young farmers series

NAME: David Wells and Sarah Bellos FARM: Stoney Creek Farm AGEs: 29 and 29 Can you provide some brief background information about your farm? In your opinion, what makes it special or unique? Stoney Creek farm is a diversified four-acre permaculture farm with an emphasis on specialty crops like natural dye plants and mushrooms, with some small perennial fruit production. Both David and I have "in-town" jobs and so were seeking a way to slowly begin to make a living off the land. Joel Salatin says go big or go home, but we feel like there is a lot for us to learn taking it season by season and bootstrapping our operation and honing our skills in these more niche crops.   We are excited...

  NAME: Brad Halm FARM: Seattle Urban Farm Company AGE: 32 Can you provide some background about your farm? In your opinion, what makes it special or unique? At Seattle Urban Farm Company, we work directly with people- individuals, families, school children, chefs, and business owners- to help them grow their own food.  Whether it's building an organic vegetable garden or chicken coop in an urban backyard, installing a production garden on the rooftop of a restaurant, or designing a community garden space, the most enjoyable aspect of what we do is watching people get excited about food and farming. Why do you believe farming is important, particularly for the younger generation,...

NAME: Blain Snipstal FARM: La Minga (Cooperative) AGE: 23 Can you provide some brief background information about your farm? In your opinion, what makes it special or unique? My farm and its community is unique for its composition of the campesinos and campesinas involved - all of which, apart from myself and two others, are from Central America. So that adds a unique flavor to the equation, along with the collective/communal and subsistence mentality that supports the entire culture of the project, the space that floats around the land there welcomes all (including the local deer, family of turkeys and chickens and bees). It's a beautiful thing really. When I got involved, they asked...

  NAME: Severine von Tscharner Fleming FARM: Smithereen Farm AGE: 30 Farmer and activist Severine von Tscharner Fleming is one of the co-editors of Greenhorns: 50 Dispatches from the New Farmers' Movement. She is also the founder of the Greenhorns, a sister organization to the National Young Farmers Coalition, and an organizer of Farmhack.   Can you provide some brief background information about your farm? In your opinion, what makes it special or unique? Smithereen Farm is a little farm llc that I can carry with me until I have a farm of my own. It is the legal structure and equipment that I can use to run animal operations and herb-drying operations wherever I may be...

NAME: DEsi K. Robinson FARM: DeVyne Crown Farm AGE: 39 Can you provide some brief background information about your farm? In your opinion, what makes it special or unique? Though I've had a few growing seasons, I've recently named my little urban plot DeVyne Crown Farm because: DeVyne: I'm a diva gardener (stylish and polished with boots and rake :-), Crown: I live in Corona which means crown in Spanish! DeVyne Crown is unique in that it serves as a resource for my various projects as a journalist, educator and foodie. I use my crop to facilitate my cooking program, "What's Cookin' in the World, Miss Desi?" What's Cookin'© is an arts-based international cooking program (using maps,...

NAME: Michael Meier FARM: Brooklyn Grange AGE: 25 Tell us a bit about your farm and how you got into farming: I’m Farm Manager this season at Brooklyn Grange, a multi-acre practicing-organic soil-based rooftop farm in New York City, with locations in Long Island City and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We grow greens, tomatoes, herbs, and a variety of other seasonal fruits and veggies. We keep laying hens and bees and as a special project are developing a large-scale apiary this season with about 30 beehives. We have a CSA and sell at farmstands and to local restaurants, cafés and small food businesses. I’d been interested in food and agriculture for several years, spending more time at local...

  NAME: Ruby Olisemeka FARM: Stone Barns AGE: 37 Can you provide some information about your farming operation? What makes it special? Organic farming is a method of ecological restoration, and I am part of a new farm breed that is thinking outside the box, the type of farmer that is transposing the principles, methods and techniques behind the traditional rural farmscape onto other systems, in my case suburbia. Restoration should not be limited to rural venues but extend out into suburban and urban landscapes. I'm currently a part of the Ward Acres Community "farm." What makes it special? Its potential. The community farm is situated in a prominent section of 62 acre Ward...