After 8 inches of rain in two weeks at Where the Redfearn Grows Natural Farms in Independence, MO, the fields are quite soggy. We’re hoping the crops hold out in their raised beds and don’t suffer from root rot. Since we can’t get into the fields right now, we took some time out to begin construction on the Redfearn Farm walk in cooler.
With the much-needed help of a few friends, the main structure for the walk in cooler was completed on Saturday just before the winds picked up and put a stop to the work. We’ve constructed the cooler out of highly insulated 6 inch thick structural insulated panels (SIPs) that we purchased as scrap panels from Thermocore in Jefferson City. These panels have an insulating R-value of 40 (which is about 3x the insulating value of the walls of most homes). These panels form a box (floor walls and ceiling) that was sealed using spray foam and caulk.
We have a window air condition unit controlled by a coolbot that will serve as the cooling unit. This type of refrigeration is much less expensive and easier to replace than a dedicated cooling system and quite efficient to boot.
The idea behind the walk in cooler is to allow for higher quality vegetables for our CSA and farmer’s market customers. We pick our produce either the day of or the day before CSA distributions, so the vegetables we provide are far fresher than anything at the supermarket. But, short storage duration (often only a few hours) before customers take the delicious vegetables home is only one piece of the puzzle. For premium quality and long storage potential at our member’s homes, we need to bring those luscious vegetables out of the hot fields and cool them down as quickly as possible to extend their later shelf life. When the CSA was smaller we used old refrigerators for this purpose and for the time being we’re using giant igloo coolers, but we can only do this with the most tender vegetables that need the cooling the most (leafy greens mostly).
We look forward to completing this walk in cooler where we can bring the harvest straight out of the heat and allow it to cool prior to dividing it up among the CSA members. We even plan to put the completed shares in the walk in cooler to await members picking them up directly from the walk in cooler.
Thanks to Ben, Ben and Dustin, we came a long way on the project. We’ve still got to put on the siding, install the door and cooling unit, put on the roofing, do the electrical work and put on the finishing touches. We had to special order the door, so we won’t be fully operational for two more weeks, but we’d like to get all this work done leading up to that time. So if you are handy with any of this type of work and want to pitch in, feel free to contact us. We’ll probably be working on it evenings and weekends in between all the other farm tasks and we could really use your help!