Nevada High Altitude Farm Stretches Bounds of Sustainable Ag Innovation, Educates Others in Effort to Expand Market

Photo Credit: Hungry Mother Organics.

Thanks to its harsh climate and high altitude, Northern Nevada requires that farmers develop innovate agricultural methods and practice to sustainably grow produce. Seedstock recently spoke with Jacob O’Farrell, Special Projects Coordinator at Hungry Mother Organics about the challenges of farming in the Sierra Nevada foothills and how the state can improve its movement toward sustainable agriculture.

How did Hungry Mother Organics begin?

We started out as a family farm over 20 years ago in Virginia and relocated to Nevada ten years ago. Thereafter we worked with an inmate rehabilitation program and used prison labor to set up hoop houses at the Northern Nevada Correctional Facility. We continued expanding and eventually launched a retail location where we offer organic produce, heirloom seeds, Read More

Through Local Sourcing and Hydroponic Towers, Urban Farmer Delivers Fresh Produce to South Florida

Vertical growing systems that The Urban Farmer organization placed on a 1-acre lot of industrial property in Broward County. Photo Credit: Urban Farmer.

In many urban areas across the nation, access to fresh, locally grown and produced food is difficult to come by, and South Florida is no exception. Seeing an opportunity to address challenges to local food availability in this area, The Urban Farmer, a Pompano Beach, Fla.-based organization that grows and sources locally grown food, was launched to meet the demands of South Florida residents for locally and sustainably grown food.  While The Urban Farmer is still in startup mode, it’s garnering support and keeping afloat because of its founders’ love of educating – and feeding – Floridians awesome, local produce.

I recently got in touch with Stephen Hill, a principal at The Urban Farmer, to find out how and why the organization was founded, how Urban Farmer serves Florida and what the organization has planned for the 2013 season. Read More

Spanish Lit Scholar, Extreme Adventurer Turns Thin Layer of Topsoil into Thriving Four Season Farm

Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman of Four Season Farm in Maine. Photo Credit: Four Season Farm.

Nothing is impossible - so says a rock climber with his head pitched back staring up an ugly face of granite, a kayaker caught in a squall, a skier pointing tips down a sheet of black ice – or a man who has done all of this and then taken up farming Down East where topsoil is barely deeper than the pine pollen on windowsills in May. After chasing adventure in the guise of a Spanish literature scholar with a taste for Chilean deep powder, cliffs and white water, Eliot Coleman got himself some acreage.

Of course a lot happened in between, but the story of Four Season Farm and how it came to be began with Coleman turning his quest for adventure away from situational adrenaline surges to another sort of challenge: to extract sugar carrots from a fir wood rooted on ledge.

It was late 1960’s when Coleman came back down to earth. A decade earlier the back-to-the-land how-to book, ‘Living the Good Life’, by Helen and Scott Nearing had emerged and became something of a bible among the younger set. Read More

Nevada Indoor Ag Conference Brings Together Innovators to Confront Challenges to Local Food Production

News Release – (Las Vegas) – Entrepreneurs, agriculture industry leaders and Nevada state officials plan to come together to propel forward the development of creative and sustainable indoor growing solutions. The Nevada Indoor Agriculture Conference will aim to increase local food production in the dry desert landscape that abounds in Nevada and, in turn, bolster the state’s internal food supply as well as the local economy. Indoor agriculture has the potential to meet future food demands, reduce environmental impacts, and create new economic engines.

To address these challenges, notables in sustainable and indoor agriculture will bring their leading-edge products and ideas to the Nevada Indoor Agriculture Conference on Wednesday, April 24.  This one-day event at the Historic 5^th Street School in Downtown Las Vegas, will focus on how the state can increase its indoor agriculture production in a sustainable manner and become a recognized hub for innovation in this space. Read More

Enriched in Organic Soil, Johnny’s Selected Seeds Grows Seed Stock for the Future

Cherry Tomato Harvest at the Johnny's Selected Seeds growing farm in Albion, Maine. Photo Credit: Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Rob Johnston, founder of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, got an early lesson in the importance of seed diversity back in 1972, when he formed a communal truck farm in southern New Hampshire, growing 15 acres of vegetables that were marketed through a co-op in Boston and New York.

A Japanese distributor in New York wanted specialty produce and Johnston had to go to Japan simply to find the seeds. The resulting odyssey into exotic seed sourcing awakened a different kind of seed, planted long ago in him by his grandfather, a Pennsylvania farmer who used to take Johnston out into the fields of a summer evening to “listen to the corn grow.”

He set up Johnny’s Selected Seeds (originally called Johnny’s Appleseeds, until he was informed that name was already trademarked) and issued his first seed catalogue in 1974. Read More

Competition from the North Pushes Resourceful Rhode Island Hydroponic Farmer to Downsize and Diversify

A show of the diverse products offered by Absalona Greenhouse, a hydroponic farm based in Chepachet, Rhode Island. Photo Credit: Mark Phillips.

A job done right looks easy. Likewise Swiss chard that has celebrated five birthdays and boasts a girth of six inches looks normal at Mark Phillips’ Absalona Greenhouse Farm in Chepachet, Rhode Island. Twenty years now in the business of hydroponic farming, Phillips has mastered the art of soil-free growing. Of his accumulated knowledge what he didn’t learn from his plants themselves he mostly learned from listening to his gut rather than to opinions of others.

“I fell into it. I didn’t think I was going to work for myself,” said Phillips who earned an environmental studies degree in college. Unbeknownst to him his career was set in motion the day he took a job at a greenhouse the summer after graduating. But he took to the work and in 1990 decided to go into business for himself. Read More