Vendor Spotlight: Green Hart Farms

New The Eco Market vendor spotlight: Green Hart Farms, a local family farm located just outside of New Hamburg with a commitment to sustainable agriculture. We sent them a few questions about the work they do, here are there answers!

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1. Tell me about your business/organization.

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We are a small farm just outside New Hamburg.  Throughout each season, we grow a wide variety of vegetables from arugula to cucumbers and tomatoes, which we sell through various farmers markets and our veggie box delivery program (CSA).



2. How do you work to keep sustainability at the core of your business?
 

We work to become sustainable in several ways:

  • by reducing waste: we use biodegradable plastic mulch in our gardens, and reuse our trays and landscape fabric for several years instead of taking them to the landfill at the end of each season

  • by feeding our soil- we believe that healthy soil leads to strong, healthy plants.  So we constantly feed our soils by using practices such as cover cropping, mulching and adding organic fertilizers and soil amendments.  

  • by planting trees: most years we'll plant at least a few trees to act as windbreaks and provide a home for wildlife (especially birds) 

3. Tell me about you/your team. What got you/your team here to a green business/organization? Why?

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My parents farmed before I was born, and I was involved in our family farm from a young age. I became interested in growing vegetables after volunteering at Everdale organic farm and Green Being Farm.  The next year I tried a small farmers market and just grew from there. Now we (my family has helped me all along) run a vegetable box delivery program as well as attending the Cambridge and Stratford farmers markets during the spring/summer.  

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 4. What are you up to? Any new events? Products?



New for this year- we are doing a mini 6 week program veggie delivery program to kick off  the season.  We're aiming to have our first delivery on the 2nd week of May, although we may be delayed slightly by the cool weather that we have been experiencing this spring.

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