The 2019 South Dakota Local Foods Conference is taking place next month in Pierre. The event’s keynote speaker is presenting a method of growing crops all year long.
Carol Ford, along with her husband Chuck, came up with the idea of Deep Winter Greenhouses more than ten years ago. The idea is to dig into the earth to wherever the soil is warm to grow greenhouse crops.
Ford says she’s happy to be speaking to South Dakotans next month about this concept and to promote this means of continued food production.
“Our small communities don’t have to be deprived of this kind of nutrient-dense food in the wintertime," says Ford. "We can grow it for ourselves, and I really think that having a resilient local food system starts with recognizing that if you have a problem, you can turn it into an opportunity and figure out ways to get around it.”
Ford and her husband published the idea in a book called The Northlands Winter Greenhouse Manual, which earned Chuck a leadership fellowship from the Bush Foundation.
However, not long after receiving the fellowship, Chuck died of stage four terminal cancer.
Ford says though he’s gone, her husband’s vision lives on.
“There’s so many times where I just feel his presence in different events that I’m at or in talking with people, and I just know he’d be thrilled and so pleased that it’s got a life.”
Ford is the keynote speaker at the South Dakota Local Foods conference in Pierre on November 2nd.