Farmer to Farmer with Chris Blanchard

Mark Cain owns Dripping Springs Garden with his partner, Michael Crane. Located in northwestern Arkansas, Dripping Springs has about four acres in production, with half of that in cut flowers. Most o…

Jack Hedin owns Featherstone Farm in Rushford, Minnesota. Farming 132 acres of certified organic vegetables (out of 250 total planted acres), Featherstone Farm provides around two million dollars of …

John Navazio manages the plant breeding program at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Albion, Maine.

John takes us on a seedy tour of the early days of organic and local vegetable production, and his journey…

Ali and Dan Haney own Shenandoah Seasonal, two-and-a-half acres of vegetables and 400 laying hens in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Now in their fifth year of running the farm, Ali and Dan sell their …

Jen Campbell raises two acres of vegetables on Canada’s Prince Edward Island at Jen and Derek’s Organic Farm. She sells about $80,000 of certified organic vegetables per year primarily through a 90-m…

Nate Parks raises twenty acres of vegetables at Silverthorn Farm in west-central Indiana, and sells his produce to restaurants, a custom-packed CSA program, and at an on-farm store.

We dig into the n…

Janet Czarnecki raises five acres of vegetables, flowers, and fruit at Redwood Roots Farm on the northern California coast, just outside of Arcata. Almost all of her produce is sold through her CSA, …

Allen Philo is the specialty crops consultant for Midwestern BioAg, a biological fertilizer company in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, where he works with fruit and vegetable growers around the country to he…

Matt Herbruck has lived two farming lives: one in down east Maine, and another in northeast Ohio. After 21 years of farming, he currently owns and operates Birdsong Farm in Hiram Township, Ohio, with…

Peter Seeley and his wife, Bernadette, began farming at Springdale Farm in 1988, at the dawn of the CSA movement in the Upper Midwest. Over 25 years, the farm has expanded to twenty acres and 800 CSA…

Shawn Jadrnicek manages the Clemson Student Organic Farm at Clemson University. Six acres of produce serves a one hundred-share CSA, wholesale markets, and a farmers market, in addition to providing …

Jeremy Mueller and his wife, Ashli, operate Excelsior Farm, just outside of Eugene, Oregon. Together they raise produce for restaurant sales, retail grocers, and a small CSA to make a modest living o…

Laura Frerichs owns and operates Loon Organics with her husband, Adam Cullip, in Hutchinson, Minnesota. Loon Organics grosses $200,000 on 8 acres of produce and 10,000 square feet of high tunnels, pr…

Rachel Armstrong founded the nonprofit Farm Commons, a legal resource for sustainability-minded farmers, in 2012. And Cassie Noltnerwyss owns Crossroads Community Farm in Cross Plains, Wisconsin. And…

Brenton Johnson started growing vegetables in his backyard in Austin, and then his front yard, and then he started selling them, and then he moved to a larger acreage, and then to an even larger acre…

Eliot Coleman raises about an acre-and-a-half of vegetables in Harborside, Maine, with his wife, Barbara Damrosch. With over 40 years of experience in all aspects of organic farming, Eliot is widely …

Mike Bollinger raises about three acres of outdoor vegetables and a half acre under cover just inside the city limits of the small town of Decorah, Iowa, with his wife, Katie Prochaska. River Root Fa…

47th Avenue Farm’s Laura Masterson started her farm on a double lot in a residential neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, twenty years ago. The farm expanded to many different plots of land, then consol…

Curtis Stone raises $100,000 of vegetable on just a third of an acre at Green City Acres in Kelowna, British Columbia. He’s also the author of The Urban Farmer, an excellent text on growing food for …

Dru Rivers began farming in 1983 with her partner, Paul Muller, in Northern California’s Capay Valley. Since that time, Full Belly Farm has grown to over 200 acres of vegetables, with still more acre…