the area where we harvested potatoes.
We seeded the harvested area to a winter cover crop mix of barley and crimson clover.
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