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Four Season Farm- Harborside, Maine
Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch and farm manager Clara Coleman
Four Season Farm is a commercial market garden and working farm producing vegetables year-round on Penobscot Bay’s rocky Cape Rosier. Eliot Coleman began clearing the land in 1968, settling down the road from mentors and friends, Scott and Helen Nearing, authors of Living the Good Life. Today Four Season Farm is a nationally recognized model of small-scale sustainable agriculture and Eliot continues to work alongside his partner, writer Barbara Damrosch, and daughter Clara Coleman who manages the farm and is carrying it into the next generation. He also partners with Johnny’s Selected Seeds over in Waterville, Maine to design tools for farmers that “translate intention into action” and he and Clara work with Slow Tools, a collective of farmers, engineers, and makers who brainstorm solutions and new ideas for small farms. Eliot’s classic book The New Organic Grower and the Winter Harvest Handbook are seminal guides offering generous wisdom and advice to new farmers. Last winter Clara founded Real Farmer Care to raise funds for self-care activities for farmers who need it and every dollar donated goes into the hands of farmers.
“There are far more young people getting involved in farming now that when I was a kid, so that’s amazing, but there are still the barriers to entry that continue to be problems – capital and land. I think as long as the enthusiasm continues to be there, people will find a way. The human will is always more powerful than the barriers.” – Clara Coleman
“Any rational food-production system will emphasize the well-being of the soil-air-water biosphere, the creatures which inhabit it, and the human beings who depend upon it.” –Eliot Coleman, The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener
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