River Berry Farm, Fairfax, David Marchant and Jane Sorenson: organic vegetables, pick-your-own berries, cut flowers.

Long Roads Farm, Arlington, John and Judy Nolan: organic vegetables, CSA, corn and hay.

They are a growing breed, Vermont’s fruit and vegetable farmers on conserved land. They grow everything from artichokes to (needless to say) zucchini, from kale to cut flowers -- and they market their produce in an expanding variety of ways.

Eleven farms currently raise produce, more and more of it organic, on conserved properties from West Brattleboro to Fairfax, from the rich banks of the Connecticut River to the warming slopes of the Lake Champlain valley. The farmers connect their wares with customers through farmstands, farmers’ markets, pick-your-own operations, community-supported agriculture, custom production for restaurants and shops, contracts with food co-ops and supermarkets, and even a multi-state shipping cooperative.

And in a selection of recent interviews, produce farmers uniformly reported that business is good. In fact (forgive us, one more time), ... it’s growing.

"We’re doing fine -- our business has gone up every year," said Robert Stone, a former schoolteacher who, with his wife, Marilyn, own the thirty-acre Cedar Circle Farm in Thetford. To expand their operation, the Stones sold their development rights to VLT in 1990 and acquired another farm threatened by development. They raise a bit of everything, with major acreage in sweet corn and pumpkins and about six acres in pick-your-own strawberries. They provide bedding plants to the Hanover Co-op and do a bit of wholesaling, but sell most everything else at their own farmstand.

"The local market’s pretty strong, as long as you’ve got good quality," Robert said. "We find that people go out of their way to get local produce."

"CSA": Connecting to Communities
Up in East Hardwick, Bruce Kaufman and Judy Jarvis’s Riverside Farm was the first Vermont produce operation to be conserved, in 1989, and is still the only conserved vegetable farm in the Northeast Kingdom.

Bruce and Judy have about thirty acres in vegetables, ten in hay, four in corn and five in medicinal herbs, a growing new segment of their market. They also raise a wide range of vegetables and ship about half of it up and down the eastern seaboard through Deep Root Organic Cooperative, a consortium of fourteen farmers in Vermont and Canada.

A quarter of the farm’s production sells through two area food cooperatives and some local restaurants. The remaining quarter goes into community-supported agriculture (CSA), an operation that the farm ventured into five years ago. That first year, five people paid in the spring to receive weekly deliveries of fresh vegetables through October; this year, sixty-five members are paying from $225 to $450 each.

"I really enjoy that connection with people -- and it gives them a connection with the farm," Judy said. "Through wholesale, you don’t have that. It’s always, 'How low can we get this farmer to go?’"

Along with being more profitable, the CSA brings money to the farm in the spring, when expenses are highest. Wholesalers, in contrast, can take two months to pay after produce is shipped.

Riverside Farm employs six people during the season, often current or former students at nearby Sterling College, where Bruce Kaufman teaches organic vegetable production.

Many Ways to Make Markets
Down in West Brattleboro, Amanda Ellis-Thurber and her husband, Ross, first raised vegetables in 1996 on the diversified dairy farm run by Ross’s parents, Stuart Jr. and Beverly Thurber, to supply their own wedding. Today the young couple joins the elder Thurbers in running the 600-acre Lilac Ridge Farm, which was conserved in 1998. The farm produces milk, Christmas trees, syrup and sawlogs, along with the produce and cut flowers for which Amanda is responsible.

"Probably the most profitable are the cut flowers," she said. "Those I sell to local florists and to the farmers’ market. This year I hope to start a flower subscription program for area businesses."

The farm’s produce goes to the local farmers’ market. "Because we’re so diversified on the farm, we decided to keep the vegetable production to a small scale, but do intensive production of certain crops," Amanda said, referring particularly to California-style "globe" artichokes and salad mixes.

In Fairfax, on prime, soft soil alongside the Lamoille River, David Marchant and Jane Sorenson’s River Berry Farm added eighty tillable acres through a conserved-land purchase in 1997. Their farm has a pick-your-own berry business, with raspberries added to strawberries this spring. They sell half their organic vegetables through Deep Root, and half through farmers’ markets, a roadside farmstand, and "our own private farmers’ market" at Smugglers’ Notch resort in Jeffersonville, Jane said.

"It’s really fun to sell there, because the city people who come up are so appreciative of having good local produce available," she said.

Increasingly, area people are, too. River Berry’s business "is growing as we would like it to -- and a critical part of that is having purchased the eighty acres through the Land Trust," Jane said.

"It’s What We Believe In"
Asked what is most important to their business, the produce farmers sounded a common theme: "That people support local agriculture," said Judy Jarvis. "I think food needs to be grown everywhere in the world -- and in every state," she added. "If you get so dependent on California and Florida, then local farms go out of business."

"I guess there are two most important things," reflected Amanda Ellis-Thurber. "One is for people to appreciate and to actually buy locally produced foods, on a regular basis. The other is for the public and customers to realize the cost of producing food -- and to be aware that when it comes to the prices in the market, a small grower is more linked to the cost of production than are large producers in other parts of the country and the world."

"If your store doesn’t say where the produce is from, ask them," added Jane Sorenson. "Buy locally -- because it goes toward supporting your local economy, as well as keeping Vermont a working landscape."

Are these farmers growing rich? Hardly. But perhaps that isn’t foremost in their minds.

"There’s a lot of people that think we’re crazy for doing what we do -- and maybe we are," Judy Jarvis said, standing outside her greenhouses on a cool and windy April day.

"But it’s what we believe in. And it’s what we’re going to keep on doing."

These links provide other information about VLT's farmland conservation program:

• Statewide Farm Project Guidelines

• Local Farm Project Guidelines

• Farmland Protection - How to Conserve Your Farm (PDF)

  • supplement to the new farmland protection brochure, focuses on the Pension Protection Act’s impact on bargain sales (PDF)

• Operating Farm Easement: A Guide to the Legal Document (PDF)

• What do owners of conserved farms think of the program? American Farmland Trust (AFT) survey

• Land Link: UVM's Farm Transfer Program

• Visit Vermont's conserved produce farms

• Complete list of VLT publications on the web

• Contact the VLT office in your area

• News of some recent farm conservation projects

• Land Conservation: the Case for Perpetual Easements

The following links provide information for you, if you are interested in conserving land that is not a working farm:

• Managed Timberland and Forestland Conservation
• Lands Important  to Local Communities
• Family Lands