Farmer Stories

Small-scale vertical integration at a roadside fruit stand farm in British Columbia

Over 60 fruits and vegetables on 10 acres, a remote location, a short growing season and a pernicious pest: There are plenty of challenges for organic growers Doug and Michelle Nimchuk. But business is good.

By Don Lotter

Flowers and fine olive oil in California’s Central Valley

Mike and Diane Madison sell 20,000 bunches of cut flowers a year through direct market and retail. They also grow clementines and high quality olives for oil. An innovative member arrangement—picking olives in exchange for oil—allows them to avoid the headaches and anxieties of being employers.

By Don Lotter

Ahead of the curve

Phil Coturri has been growing organic wine grapes in Sonoma for 25 years, and 10 years ago helped set the trend for organic olive oil production in California. For both crops, his management principles center on diverse cover crops, composts, careful use of irrigation and constant attention to the flavors of the final product.

By Henry Homeyer
Posted January 27, 2005

Coturri Olives

Coturri Olives

Coturri Olives

Coturri Olives

Coturri Olives

At Lost Cabin Ranch in north-central Arizona, farm, family and work have evolved together into a sustainable, interdependent whole.

By Susan Lamb
Excerpted by permission from A New Plateau:
Sustaining the lands and peoples of Canyon Country.

Posted January 7, 2005

Independent innovation

On the banks of the Willamette River, this farmer and seedsman has turned his operation into one-man alternative agricultural experiment station.

By Dan Sullivan
January 27, 2005

Time for change

The story of Tilth’s remarkable birth also charts the beginnings of the sustainable agriculture movement

By Dan Sullivan
January 27, 2005

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