River Bend Farm: Meet the Farmer
The Ecology School’s next phase at River Bend Farm will model sustainable community development through the Living Building Challenge dormitory and dining commons. There’s another compelling part of the project that is taking root (literally) alongside the Saco River.
The vast acreage of fertile farmland will soon be home to our agroecology farming operation. In essence, agroecology farming is farming that centers on food production that makes the best use of natural systems and ecosystem services while not damaging nature and the land. This addition to our River Bend Farm "education ecosystem" will enable our Program Team to integrate ecological agricultural practices into the programs and curriculum while providing experiential opportunities for youth and community members to learn about farming, food security, climate resilience, and local food systems.
The half-acre of permaculture gardens that began at Ferry Beach gave root to a robust Food Systems curriculum that now is fully integrated into our programming and inspired our growth to a full-scale farm. This endeavor provides even more opportunities for our educational program participants and other visitors to gain valuable “hands in the dirt” learning.
The goal is for 100% of all produce served in our dining commons to be grown on our own farm. This is a huge goal and we’re excited to start putting the pieces in place to make it happen. To accomplish this, we needed one vital piece of the puzzle: a farmer!
Meet the Farmer
My name is Scott Courcelle. I live with my wife Lindsay and our two kids Ella (4) and Remy (1) in Shrewsbury, Vermont. We own and operate Alchemy Gardens, a small organic farm that produces vegetables, herbs, flowers and bedding plants.
My wife Lindsay and I started our farm business in 2010. We became interested in farming after having a community garden plot in Montpelier, VT in 2008, when we were both serving as Americorps VISTA members. We started spending every afternoon in our garden, and really fell in love with the process of growing our own food and really exploring cooking from scratch as well.
“ Being able to incorporate extremely thoughtful agricultural production on site will add so many wonderful new opportunities for teaching and leading as a cutting-edge example of how to produce food on a larger scale. ”
The following year we apprenticed on a vegetable farm near my hometown in Rutland, VT. Then, the year after that, through the generosity of local farmer Greg Cox, who gave us free use of his land, equipment, and processing area, we began our farm business.
In 2015, Lindsay took a step away from full-time farming to start her career as a massage therapist specializing in myofascial release, and to become a mother. We have had two apprentices every year since then, but this year I am working with just one employee, Katie, who has been with us for two seasons prior.
We currently operate gardens in two locations that are 12 miles apart and 1,000 feet different in elevation. We grow the majority of our crops in Shrewsbury a quarter mile from our house but as our garden is at 1,800’ of elevation and in a cold hollow we do not attempt to grow any of our heat loving crops here. Instead we grow all of the heat loving crops in West Rutland where we started our farm on a piece of land that is at 900’ elevation and at the southern extent of the Champlain Valley (farmers around here refer to it as the “banana belt”) for its relatively warm climate.
We are busy now starting plants in our greenhouses. We are the sole provider of starter plants at the Rutland Area Food Co-op and sell through the farmers market as well. We grow crops to sell at the farmers market, through CSA, an online ordering platform, and through a program called The Farmacy Project, which is a grant funded multi-farm CSA in which participants are prescribed a CSA share by their physician.
Along with growing crops, we have always maintained a focus on education on our farm. We are co-founding members of the Shrewsbury Agricultural Education and Arts Foundation (SAGE). Through SAGE, we are currently working on developing Farm to School curriculum with Shrewsbury Mountain School, our local elementary school, and will be developing the composting program there as well. We have taught countless workshops and regularly led field trips and other community groups in work projects and tours.
A Deep-Seeded Connection to The Ecology School
I am working with The Ecology School to get their farm up and running at River Bend Farm with an eventual goal of producing all of the produce served on site. I worked as a Naturalist at The Ecology School (then FBES) starting in the Spring of 2006. The following term, Fall 2006, my wife Lindsay joined the staff. We hit it off pretty quickly and have been together ever since. We spent the winter after our first term WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) across the country, in order to bring her car from Seattle back to Maine. We got our first taste of the sweet lives of farmers and homesteaders on that trip, grafting fruit trees in California, cleaning up an orchard in New Mexico, cooking in an outdoor kitchen in Georgia, and preparing ground for planting lavender at a goat dairy in North Carolina.
We completed two more terms as Naturalists together at The Ecology School in Spring 2007 and Fall 2007. We met some of our very best friends to this day through our work there. We continued to visit for FOAM Summits, and were asked to present at the 2014 Foam Summit. We absolutely believe in the work that The Ecology School has done all this time, and have incorporated the values and ideals into our work as educators on our own farm.
The Good, the Bad, and the Very Exciting of Farming
My favorite thing about farming is the magic of planting a tiny seed and nurturing it to grow something that is more valuable than gold: good food! It was this idea that served as the inspiration for our farm name, Alchemy Gardens. This idea of working with simple elements; seeds, soil, sun, water and air to create something that is of the greatest value to us all, which actually sustains life still serves as our inspiration! I love working with plants, which is one reason I’ve kept our farm scale small. I don’t want our farm to get so big that I can’t give proper attention to them all and keep things looking tidy. I love to be outdoors under the sun and the endless nuisance of trying to grow things as best I can, with lots of attention to soil science, balancing minerals and using nutrient-dense growing practices. I also love that my kids are growing up immersed in our farm life knowing their plants and eating the freshest food possible.
Farming is a very challenging way to make a living but it is also extraordinarily rewarding. The hardest part is simply that it is so closely tied to factors that are entirely out of our control and fluctuate wildly from day to day and season to season. The job of farming is demanding enough and can be fairly stressful without even beginning to take into consideration the total unpredictability of the weather. The weather dictates when and what we can and cannot do, sometimes it cooperates and plans can proceed as intended and sometimes it presents relentless obstacles that make managing the farm feel next to impossible.
I am so excited to be involved in helping to make The Ecology School’s farm come to life! River Bend Farm itself is such a beautiful site and so full of productive potential. I believe that The Ecology School’s mission of educating people of all ages to be more ecologically literate is critically important. Being able to incorporate extremely thoughtful agricultural production on site will add so many wonderful new opportunities for teaching and leading as a cutting-edge example of how to produce food on a larger scale.
Keep your eyes on our website for the next part of Scott’s blog that will detail what’s being done to prepare the farm for production.
Below are pictures of Scott, his wife Lindsay, and their two children at Alchemy Gardens, their farm in Vermont. Photos courtesy of Scott and Lindsay Courcelle.
