Our journey as farmers began in 2009 on a 1-acre market garden. This page takes you on a brief photo tour through where we've been and where we are now.
Journey’s End CSA, Sterling, PA
2009-2010
Journey's End Farm Camp gave us our first opportunity to run our own market garden. We're grateful to the Curtis family for the chance to practice managing our first small farm business. This experience was the 'training wheels' we needed to get be we are today. (The farther we get away from that time, the more we realize that we had no idea what we were doing those first few years!)
Evening Song Farm, Cuttingsville, VT
2011
In the summer of 2010 we were thrilled to purchase our first piece of land to start our own small farm: 10 acres on Route 103 with a beautiful old barn and quirky old farmhouse. Our first growing season in 2011 was a challenging and rewarding experience to scale up our market garden to a 3-acre production farm. We were lucky to have ended up in a wonderful community that welcomed us.
Tropical Storm Irene
August 29, 2011
In the peak of Evening Song Farm's first summer harvest, tropical storm Irene caused the Mill River to permanently re-route through the vegetable production fields. That land is located in a narrow river valley in the Green Mountains, and the velocity of the river caused it to carve a new riverbed right through the land that we had begun to cultivate. We evacuated our home with our animals and returned the next day to find our home and barn safe from the water, but the land destroyed beyond recognition.
Before and After
The photos are paired to give a sense of how thoroughly the land was changed in less than a day: the 'before' photos were taken just weeks before the 'after' photos. The final image is video footage that was taken shortly after we lost the farmland.
Rebuilding the Barn and the Greenhouses
2012–2014
In 2012 we purchased land nearby to re-start Evening Song Farm. It was a daunting and exhausting several years to build the infrastructure that our farm would need long-term, while we simultaneously continued to run our fledgling farm business. We're grateful for all the friends, family, neighbors, employees, and contractors who helped us through this time.
Building a Home on New Land
2013–2015
We broke ground for a house on the new farm land in the fall of 2013. We're thankful to have been able to hire out most of the heavy-lifting like sitework, framing, siding, and roofing, and it was a great experience for us to do a lot of the interior work like flooring, tiling, plumbing, electrical, drywall, and painting. We don't envy the days when our home was a construction zone full of materials, extension cords, tools, and sawdust, but we feel lucky for it to be a comfortable and welcoming living space now.
Evening Song Now
2015–Present
2015 marked the first year when it felt like we weren't simultaneously farming and re-building a farm. It's a wonderful blessing to have gotten through the rebuilding phase, and to be able to put more of our attention into making the farm a healthier ecosystem for the crops, the crew, ourselves, and the long-term productivity of this piece of land. In the winter of 2018, we finally did the work to become certified organic! Our farm team has shifted to longer term employees who are a delightful bunch of hardworking, dedicated farmers. Many farm improvement and infrastructure projects have occurred during these years, including finally having enough roof space for all the solar panels needed to produce all the farm’s electrical power demands. Most of our brainpower is spent modifying growing methods, experimenting, learning, and collaborating to address food production in a changing climate.
In March 2020, we stopped attending farmers’ markets in due to the pandemic, and have focused our growing for the CSA and wholesale outlets we have long relationships with. While we miss the relationships with regular farmers’ market customers that developed over nearly a decade, we are grateful for all the support from our CSA members and wholesale partners, and look forward to focusing on those outlets for the foreseeable future. The year-round Rutland Farmers’ Market and the summer Ludlow Farmers’ Market we attended for 9 years are still full of incredible local vendors who continue to serve our communities. We enjoy getting to just be customers there ourselves now!
