Four years ago Twin Springs Fruit Farm started on a major project to make the heating of our four greenhouses as green as possible. With a lot of research and engineering, not to mention loans and grants, we have installed a state of the art biomass heat plant, which takes care of 95% of the heat that used to be supplied, in a very “dirty” manner by the burning of coal, as well as oil and LP gas, when backup systems were needed.

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Every year we fill a huge building with wood chips to be burnt in the boiler. The wood, of course, being a renewable non-fossil fuel has decreased our carbon footprint considerably. The system burns so cleanly that it is exempt from inspections by the EPA; a cyclonic extraction device removes the vast majority of the particulate matter from the stack.

 

As of Spring 2016 we have installed a large solar energy roof top system to power all of the greenhouses with solar generated electricity, making Twin Springs Fruit Farm an extremely low “Carbon Footprint” farm.

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Twin Springs also prides itself on its sustainability, as well as the work we do to protect water resources, prevent erosion, and build up our soil by planting many beneficial green manure cover crops.

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The farm, now a family farm, also adheres to strict Integrated Pest Management protocols, both in the field and in our greenhouses. Predators are introduced into the greenhouses on a regular basis, to control the inevitable insect pests. The IPM techniques and materials are all designed to protect and build up the natural predator population, to make it less and less necessary to use sprays.

 

While not nearly perfect things are headed in the right direction.

Our little fleet of small Isuzu diesel trucks is very efficient; the mileage being quite high considering the loads we carry to local markets. The newest trucks in the fleet have the latest clean burning, exhaust scrubbing technologies, making them cleaner burning than most modern cars on the road.