Anna Hoppe is an UVM student working with the Underground Workshop, a network of student journalists across Vermont partnering with Community News Service.
Vermont native Amanda Adams’ passion for farming germinated in an unlikely place: a tiny yard in Boston.
Adams grew up on Adams Turkey Farm in Westford, Vermont, and graduated from the University of Vermont in 2018 with a degree in microbiology.
Initially, Adams wanted to follow in her sister’s footsteps and go into research.
“I was definitely like, ‘Oh, I gotta get out of Vermont. I don’t want to do any sort of farming,’” Adams said.
But during her two years in Boston, Adams and her now husband and farming partner, Mike Bickley, were unhappy with their jobs.
“I wanted to do something that made me happy and [where] I could be outdoors, but that was also fulfilling in the sense that I’m doing something good for the community and the environment,” Adams said.
Motivated by her love for cooking, Adams filled her 30-by-30-foot plot in Boston with vegetables. In spring 2020, driven by the Covid-19 pandemic and a desire to leave Boston, they returned to Adams’ family’s farm. Adams was able to use some of that land to start Dandelion Farm, a diversified fruit and vegetable farm that uses organic growing practices.
To Adams, growing on her family’s land was not only an opportunity to start something new, but a chance to give back to the land.
“My parents are pretty busy with the poultry farm and they’re a little older now. So they don’t have the bandwidth to maintain the property as much as they used to when they were younger,” Adams said. “It was also a way for me to come back and … be a steward of this piece of land that I grew up on and have such a deep love for.”
While Adams shared that her parents can be a little “old school,” they’ve taught her how to develop strong business relationships. For farming knowledge, Adams turned to the internet.
“What ultimately brought us to farming and actually pursuing it as a career was that there’s so much information on the internet on how to do this, how to do it profitably,” Adams said.
Self-teaching through the internet also helped Adams achieve her goal of stewarding the land. She’s learned about practices like cover cropping, which helps increase soil nutrients. These practices have restored land that’s been worked for decades.
“[My parents] have been farming this land since way before the internet, so they didn’t always know all these things that you’re supposed to do to the land to keep it super productive,” Adams said. “We found that that area that had been hayed was a lot less fertile, and we kind of have to work hard to replace that and build up the soil.”
Dandelion Farm also uses composting and low-till practices, which can be described as a part of regenerative agriculture.
“I feel like regenerative can be such a loaded term,” Adams said. “And people have many different definitions of regenerative. For me, the word regenerative [means] you are recreating, you’re reproducing. So for us it’s when we compost garden debris, it goes back to our compost piles and then eventually it goes back into the garden. It’s a closed system.”
The Vermont farming community, especially the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association, has also helped Adams develop her farm.
“I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to farm in Vermont. I think it’s really unique in the country.” Adams said. “I think there’s very few places like this that are so incredibly supportive.”
Partly because of that support, Adams described the past few years and her efforts to diversify the farm’s products as a “huge success.”
“It’s easy to have an impostor syndrome of like, ‘oh, I don’t know, I’m not a real farmer,’ but I know what I’m doing and [am] really making it happen,” Adams said.
Adams has noticed that more farms in Vermont are following similar models.
“[Farms have] definitely diversified and I think we’re also seeing, at least on the vegetable and flower end of it, a resurgence of these really small farms,” Adams said.
“Had I tried to do this like 20 years earlier, I don’t think it would have been possible, really … farming in Vermont has just grown and continued to grow and I think it will continue to grow,” Adams said.
She identified the biggest barrier to farming as land access. Adams did not have to face that challenge, but she did share that organizations like the Vermont Land Trust are working to help farmers overcome that barrier. According to the group’s website, the Vermont Land Trust can help farmers more affordably purchase land that will also have increased environmental protections.
Adams also encouraged young people to learn how to grow food.
“It’s really enriching and it’s truly just a valuable life skill to have the confidence that yeah, I can grow food for myself,” Adams said. “It’s good for you to get outside and get in the dirt and it’s also really fulfilling to cut a head of lettuce and take it home and be like, ‘I grew this.’”
In this month’s installation, our reporters showcase the evolution of farming in Vermont. From environmental adaptations to overcoming racial barriers to young farmers learning from their families, the Underground Workshop’s March 2024 stories show a spectrum of people and places that take part in the Vermont tradition of agriculture. To learn more about the Underground Workshop, visit our website or check us out on Instagram @undergroundworkshopvt.