Farmer Authors

  1. Micro-Farm Success: Learning from the Market Gardener

    When my husband Edge and I started our farm, a friend remarked, “now all you need is a tractor and you’ll be real farmers.”  What he didn’t realize is that we’ve never planned on buying a tractor to grow vegetables. We’ve always been more comfortable on the human-power scale, and though we did add a two wheel walk-behind tractor to...
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  2. Inequity, Creativity, and Resiliency: Farming in a Changing Climate

    Becky Maden is the Assistant Farm Manager at Intervale Community Farm (ICF), a thriving member-owned CSA farm in its 21st season of growing organic produce in Burlington, Vermont. Becky has worked on several diverse vegetable farms throughout the country and around the world. At ICF, Becky is either found in the greenhouse, on a tractor, or jogging between the two. ...
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  3. City Farmer: Weighing the Benefits and Challenges of Urban Agriculture

    Each morning, I ride my bike less than ten minutes from my home in the densely populated Old North End neighborhood in Burlington, Vermont to my farm, weaving my bike through a break in the stream of morning traffic and down a steep hill. To my right is a Shell gas station, straight ahead is Dunkin Donuts, and to my...
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  4. Seed Grower Profile - Frank Morton: An Agent of Change

    Frank Morton is a plant breeder and founder of Wild Garden Seed in Oregon. He and his family supply many of the unique varieties in the High Mowing catalog. On a spring day in the early 1980’s, a curious young salad grower found himself looking at one red lettuce seedling in a sea of flats filled with tender green oakleaf...
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  5. Budget Seed Starting on a Small Farm

    Late winter brings farmers out of the seed catalogs and into seed houses.  As greenhouses are heated, potting soil spread into trays, and seeds placed in each cell, excitement mounts for the coming season and all its possibilities.  For many farmers, especially new farmers, this is also a time of year when budgeting is crucial—money is going out, but not...
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  6. The Roadside Stand Advantage: Is it Right for You?

    As a young farmer in an already-saturated organic farming community, I have had to find creative solutions for marketing my produce. Our local coop and other stores selling local produce already have producers for most crops, so normally my only option would be to get in line with the other new growers, hoping to get a foot in the market...
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  7. Integrating Livestock and Crops at Good Heart Farmstead: Sheep, Pigs and Poultry to Increase Soil Health

    Organic farmers know that healthy soil means healthy plants. At Good Heart Farmstead, everything we do is based in the soil. We even named our farm in honor of it—when soil is “in good heart”, it is alive and healthy. But organic farmers will also know that the name itself doesn’t transform depleted, acidic soil into living, healthy soil overnight...
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  8. Reflecting on this Year’s Successes and Challenges at The Intervale Community Farm

    Becky Maden is the Assistant Farm Manager at Intervale Community Farm (ICF), a thriving member-owned CSA farm in its 21st season of growing organic produce in Burlington, Vermont. Becky has worked on several diverse vegetable farms throughout the country and around the world. At ICF, Becky is either found in the greenhouse, on a tractor, or jogging between the two...
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  9. Putting Down Roots: The Search for Our Own Farm

    We closed on the land in June 2012.  With a money transfer and a few signatures, Edge and I became official landowners of 14.5 acres in Worcester, Vermont.  We slept there that night—setting up a tent and building a small campfire on the edge of the forest looking over our (our!) nine acres of pasture.  After two years of searching...
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  10. Farming and Beyond: Sustaining Your Interest and Intellect Year after Year

    Becky Maden is the Assistant Farm Manager at Intervale Community Farm (ICF), a thriving member-owned CSA farm in its 21st season of growing organic produce in Burlington, Vermont. Becky has worked on several diverse vegetable farms throughout the country and around the world. At ICF, Becky is either found in the greenhouse, on a tractor, or jogging between the two...
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