Orange Circle Farm; Sustainable Agriculture in Berwick

“Sustainable North Berwick” sent questions to Orange Circle Farm to learn more about their operation. Owner & Farmer Jeff Benton took time to answer and discuss.

Join "Sustainable North Berwick" on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1PMn6RijLV/

Check out Orange Circle Farm's website: https://orangecirclefarm.com/

Introduction:

After reading this interview aloud to my family, the feedback was clear: less of me and more of Jeff! And it was obviously true. It was great learning a bunch about the farm and Jeff had such great and thoughtful answers to all my questions, which can often ramble or meander. Alas, I am no journalist and this blog series profiling local and sustainable businesses is mostly a passion project of mine. But it has been a wonderful journey thus far that has taught me a lot about sustainability and local businesses, not to mention interviewing people. I hope readers find the discussion enjoyable and informative. I can't thank Jeff enough for taking the time to answer all my questions.

Jeff's approach to Sustainability is broken down into four classic groupings: environmental, social, economic, and human. He chooses to avoid the term 'sustainability' in any of their marketing because of how vague the term is, and because of how it can mean different things to different people. Though I still find it quite clear from the interview, and from the operation at Orange Circle Farm, that sustainable principles and practices are important to Jeff nonetheless. When asked about areas for improvement on sustainability at the farm, he gave a great answer with plenty of ideas for the future and some great decisions that were made to reduce plastic packaging.

I respect and admire the work being done by Jeff and Orange Circle Farm. I think the attention he gives to the farming methods speaks to a deep care for quality. My family can happily attest to the quality of the farm produce as members of their CSA. We look forward to being members again next year and checking out their seedling and flower programs.

I completely understand Jeff's shying away from the term 'sustainability' because of the inherent vagueness, however, I am pleased to report that even after just four interviews with local business owners I have found some consistency in shared language and core fundamental principles to serve our general purposes regarding how we can engage and identify as 'sustainable':

• Connection: Whether we talk about connection to the land, people, food, family, or to community, sustainability often comes back to forming or strengthening a deeper connection.

• Cooperation: Each business owner I have talked to has been open to broader cooperation and participation. Some have even modeled their business around it.

• Communication: Every question I have asked (even the really lengthy ones) has been answered, and thoughtfully. Local, sustainable business owners appear to prioritize open, honest, and transparent communication with their patrons and community. In the interview Jeff mentions 'accountability' as a benefit of local farms, which I think starts with a commitment to communication.

• Long, long time horizons: From delving into the wisdom of past generations, or reciting family memories and recipes, to Forever Farms or the minding of succeeding landowners or caretakers, my interviews with sustainable business owners feature language ripe with callbacks to distant history and nods to far futures.

• Educating Customers: Because of how broad the term 'sustainability' can be, and the wide range of ways to approach it, I often find that business owners who try to be sustainable invest a good deal of time and effort in educating their customers.

• Quality, quality, quality: As much as I try and steer the focus of the interview to 'sustainability', especially environmental sustainability, it always comes back around to quality. Quality of the product, process, method, input, soil, ingredients, artistry, craft, design, approach... and so on. So far, each business owner I've talked to weighs 'sustainability' as just one important part of the bigger picture in offering great Quality to their customers. I love to see that and completely agree; I think that's right where 'sustainability' needs to be positioned.

I'll leave the discussion there for now and get to my interview with Jeff and Orange Circle Farm, read below:

Questions & Answers:

After telling my family that I'd be asking you a bunch of questions about the farm and operation, here are some of the questions that they have for you:

My six-year-old son wants to know, do you have any animals on the farm?

My four-year-old daughter says to say hi to the animals. 

My wife is curious about some of the bugs; which are the problematic ones, what do you do about those, and are there some good bugs in the mix?

"We don't have animals on the farm much to the disappointment of kids everywhere. When we first started, we had a large flock of laying hens. We quickly realized that it was a clumsy fit with the rest of the operation in terms of work flows, food safety and marketing outlets.

We do have plenty of bugs, both in terms of beneficials and pests. The pests like flea beetles, aphids, cucumber beetles, cabbage worms, hornworms etc., are the ones we notice the most. We don't use pesticides, so we rely on other physical methods of control including crop rotations and row covers along with more methodical systems like timing and sequencing.

For instance, flea beetles affect our brassica crops (kale, radishes, bok choy, etc.) which we rely on in the shoulder seasons. We have a sequencing plan that removes all of the brassicas from the field for 2-3 weeks in July to starve the flea beetles and break their life cycle. No products, just planning. This greatly reduces populations for our fall brassica plantings and subsequently the over-wintering population on the edges of the garden. We still have outbreaks from time to time, but it's become a minimal issue.

We've experimented with lots of methods over the years including methods like companion planting where we would plant marigolds with cabbages or sweet alyssum with tomatoes to ward off pests or attract beneficials. Or planting hedgerows of plants specifically to attract beneficial insects to control the population of pests. The results are usually mixed enough to inspire plenty of doubt, though we still dabble with these ideas as the farm evolves."

On your website I saw that you've been growing vegetables in the Seacoast area since 2010. Can you share some more back stories on those early days, how and why you got into farming? When you started in 2010, was that your earliest introduction to farming? Was this work something you had always been familiar with, or did you jump into it as a novice?

"I started my first backyard garden when I was in grad school getting a non-agriculturally related degree. It only included a handful of tomato plants with some other meager attempts of lettuce and radishes. But it was enough to spark an interest. When I graduated in the winter of 2009, in the midst of the recession, there were no job openings on the other side.

In hopes of bridging the employment gap constructively, I moved to a Seacoast farm (then Brookford Farm in Rollinsford, now Brandmoore Farm) the next spring as a novice. From the beginning, I liked the physicality of the work paired with the seemingly endless speculation of how and why things worked or how it could be better. There were so many layers to all of the daily actions that continued to inspire more curiosity. And then there was the fresh, simple food on the other end. It was a good fit.

I worked there for a year and then on two other farms over the next three years learning different growing methods and business models before ultimately deciding to start my own operation in 2014."

I admire those people that choose farming as a profession or lifestyle. I grew up in a very rural and predominantly agricultural area in upstate New York. Growing up in that area, even if your family didn't farm, you'd almost always wind up working on a farm in some capacity for extra cash in the spring or summer before graduating high school. Whether it was tossing hay, cleaning barns, or picking rocks, every local farm needed an extra pair of hands for something or other. Back then we absorbed much, or at least a little bit, of farming culture through a sort of osmosis, regardless of whether we would later become farmers ourselves. 

To come back around to the previous question about your back story, given that farming is obviously a lot of hard work and often very challenging, I always wonder what the specific call to farming is for each farmer out there, and to what degree the decision to farm is premeditated and rational versus something that is more natural and instinctual? What was your call to farm, and was it destined to be so?

"I grew up in the suburbs and didn't have a huge connection to farming growing up. My grandparents grew a lot of food but mostly in a homesteading context by the time I came along.

There were plenty of cotton and peanut fields around but I never heard farming talked about in a way that framed it as a job or career. The fields were never full of people. Only interacted with by tractors and crop dusters.

We got most of our food from grocery stores, though I remember noticing my mom preferring to get tomatoes from roadside stands if they were available.

For me, farming started with a desire to simplify, so perhaps more rational than instinctual. I liked the simplicity of growing food in the backyard and saving a trip to the grocery store. And it tasted great!"

You are a Master Food Preserver and an avid home chef from what I can tell. Is the love for farming and the love of food a chicken or the egg sort of quandary, or is there one passion that drives the other? 

The careful attention you give to the soil, irrigation, selection of any inputs, the farming methods, and then the equal attention given to the prep, care, cooking and even preserving of the vegetables... it is an impressive holistic approach to the cycle of farming and food. It feels like maybe somewhere in there is a deeper connection being forged. Is there a driving force that goes beyond the love of food or farming that takes a higher precedence in your holistic approach? Or does mastering the production of quality soil and food, in and of itself, relegate any other high-minded pursuits as perhaps superfluous?

"Working on other farms, I quickly became familiar with the struggles of dealing with products that had a short shelf life and trying to balance production with demand on a weekly and often daily basis. The moments of scarcity weren't as problematic to me as the moments of over abundance and waste.

I was able take advantage of the Master Food Preserver course offered by UMaine Cooperative Extension to learn the nuances of preservation. At first, I thought it was going to be part of the farm's business plan in some way. I eventually discovered that most folks interested in big preservation projects are backyard growers looking to extend their own harvest. This is one of the founding ideas behind offering seedlings each spring.

In regards to the connection between growing and cooking more generally, I don't know if it's something to overthink. I've always had big appetite and love eating! I'm an average home chef, but I know I have the freshest, highest quality ingredients. From that starting point, it's hard to go wrong in the kitchen."

Speaking of food, I'm curious if you sell your vegetables commercially at all, to any markets or maybe even restaurants? Outside of joining your crop share, is there anywhere that customers could purchase vegetables or other products from Orange Circle Farm? We would follow the food as patrons of a local restaurant if that was going on. 

"Our Vegetable CSA has always been our primary offering and starting point of the garden plan each year. By knowing how many members were growing for at the start of each year, we're able to minimize waste in our production both in terms of food waste and wasted time and effort.

I think it was about six years ago when we stopped pursuing any other outlets (markets and restaurants) to focus on the CSA. We still have friends in the industry that we serve from time to time, but it's minimal."

You started Orange Circle Farm back in 2014, and production started in 2018. If you don't mind me asking, how has business been? Things can change a lot over a decade, and I'd love to hear what you've been observing for industry trends over the years. Is there more competition, higher costs, changing yields, larger markets or changing share of the market, changing demographics, new consumer trends or disruptions? I'm unfamiliar with the business model and would enjoy hearing more about how the business functions and get a glimpse of what you see for the future of your farm business and industry. 

"To be clear, production started on this Berwick property in 2018. We grew on rented land in Stratham for four years before the move, so 2025 was the 12th year of the business.

At this point, business is steady. Our only point of growth is with our flowers as more of our perennial plantings are starting to mature. In terms of vegetables, we're maximizing the infrastructure that we have in place and aren't trying to grow or expand. What we have works for our current needs, and I would rather spend my efforts on refining our production and keeping our offerings at a high quality than chasing the next trend.

The CSA model is well known in this region. Our particular version that includes pre-packed shares tends to appeal to folks who are comfortable in the kitchen and can easily work with whatever they get. They value not having to make decisions about which items to get at the store. Who wants to make more tedious decisions in a day anyway? Instead, they start with the fresh ingredients on hand and from there, they can explore the possibilities. It takes a bit to get used to, but we've found that it's a dynamic that a lot of people enjoy."

I mentioned competition, as to whether there has been increased competition over the last decade, but I'm not sure I can picture what competition looks like in your industry. In my industry, residential landscaping, there is an over-abundance of competition, and I think it is pretty apparent to those outside of my industry. Can the same be said for farming, or is the opposite true? Or is competition maybe the wrong way of looking at the relationship between your farm operation and others? 

What are some farm operations that you look at for inspiration, and what are some things those farms are doing that catches your eye?

"I don't find there to be much competition with other local farms. There just aren't that many of us doing this work.

Our relationship with other farms is more collaborative than competitive. We're very open about sharing our experiences in terms of growing methods, marketing approaches, finances and all of the other things that go into making these farm businesses work.

I'm familiar with a lot of farms both locally and nationally. I take away pieces and parts from them all but listing just some of them doesn't feel like it does all the others justice and a comprehensive list would be unreadable.

The one piece of advice that I think of often came at a farmer conference many years ago from another grower I didn't know: 'Farming is simple. The hardest part is keeping it simple.'"

Looking ahead, can you share what the future of Orange Circle Farm might look like as a business? I know your hands are probably full at the perpetually ambitious task of bettering the soil and growing nutritious food, but, do you have any big changes on the horizon for the business operation? Are you looking to expand at all or change up product offering?

"The business is in a relatively comfortable place right now, so there's not a lot of big changes on the immediate horizon. The CSA will continue to be our primary offering for both vegetables and flowers. And we'll continue to offer seedlings in the spring."

You offered a meet and greet to answer questions from the community at the Berwick Library and I thought that was just awesome. I really wish I could have made it and brought my kids to ask about the farm. Knowing the exact source of your food at the dinner table is an extraordinary thing, but getting to learn from the farmers that grow the food is even better. I get the sense that you really value serving the local community and I wanted to ask more about that:

Do you have a personal connection with the local land, community, or area? Did you grow up around here? Has that personal connection changed over the years?

What is the role that local agriculture plays in the community? What has Orange Circle Farm done, or is doing, to champion that role? What has the local community done to foster, support, or encourage that relationship?

Do you think local farms and agriculture need to play a larger role in the community moving forward, and if so, what are some ways we can work toward that?

"I was hoping the meet and greet sessions (Farmer Office Hours) would be a good opportunity to connect with CSA members that I don't know personally. This year we had over 175 members in our vegetable CSA picking up in at 5 different locations (6 if you count our Portland Flower CSA pickup).

There's just not enough time to make those personal connections in the midst of the busy growing season.

So some of it is selfish. I enjoy getting to meet folks who are essentially neighbors to me and each other.

My bigger aspiration is to create opportunities for members to connect with one another. I start to get carried away by the thought that there's so many members who are probably making a dinner that's very similar to their neighbors because they all start with the same ingredients. And isn't that a great starting point for a human connection that seems harder and harder to come by these days. Food can be a great way to bring people together!

We've tried other things in the past in this same vein like farm tours, bonfires, concerts, workshops, canning classes, volunteer days and even a private social media group in the pandemic. Envision Berwick has helped with some of those. I once had a teacher who emphasized the need to put out different calls to attract different groups of people. 'You can't keep sending out the loon call and be surprised when loons are the only ones showing up to meetings.'

We don't have the infrastructure for easily hosting agri-tourism events on the farm. Especially when you consider that Hackmatack Farm is just down the road as well as Lavender Hill Farm and The Barn at Dunn Farm. So we try different things as we have the capacity and inspiration.

Next year we're aiming to connect members with the practical intention of helping with CSA pickup. For instance, if there's 5 members coming from Wells to pick up in Berwick on Thursdays, how can we set up a way for them to connect and coordinate with each other so that everyone doesn't have to make the same trip.

I honestly go back and forth on whether or not these types of effort make sense for the farm to take on. A lot of times I think it's hard enough just to grow the food and flowers and that should be enough. Realistically it is. So the added inspiration comes from wanting to live in a place where neighbors are connected and the sense of community comes from real, face-to-face relationships."

Outside of one's experience in the field or working on the farm, are there periphery or ancillary skills one should develop to become a better farmer? Anything that you feel is crucial to success that can be pulled from the university, corporate world, or elsewhere? 

"There's so many components to a farming operation that extend well beyond planting and harvesting. If you're good at logistics, your farm will likely look much different that someone who is great at marketing. And that farm would be different than the one run by the mechanical minded person or the one who thrives in their understanding of plant biology. Most growers I know wear many of these hats out of necessity. There's only so far any one specialty can take you on a small farm so I find it more helpful to embrace the role of a generalist. Basic observation and problem solving skills go a long way here."

On Sustainability:

I don't think it helps anything when terms like "sustainable" become politically loaded, as terms so often do, and I sometimes feel as though the term sustainable has steadily become more loaded. To me, sustainability is more a categorical aspect of quality than anything else. Is this thing, or that thing, of quality? And then one may sort of run down through a mental checklist of static features, characteristics, or attributes that a thing might possess to earn final marks of having high quality. Whether the thing is sustainable or not, ought to be on that checklist. And whether the term has become politicized or not, if something is unsustainable, I would deem it as unworthy of being called good quality. At the absolute bare minimum, whether something is sustainable should be at least part of the discussion. This is along the philosophical framework posed in "On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence" by Robert M. Pirsig.

Of course, there is also the relationship between sustainability and our ongoing environmental crisis, colloquially referred to as Climate Change. At which point the frame of reference changes quite a bit, and whether something is sustainable may be a question of the degree of impact and harm rather than simply an assessment of a thing's quality. The fervent momentum behind environmental sustainability can take it off the rails here, where marketers can exploit people's desire to do good by manipulating the marketplace to simply validate rather than making significant changes to core problems posed by excessive consumerism.

That would be my take anyway.

I'd like to ask questions through both lenses, the platonic assessment of quality and the more pertinent aggrandized version, if that is alright.

This is from your website, on farming methods:

"All vegetables and seedlings produced on Orange Circle Farm are certified organic by MOFGA. We are also certified by the Real Organic Project.

We grow without using any types of herbicides, fungicides or pesticides, even OMRI listed products.  Instead, we use a holistic approach to soil health and ecology which helps reduce pest and disease pressure.

We are now a fully no-till operation using compost, cover crops, mulches, crop diversity and mindful irrigation to support the health of our soil and our planet.

Our barn (which includes our walk-in cooler and irrigation well) is powered by an off-grid solar array."

That sounds like a pretty darn sustainable operation to me, but just to confirm, do you consider Orange Circle Farm to be a sustainable agriculture operation?

Is sustainability something that you prioritize in your operation? What does sustainability mean to you? What does it mean for the farm or for agriculture more broadly?

"I don't use the term 'sustainable' in any of our marketing because it's so vague in how it means different things to different people.

I tend to think about sustainability within the four classic groupings: environmental, social, economic, and human.

In terms of environmental sustainability, we do a lot of common sense things here that I believe are good practices in terms of minimizing our negative impact on the environment and maximizing our positive impact. But measuring our success or shortcomings in a comprehensive way is a bit too subjective to boast about.

We gauge our social sustainability through the relationships with our CSA members and crew. Our CSA retention rate has been between 70-75% for the last five years and our only full time employee, Audra, has been here for the last five years. Though we do have intermittent trouble filling our other part time position so there's room for improvement there.

Economically, we're in a good enough spot that growth isn't as tempting as maintaining quality. But that very much wasn't the case for the first six or so years. And even then, the move to Berwick wouldn't have been feasible without some significant financial support from family.

In terms of human sustainability, it's also a mixed bag. The farm will always absorb as much time and effort as you offer it so boundaries are important. Here at the end of the season, I know I'm likely to give a more favorable assessment of this. May, June and July can, and often does, have a very different answer. And to think back over the history the farm, this category probably been the most out of balance. Keeping all of these in some kind of dynamic balance seems more of an ongoing ambition rather than a static state of achievement."

Can you tell me more about the Forever Farms program through the Maine Farmland Trust (MFT), which Orange Circle Farm is a part of. How did that come to be, was that something that you pursued or that preceded Orange Circle Farm and is more associated with the land itself than the farm operation?

On my visits to my hometown, it feels apparent that the local farms I grew up with are struggling mightily. I can speculate on the many possible reasons, and I could certainly be wrong, but that is just to convey the great jolt of hope that I get when I arrive at the Orange Circle Farm stand to pick up our crop share, and everything looks vibrant, and the Forever Farm sign is out front. Great branding for the program and what you are doing with the land. 

What has been the history of your involvement with MFT, where do things stand now, what happens next? I'd love to hear all that you can share about Forever Farms. 

"It was actually the previous land-owners that initiated the process of conservation with Maine Farmland Trust. They were having trouble selling this 70-acre piece of land. They worked with MFT to create a conservation easement that would go into effect only if they had a buyer lined up. The conservation easement meant that the land would have permanent limitations on how it was developed. Ultimately, MFT paid the owners for the development rights which lowered the price of that land so that me and my partner could afford it. The easement is fairly flexible in terms of activities related to agriculture but rather limiting in the other things that can be done/built.

There's a lot of land on Blackberry Hill Road that also has conservation easements on them, so hopefully this road will continue to offer the opportunity to be an agricultural hotspot for Berwick for many years to come.

Over the past few years MFT has expanded their scope to include making sure the lands they have protected remain viable for agricultural production in the face of climate change. We were able to participle in their Soil Health Network that included some continuing education opportunities as well as creating a formal risk assessment plan around issues pertaining to climate change. It was through that program that we receiving a grant that helped us address our flooding issues in our high tunnel."

I'd love to hear more about Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners (MOFGA) and Real Organic Project. What is Orange Circle Farm's involvement with MOFGA, what kind of support might come from these organizations, or what role you play within MOFGA, or what initiatives if any are you helping them promote. 

Particularly the Real Organic Project I find very fascinating. I've come to learn that what is organic is not necessarily sustainable, and what is sustainable is not necessarily organic. I'm excited to learn more and listen to some of their podcasts. How did you find out about them and what made you decide to join their project? Are you part of any of their ongoing initiatives? What was the certification process like and is that something that must be revisited frequently? Do you expect more farms to join the project?

"We choose to certify our products as organic as a good, concise starting point for communication with our customers. It's never been anything controversial or sacrificial for us other than some paper work, an annual inspection and fees ($1655 in 2025). All of our practices are well within the margins of certified organic standards. MOFGA is our certifying agent of the National Organic Program (NOP). Of course, the organic standards have been increasingly compromised over the years. A few years ago, hydroponic crops (crops not grown in the soil) became eligible to be certified organic. The Real Organic Project (ROP) was conceived of as a response to those lowered standards. They require you to first be certified through the NOP and then meet some additional criteria that dives a bit deeper into things like labor and growing practices. Again, nothing we aren't already doing and this certification is free. They require an annual application online, and they visit the farm for inspection every five years. This year, the MOFGA inspector and the ROP inspector were the same person at the same time.

At this point, the ROP is trying to gain traction as label recognized and understood by consumers. There's increasing pressure to make it a stand-alone label (not contingent on USDA organic certification), so we'll see how that plays out.

I'd say the criteria for both of these certifications are pretty basic. Our personal standards are much higher, but they don't conflict with these baseline standards so we're happy to include them in our marketing materials. We've often joked that the incentives are pretty inverted here, and it's the conventional farms who should have to pay for certification to be able to spray all of their chemicals. I know Maine as a pesticide applicator license, but those fees are only about 7% the costs of organic certification fees. I digress."

As for the effectiveness of these programs, initiatives, or methods in the context of sustainable agriculture, how do you measure success? Is it quality of the food or vegetables grown, is it yield, is it soil quality or health, biodiversity, something else? Are there any arbitrary data points and what are they, how do you select a specific timeline or specific area of land to observe and analyze?

As an outsider, a lot of the time it feels easier to grasp the negative effects of poor farming practices or bad land management, from contaminated waters, erosion issues, loss of fertile soil, dramatic declines in biodiversity, sharp changes in localized microclimates, etc. But I also wonder what the baseline metrics are, what the data shows, what are the data points, if there are any Key Performance Indicators, targets, benchmarks, tangible industry standards or guidelines. I asked Riverside Farm a lot more technical questions about their operation, probably too many, about what gets measured, why and how. And though it seems that there is a renewed focus on sustainable agriculture moving forward on their farm, I got the sense that much of the analysis was done from soil sampling and testing. 

Could any of the inputs, or outputs, be monitored for improved insights and indications of stress on land or soil, capacity, fertility, brittleness, or the conclusive success of the variety of different farming methods? For example, is water consumption or water demand something that can be feasibly measured and monitored? Amount of composted material added, ratio of rested land to productive land, crop yields, things like that. Are there ways to measure or quantify biodiversity in an area, or erosion impacts, or microclimate trends?

Maybe the better question here is whether it is worthwhile approaching sustainable agriculture from an analytical or data driven lens? And if so, are small farms doing that? Does Orange Circle Farm?

"There are lots of ways to measure and analyze soil and plants at different stages. Many of these may be more relevant for growers with 500 acres of a single crop. It's much more intricate to test for 60 bed feet of bok choy next to 45 bed feet of lettuce next to 20 bed feet of cilantro. The costs quickly get prohibitive and the results can be difficult to react to for crops that are in the ground for only 4-5 weeks. That being said, our only scientific measurement is the soil tests we take each fall.

So how do we measure success? Not nearly as scientifically specific as you'd like based on the detail of your question. There's simply too many variables to account for. It's a lot of trial and error. With lots of notes to document what happened. Over time, we observe how the soil evolves. How the different plantings fair in comparison to the other years. How significant is the pest pressure and how does it change.

At the end of the day, I'm really looking to see how the crops turn out and how difficult was it to get there. If the answers are 'great' and 'less than last time', I'd count that as a success."

In your opinion, has Climate Change had a real tangible impact on agricultural operations on the Seacoast area? If so, what sort of things have been impacted? What are some of the trends you have observed? What things are more challenging as a result, and have there been any positive effects?

"From a micro point of view, I don't categorically distinguish between climate change and weather. If we associate climate change with increasingly erratic weather, then we can attest to that. Until there's a few months of mostly pleasant weather, which does happen. Then we conveniently forget.

Overall, we aim to have all of the tools in place to deal with whatever conditions we're presented with. It's my understanding that the long term forecast of this area calls for more rain overall, but fewer rain events. So we have to be prepared for both droughts and floods. Hence the efforts to deal with projects like improving drainage around the high tunnel.

In general, we're a farm of averages. In making a plan each year, we analyze our notes from the past few seasons and aim for the middle.

The CSA model itself is a low-risk, low-reward format. This year, we had a great growing season and most all of our weekly shares were slightly inflated in terms of value. Two years ago, we had a terrible season and struggled to get our weekly shares up to value, especially in the early season after heavy rains and a late spring frost (24 degrees on May 18). Financially, both of those seasons were essentially the same for us. The big difference was the experience of our CSA members.

We try to be upfront and clear with our members about these struggles as they happen through our weekly newsletter and conversations. They're usually pretty sympathetic since they live here too and are witnessing the same extreme events. The shared risk helps to form a relationship that deepens everyone's connection to their food week after week and year after year. It's also how we can celebrate bountiful years like this one just a little more."

I try to keep a keen eye on water quality and accessibility issues locally and nationally. The continued availability of clean fresh water as a shared critical resource for humans, land, animals and infrastructure is a major concern of mine. Often it feels like the threat is obscured or downplayed. 

Local agriculture appears to be best positioned as the primary steward of this shared resource, for better or worse. Are small operations doing enough to protect water quality and supply? Are there regulatory requirements to monitor and report agricultural water usage and cleanliness? What watershed does Orange Circle Farm pull from or directly impact, and who are the immediate stakeholders? What is the current state of the watershed, is it relatively healthy or are there known problems? Do you feel that our local municipalities, or are our state government adequately handling water issues?

If you told me that I was overly concerned and that perhaps these issues are in fact overblown, I wouldn't be totally shocked. But I'm curious what your thoughts are. 

I’d be thrilled to read any blogs you write about the geology, watershed, aquifers, and soil composition of Orange Circle Farm and the area if you ever wanted to post something about all that stuff. 

"These are good questions, but I don't have many good answers. We are required by FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) to test our water periodically. I'm not sure if water tests are required as part of organic certification or just highly recommended."

What do you see as areas of improvement for sustainability on the farm? Is there anything that you feel Orange Circle Farm is way out ahead on regarding sustainable agriculture?

"There's always room for improvement.

We're still pretty vulnerable to a lot of high winds, especially during the shoulder seasons. Creating strategic hedgerows could be a good start, but we're not there yet. And we're still vulnerable to too much rain. We've stopped growing in some of our garden plots most prone to flooding, but the property as a whole is pretty poorly drained. It's tempting to take on some large scale land sculpting projects to improve drainage. At the same time, we don't want to create too many constraints on how the land is used after Orange Circle Farm. So there's always a backlog of ideas that evolve as our understanding of the land improves.

Next year, we'll be offering all our seedlings as soil blocks only (no plastic cells or pots). We've been working toward that transition for a few years now.

A few years ago we started growing all of our straw mulch. We may start trying to harvest our own seed from those grasses to use for future plantings.

I'm probably the most excited about our decision to eliminate plastic bags for packaging several years ago. It meant that we stopped growing baby salad greens and focused more on growing heads of lettuce. We stopped growing baby spinach that was harvested leaf by leaf and weighed. Instead, we started growing a different spinach variety with longer stems that could be bunched with a rubber band. Now our only packaging is rubber bands, and we take those back for reuse."

I tend to think that the term "Sustainable" can be politicized. One problem with that, I believe, is that it can sort of inflate misinformed demand, which then in turn drives Greenwashing as the market response to that increased demand. Have you come across "Greenwashing" at any scale in your industry?  

Greenwashing is the deceptive practice of making misleading or false claims about the environmental benefits of a product, service, or company appear more sustainable than it is. 

I see it a lot in landscaping. I try to be honest with my clients and inform that as a "Sustainable Hardscaper" I try my best to improve construction methods to prioritize sustainability and minimize harmful impact, but that ultimately much of hardscaping is not inherently sustainable. Locally sourced natural stone in my parlance can often mean stone that is pulled from a local quarry, and not everyone is a big fan of the environmental impact caused by a quarry right down the road. Whether that is more sustainable than a pallet of concrete pavers shipped halfway across the country, or even versus pavers manufactured locally is a difficult question. More still, is the situation where the landscaping industry lobbies local and state government for less regulation and less oversight on fertilizer and pesticide usage. The steady commercial contracts for landscape maintenance in many ways prop up the market for other niche landscape trades like hardscaping, and many of the large landscape companies behind those lobbying efforts also like to simultaneously compete in the sustainability space. The claims for sustainable landscape operations thus become disingenuous at best and the greenwashing pops up everywhere. At the end of the day, it becomes extremely challenging for the consumer who is probably just trying their best to make a responsible and educated decision. 

If greenwashing is part of the agricultural industry too, how do you handle that? How do you stand apart from it? Do you have any advice for the consumer about what to look for or what questions to ask?

"In our marketing materials, I aim to be clear as to the steps we take in our production. Though I don't think it's sticking point for most of our customers at this point. For instance, I'm not overly confident that our CSA members know what no-till production looks like in comparison to standard tillage.

In general, I think our bottlenecks to growth as a local food movement revolve more around distribution and customer convenience than the nuances of production.

If we get to the point that there are enough farms around to be competitive with each other enough to bring up a greenwashing issue, I think that would be a positive evolution.

The benefit of local farms is their accountability. You can ask us questions directly and get real answers. For example, this interview. We're here for it! The strange part comes when customers have a much higher set of standards of what's acceptable from us local producers in comparison to what they'll accept from an anonymous brand at a big store."

Any industry trends you are tracking that are concerning or exciting? Do you see small farms making a comeback, more farmers coming up in the workforce, a surge in sustainable farming methods?

"I think the demand for local food is largely in conflict with the modern day conveniences we've grown accustomed to. If we, as local producers, can find some creative ways to remove that barrier, I think there's potential to expand our market. Home cooking has been trending up since the pandemic, and as folks become more engaged with their ingredients, the quality of local produce is the next logical step. We (local farmers) all saw the huge increase in demand back in 2020 that was exciting and raised a lot more questions around our capacity to serve a larger audience. In that context, it seemed much more feasible for new farming operations to get started. The outlook is a bit murkier since then, and I'm as curious as anyone to see how it evolves."

My last question is about the challenge, or opportunity, of integrating modern technology with sustainable agriculture. I'm a big Wendell Berry fan, so I think that my default is to be suspicious of modern technology for the purpose of optimizing agricultural production. I just switched back to a flip phone and ditched the smart phone (one small step in my book), so I am absolutely biased on this one. Big Data and AI are not for me personally, and the inability to be free of tech's shadow is frustrating to me. But I have read articles about farms using drones and data to identify tiny spots of land where additional inputs cannot be optimized for increased crop yield. Theoretically, if I understand correctly, this will allow farmers to allocate the optimal inputs for nearly every square foot of farmland in production. With a more comprehensive view of hyper-specific energy cycles, water cycles, microclimates, aquifers, watersheds, erosion, topography, geology, soil, so on and so forth, then dramatic improvements in efficiency can be made across the entire farm operation. 

Is this approach a short-term solution to many of the problems posed by Big Ag, or could it be feasible as a long-term solution? Is it a solution at all? Or is it again misguidedly romanticizing the grandeur of machinery and tech over the toil of land, labor, and soil? Which is to say, is it too good to be true? And are these modern tech methods something that small farms can pursue, or is this another way of costing out the competition? Is there a perfect balance to be struck between tech and sustainable agriculture?

"It's tempting to go down some rabbit holes here, but it all seems so far removed from the farm's daily reality. I don't feel especially wanting of new tech to make production more efficient. I don't perceive production as a bottleneck to the local food system nearly as much as other factors like land access, food distribution and market demand.

I'm a little more excited about tech in terms of how it could enhance our customer interactions, but only a little.

I'll just say that I'm not holding my breath in hopes that some form of tech will make my job easier."

Thank you Jeff!

And thanks for reading!