SWCD Bus to Farm Tours

The Marion County Soil and Water Conservation District is leveraging its Clean Water Indiana and North Central SARE grants to create bus trip experiences for growers, gardeners, and conservation professionals. Our goal is intensive tours of expert market gardens in Indianapolis and around the state. We choose our destinations based on grower input and learning opportunities for soil health and crop management. Our primary focus is to learn about soil health practices in vegetable and flower production by getting up close to examples of crop rotations, cover crops, mulching, no-till permanent bed systems, efficiencies, tools, and labor. The 2025 schedule included Full Hand Farm, the Farm at Butler University, Wilderlove Farm (pictured above), and Christopher Farm. Thank you to these rockstar farms for hosting. Visiting other operations is a great way for farmers to learn, gain technical capacity, and network. We are excited to continue to offer several more trips through 2026 and 2027.

A special thank you to the Marion County Farm Bureau for providing funding for on-farm lunches. Gathering around a table to share fresh, local food with fellow growers fostered a sense of togetherness and promoted networking. It was also a pleasure to work with local businesses that sourced local food for these workshops, often times with ingredients from the same farm we were touring Thanks to everyone who brought the food from garden to table.

Learn about upcoming workshops by joining our SWCD newsletter or by checking our events page:
marionswcd.org/connect/
marionswcd.org/events/

This work is supported by the Marion County SWCD, North Central SARE, and Clean Water Indiana. This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number 2024-38640-42989 through the North Central Region SARE program under project number ENC24-233. USDA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.