While transplanting some fennel last week, I noticed some lacewing eggs on one of the baby plants. Unique among insect eggs, lacewing eggs are attached to a long silk thread protruding off the plant. This gives them a whimsical look (pictured below). This helps prevent predation and cannibalization when the first hatch in approximately five days.
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As larvae they are voracious eaters, consuming up to 400 aphids per day (or anything else they can find). Unlike ladybugs, which tend to fly away immediately upon hatching, lacewings keep close to home. This makes them a great ally for our Fort Wayne organic practice farm (uncertified) against garden pests.

While I often see adults flying around, it was fun to find the eggs. This is a nice affirmation that the eggs I released a couple years back are beginning to naturalize.

One of the most difficult decisions in organic farming is to know when to intervene with sprays. Many organic sprays are broad spectrum, meaning the lacewing larvae will also be killed. Hopefully, this is a sign that we are approaching a more natural equilibrium of pests and beneficials.

All of this is to say, thanks for forgiving the occasional aphid on your lettuce. Organic farming is all about striking that balance between high-quality product and ethical practices, and we get better at finding that balance each and every year on our Fort Wayne farmstead. ​

We've been having a very dry few years on our Fort Wayne uncertified organic farm. Let's time travel back to 2024. After a very dry summer, we finally got a bit of rain over a weekend in September: around 3/4” all told. Seems like a fever dream with all the rain we've been getting this spring, but this was our reality for about two years. 

This was bad news because, newsflash: plants need water to grow. Irrigation solves this issue during a drought, but one of the main concerns during drought is plant nutrition. Conventional fertilizers developed using fossil fuels work so well for two reasons:

The Problem with Droughts and Soil Fertility

Now, back to the drought theme. During an extended drought, soil life quickly plummets. Water is life, and if there isn’t moisture in the soil, microbes go dominant as a survival technique. That “after-rain” smell of earth that we all know is really just the soil springing back to life—the result of microbes rapidly reproducing. Just a handful of healthy soil contains billions of microbes, many of which plants rely on to help feed them!
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So, simply put, the fewer microbes in the soil, the more stress our vegetables are under and the harder it is for them to get the nutrients they need. Even if their rootzone is moist from irrigation, the soil as a whole is barren, making nutrient cycling difficult.

While it’s easy to notice the fruiting bodies of mushrooms, fungi are busy working year-round, decomposing just under the soil surface. If you have a pile of mulch or some woodchips at home, you may notice a white web just below the surface. This is mycelium.

​Functioning a bit like roots, mycelium has a symbiotic relationship with plants. It attaches to plant roots and carries excess nutrients to them in exchange for sugars and fats. When conditions are right (a good rain after a long drought, for example), the mycelium sends up fruiting bodies to create spores—the mushrooms we all know and love.

While we do get more flashy mushrooms on the farm, the photos in this post are a couple examples of the common, unsung heroes that we see in our vegetable beds frequently. As a Fort Wayne organic practice (though not certified) farm, these bio-helpers are hugely important for us. Thanks, mushroom friends!

Let's travel back in time to 2023. That year, there was a point mid-June when I thought we would lose our cucumber crop on our Fort Wayne farm. It wouldn’t have been a disaster--I have a second round of cucumber planting in midsummer, and they are fast to grow. But there would have been a break in the  cucumber action.
 
It was a particularly bad year for aphids, likely due to the warm winter in combination with a hot and dry spring. Aphids are tiny little green bugs drawn to the sugars in vegetables. They hide on the undersides of leaves and don’t harm the fruit. But left unchecked, they can stunt and ultimately kill the plant.
 

Hungry Dog Farm started in 2020 with a small group made up of friends. Since then we've expanded to sixty CSA members (learn more about the CSA model here). Just a few years ago, to fill those spots, I was flyering downtown and asking for referrals.

In 2025, we turned a corner when the summer CSA sold out within two days of opening public signups. Then, in 2026, we sold out the summer CSA in 18 hours.

What is going on here? Are Fort Wayne CSA memberships the next​ Taylor Swift tickets? And how can you secure a spot in our vegetable farm share even if you missed the deadline? Here's what's happening behind the scenes--and how you can still sneak in. 

Note: At the time of writing, we have 4 spots left in our Fall CSA. You can sign up for that and for our Spring Egg Share (and get on the summer waitlist) here. 

Why Our Fort Wayne Farm Share Sells Out So Fast

In one word? Retention.

Generally, retention is a challenge for CSAs. This is due to a variety of factors--people can't come during pickup hours, they can't finish their veggies, they find way too much kohlrabi in their prepacked boxes, you name it. According to a CSA retention report by Practical Farmers of Iowa, CSA retention rates are typically around 45%.

Our retention has always been higher than that. I think this might be for a few key reasons:

• We let people hand-pick what goes into their weekly share. That solves the "I don't like the veggies in my farm share" issue.
• Our CSA pickups are at our farm, not a farmer's market. This means people who miss farmstand hours can come get their late pickup at any time for days following main pickup. This fixes the issue of unavailability during pickup hours. 

This year, over 88% of our CSA was filled by returning members. We are over the moon and so grateful to have such loyal customers. 

​Because we currently cap our membership at 60 people, we had very few spots left for new members by the time public signups rolled around. And those spots went very quickly. 
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What We're Doing About It: Future Plans for Our Fort Wayne Farm Share

At Hungry Dog Farm, we have very high standards for quality and want to serve our members as best we can. We absolutely will not expand until we can do so without sacrificing our CSA experience. At present, we are throttled by two main limiting factors: greenhouse space and manpower. Here's where we're at with those--and what we're doing to potentially expand in the future. 

Greenhouse Space: Hungry Dog Farm has been erecting a new greenhouse pretty much annually. We are up to six hoop houses now, including a fancy new one from Nifty Hoops largely sponsored by our very first EQUIP government grant last year. We have materials to put up another greenhouse this year, which should push us over the edge into being able to grow for more customers. 

Labor: Our only full-time worker is Farmer Andy, though we have some beloved volunteers and part-time workers.  Farmer Andy is just one man and is therefore limited in what he can do. (Elaina unfortunately has a lot going on and can't help in the fields on a daily basis.) This year, Andy will likely be scaling back his wintertime employment in favor or working towards all-seasons farming (winter share??). We are also taking steps towards being able to hire a more active employee in the future, which would allow us to expand the number of shares we offer. 

How to Join the Hungry Dog Farm CSA

With our Fort Wayne farm shares selling out so fast, it might seem like it's impossible to join our CSA. We completely get the frustration. However, we do have a few tips on how you can secure a spot.

At Hungry Dog Farm, we go out of our way to ensure our existing CSA customers get first dibs and don't get left out. Once you're in the main CSA, you're in. So, in short, you just need to get a foot in the door. Here are some great ways to do that.

Get On Our Waitlist: Our waitlist is your first move. We let our waitlist folks know one by one if a spot becomes available.

Join our Email List: Make sure you are on our email list and that our emails aren't going to your spam folder (this does happen). That way, you'll be notified promptly if we have a spot for you.

Overflow Shares: We started offering overflow shares in 2025, and many of our overflow share members have graduated to our main farm share. Overflow shares are essentially a way for us to capitalize on the bounty of peak season, which usually hits mid-July and carries through to first frost somewhere in October. Our overflow members are notified when we're ready to start this, and they come get a pre-packaged box of goodies each week for the same price as the standard share. Overflow members get first dibs if a regular CSA spot becomes available. 

Spring Egg Share: Our spring egg share provides you with a dozen fresh Fort Wayne eggs per week from our happy flock of chickens. The ladies have been busy munching on spring grass in the field and are laying like crazy! Here are the details: 

• 5 total pickups (two dozen every other week)
• Now - May 25th
• $54 total (one free dozen based on our market price)
• Prorated shares are available if we have space. 

You can sign up for the spring egg share on our site or by emailing us. Slots are first-come, first-served. ​​

Essentially, get in contact with us. Start buying from us where and how you can. And, very soon, you will probably find yourself in our Fort Wayne CSA, enjoying pesticide-free local veggies, flowers, and eggs. We can't wait to start growing for you. 

This is a a deep dive into one of or staple crops that transports us to a time of cold fingers, long winter shadows, and freezing water lines. Onions have been tricky for us in the past. They are one of the more labor-intensive crops to transplant and are susceptible to a myriad of diseases. They enjoy a long, cool spring to grow their green tops followed by a hot and dry summer to size up their bulbs. If you have been following Indiana springs over the last several years, you know that “cooler” springs are increasingly rare, and our humid summers facilitate a lot of disease pressure.


In order to get an earlier crop and to avoid the weather issues, we have taken to a new schedule. Since 2022, we’ve planted onions in the late fall, overwintered them in an unheated greenhouse, and harvested them in June just in time for our first Fort Wayne CSA pickup.

We’ve added wood chips to all the walkways on our Fort Wayne farm, which required a lot of manual labor. However, we know this will pay off in the years to come. 
 
Wood chips have so many benefits. They reduce soil compaction, reduce wedding, keep the soil moist, and provide food for insects and mycelia (mushroom “roots"). As an added bonus, the wood chips decompose into compost in a year or two. This can be shoveled onto the vegetable beds to help all your Fort Wayne CSA goodies grow!
 
Wood chips also mark the growing beds, which is integral as we move to a no-till system with permanent growing beds. In traditional row crop farming, the entire field is mechanically plowed and tilled to remake the beds each year. However, there are a lot of benefits to permanent beds:
 

1. Saves time, as they don’t have to be remade each spring 
2. Less compaction with no heavy machinery reshaping the beds each year
3. Fertility and compost applications can be focused and built in place over the years  

​In the photo above, the broccoli and cabbage were planted into straw mulch, which was left over from the previous garlic crop. These were planted just days after the garlic was harvested (I added a bit of added compost from our chickens). The year after, there was some remaining straw mulch, and I planted potatoes into this in the early spring. That's three crops with just one mulch application on our Fort Wayne farm!

Our offerings do vary from year to year, so be sure to stop by our Fort Wayne farm stand to see what we've got! Peppers usually start going crazy around July and last until the weather turns.

 
Hedgerows accomplish three main goals for our Fort Wayne farm:

1. Insect/animal habitat. One of HDF’s main goals is to encourage as much biodiversity as possible by attracting beneficial insects, birds, and amphibians. Since the hedgerows are never disturbed like our vegetable fields, they act as a haven for the various beneficials. This is crucial in uncertified organic farming because it helps reduce sprays and attract native pollinators. For example, toads can eat up to 1,000 bugs a day and lacewings can devour up to 100 aphids! 

1. Reduce wind and erosion damage. These hedgerows are still in their infancy, but when they are fully grown, they will span 15 feet in height, helping to shield the vegetable beds. This is especially important in the early spring, when seedlings are tender and must be covered with frost blankets in the evenings.  

1. Provide food. This is mostly a side benefit and is still a couple years off, but ultimately, our hedgerows will provide fruits and herbs for our Fort Wayne CSA (not to mention nectar for insects). In the “off” season, I propagate perennials that go into the hedgerows during the following fall. Pictured above is a two-year-old pear tree that I grafted, and below is an elderberry.