By Hannah Moser of Forager Farm

My name is Hannah Sargent and I am a marketer turned farmer turned marketing-farmer. My fiancé Jonathon Moser and I own and run Forager Farm, a vegetable CSA in central North Dakota and are in our first season! We are on a mission to revive our food culture by providing fresh, local produce directly to our members.

In January 2013, we jetted off to Australia to live and work at Captain’s Creek Organic Farm, an organic vegetable farm located one hour north/northwest of Melbourne, Victoria. While there we managed a vegetable CSA (or vegetable box scheme as they say down under) with an average of 100 boxes going out to local customers within 100 miles of the farm every week. We learned the ins and outs of the operation and fell in love with it.

After returning to North Dakota in June 2013, we knew we had to start our own operation. Thus, Forager Farm was born. We are beyond excited for this new adventure and can’t wait share it with our fellow North Dakotans! Each week, beginning in late June 2014 to mid to late October 2014, we plan to deliver fresh, local vegetables to our farm members. If all goes as planned, our members will receive 16-18 weeks of fresh produce.

The weeks will vary in variety and availability of vegetables provided. The first few weeks will focus on the short season cold hardy veggies like lettuce, spinach, kohlrabi, radish, dill, etc. Once the season progresses, we will be ramping up the variety with things like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, watermelon, zucchini, corn, etc. The end of the season will feature cold hardy and storage type veggies like carrots, broccoli, cabbage, potatoes, onions, winter squash, beets, etc.

For the 2014 season, we will be delivering to collection points in Jamestown, Bismarck, and Fargo. We are also looking at the option of delivering to smaller communities if we can find enough interest. We also invite anyone interested to pick up at the farm. We offer full, half, and single share sizes and hope to sell 50 full shares; we are one quarter of the way to our goal!

Forager Farm is also proud to be a 2014 producer for the Jamestown Public School district as part of the Farm to School program. The land we are renting has been certified organic since the late 1970’s; however, Forager Farm is currently working towards our own organic certification.

Although our first year will be focused on vegetables, I am always dreaming of future Forager Farm adventures. We currently own two milk goats, Coffee and Tullah, and hope to someday have a goat dairy as well as our own sourdough bakery.

I would love the opportunity to share our stories throughout our first year. We’ve already encountered countless “learn by doing” experiences as beginning farmers and know it will only continue.