Down on the Farm
The fight against hunger takes to the earth.
BY Jenna Kashou
10/21/2012
 First, it was a work farm, a series of fields where inmates from the Milwaukee County House of Correction toiled away, tending fields and milking cows. Then it was a fish hatchery – UW-Milwaukee converted the 139-acre farm in Franklin, first established in 1946, into a laboratory for its Center for Great Lakes Studies in the 1980s. Later, Milwaukee County took back the land and lent it to the Hunger Task Force, which began using it in 2004 to grow food for the hungry. Earlier this year, HTF inked a new deal with the county to ramp up its operations at this farm of many forms. HTF’s two full-time farmers, plus members of the organization’s transitional jobs program, planted 58 out of 101 arable acres this season as the organization faces a stagnant economy, a withering drought and high demand for meals. “Farming is hard work, and it’s not cheap,” says HTF Executive Director Sherrie Tussler. “But we look at it as a sustainable model because we know what we are putting into the earth – and how much we can get out of it."
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