Latest from Young Farmers

Announcing the 2014 Bootstrap Writer Series Winners!

We are excited to announce the start to the Bootstrap Writing Series of 2014!

This year we’ve selected four farmers from across the country who are in the early stages of starting their farms to share their season with the NYFC community.  Wild Ridge Farm - carrotsEach writer will be writing an piece once per month through the rest of this year, sharing the inside scoop of their operation.

The series’s goal is to bring the reader through a beginning farmer’s season on the farm – through the ups and downs, lofty dreams and sometimes-harsh reality.  This is the fourth season of the Bootstrap project, and for this time around, we’ve chosen to focus on a variety of farm types – everything from veggies to animals to mixed enterprises.  Each monthly piece will be focused on a particular area of farming: start-up, marketing, training, life on the farm, and more.

Before introducing the four new farmers for 2014, a quick thank you to all the amazing applicants who contacted us over the past two months: we were thrilled with the number of responses we got and it was a hard job to choose only four.  Seeing the applications pouring in from around the country was an inspiring way to realize the deep breadth and diversity of the beginning farmer movement.  Although we could pick only four for the writing project, we hope to share as many of the profiles sent in with you all as we can!

Wild Ridge Farm - harvestingHailing from across the country, 2014’s Bootstrap writers are:

  • Hannah Sargent of Forager Farm in North Dakota
  • Nate Brownlee of Nightfall Farm in Indiana
  • Joseph Dittman of Wild Ridge Farm in Wisconsin
  • Seth Douglas of Lemonade Springs Farm in California

The blog series will begin this week with an introduction from each of these amazing farmers.  Articles will then be posted at the end of every month until the end of the year.

We are excited for a great year with these inspiring farmers!