About
Hi, I'm Mike.
I got the farming bug while studying geography at Middlebury College. Yes, geography! I was interested in working landscapes, and the Vermont working landscape in particular. I learned about ecological design, I wrote a thesis about compost and a local dairy farm, and I found myself working part time for a vegetable farmer. Magic.
Over the years I've taught, taught agriculture, and done agriculture. I ran the Ecosystem Farm at the Accokeek Foundation in Maryland, then a CSA and training farm, and then I started Willowsford Farm in Virginia. I designed and built that farm as one part of an integrated, 4,000 acre project - a multi-functional landscape with 2,000 houses, 1,700 acres of functioning ecosystems and recreation land, and 300 acres of food production. We raised vegetables, dry beans, laying hens, chickens and turkeys for meat, pigs for bacon, and goats for Deb and for landscape management. We like to think we grew some community, also. In the Mid-Atlantic I was also on the board of Future Harvest-CASA (the Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture) and co-founded Chesapeake CRAFT, a training program for employees of regional farms.
I came back to Vermont a few years ago to be close to family and found myself back in school to get a degree (Agriculture and Rural Development from Cornell University) and growing small grains, dry beans, and popcorn. In 2022, after finishing my coursework, I went to Bhutan to train young adults in agriculture. Now, my thesis complete, diploma in hand, a vacuum from my bank account to my student loan account, and with work as ED of a local watershed farmers alliance (www.cwrfa.org), I'm back at it.
I like thinking about how I grow things, and my feeling is you get what you give. That is, the more you give, the more you get. I try to farm that way. What do I give? Soil crops (cover crops), compost and manures, rock minerals, and diversity. More on that in other sections.
I hope you like what I've got for you. Small grains and dry beans are the first pieces of the farm now. Next I'll be raising poultry again, to bring animals into the system and eggs and chicken to the table.
Mike