I have been interested in gardening since I was 10 years old when I helped my grandparents with their extensive garden plots. My uncle also owned a wholesale produce business in Milwaukee in the 1960's where I got exposure to the produce business. Since the early 70's I have been practicing organic gardening techniques such as composting, companion planting and beneficial insect research. I have p
lanted over 50 fruit and nut trees on my acre plot in Cedar Lake Indiana in the past 30 years many of them have been propagated or grafted by me. I have been growing shiitake mushrooms on oak logs for over 15 years and have recently expanded the process to close to 75 logs. I have been a member of the North America Nut Growers association and North American Fruit Growers Association, am currently a member of the Indiana Farm Bureau, Indiana Market Makers and have a PACA licence issued by the USDA. I purchased the 15 acre property in May of 2011 and started Living Earth Farms as a business in August of 2011 and have been busy getting the the property ready for organic crop production. We have begun planting perrenial crops which will require several years to come into production and have started planting various plantings to encourage beneficial insects. We are also working on improving the soil quality with large quantities of organic matter. We have partnered with the Town of Chesterton and have begun recycling over 50 truck loads of leaves from their street department. As I currently am working full time at BP as an operations specialist my plan is to gradually get the farm ready for commercial production in the next couple of years. Our goal is to produce our crops using methods which work in harmony with nature with no chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or genetically modified organisms.
