SSFS Farm Blog Oct. 2025: Overcoming A Little Adversity

By Francis Zell '00, SSFS Farmer Educator

Oct. 20, 2025

Community Day is pretty busy for the farmer at SSFS. I began preparing for it almost three weeks ago by stockpiling cardboard and creating piles of wood chips to be spread on our paths. One of the great things about SSFS—the large campus—is also one of its challenges. The area where the tree companies dump wood chips is quite far away from where the farm is, so all the wood chips have to be carted over with the tractor or a cart. I was feeling pretty good about the progress I’d made coming in Thursday morning before Friday’s Community Day.

But to my dismay, when I got on campus and checked the rows, I saw that a groundhog breached our large farm fence and definitely found our radishes. The kids worked really hard planting, thinning, weeding and caring for those radishes, and they were only a week or two away from harvest, so I decided to take immediate action! In the picture you can even see where he dragged his fat little belly across the ones he ate, just creating a path of radish destruction.

Maybe you will find this video of him trying to run away from me after gorging himself more entertaining than I did.

I rounded up some makeshift supplies, and the Farming for Fitness class helped me put together a temporary fence around the radishes, which will hopefully deter him. I don’t exactly see this guy as too much of an athlete, so hopefully it will keep him out.

I was originally going to have Farming for Fitness help me with the final prep for Community Day, but this took priority, so I pivoted and stayed a little later to do it myself. As I was leaving the garden for the evening, my little Mario cart felt a little different. I looked back and had a flat tire! Not ideal timing!!

Maintenance let me borrow a different cart Friday morning for Community Day, and that one worked great, until I broke that one too…. so I ended up spending Community Day riding around on the tractor managing groups in various locations. Whatever works!

The groups that came out to the farm did an amazing job!

We went from 17 rows to 52, which is enough for some serious food production come spring. We still need to put the finishing touches on the paths and beds over the next few weeks, but the farm is really starting to take shape! Just look at those beautiful rows.

We also have clean, freshly-painted picnic tables where we can sit, listen to instructions, and do some activities. And, another group cover cropped a different area that maybe, just maybe, will become a pumpkin patch. So, despite its challenges, Community Day on the Farm was a huge success.