I grew up about an hour south of Erie,
Pennsylvania, in the rolling countryside where
the Appalachians start to fade away towards the corn-and-dairy country of Ohio. We were not
farmers, but our neighbors were, and going back you only have to skip a couple
generations of our family to get into farmers all the way back after that. We had a big garden, though, and lots of
woods to roam around in. I didn’t know then that I wanted to farm, but I knew I
wanted to work outside, so I went to Penn
State and studied biology
and environmental resource management. I
did well in school, and took the opportunity came to follow pursue a graduate degree
in ecology at Stony Brook in New York.
But I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend my life in academia, theorizing answers to
big abstract problems. I wanted to spend
my time and my energy fixing smaller, concrete problems in whatever ways it
took, being a part of a stable community, helping people out, and living in Pennsylvania again. And I loved to cook, and I loved plants. So I
took a chance, and took a summer apprenticeship at a vegetable farm in central
PA. Five years later, I’m striking out
again and starting a new farm on my own.
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