Our Guest

Eliot and his wife, Barbara Damrosch, operate a commercial year-round market garden and run horticultural research projects at their farm called Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine.

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In 1988, Eliot Coleman literally wrote the book on being an organic grower and has been an invaluable resource for organic gardeners and farmers for three decades. He only started growing food because it sounded like an adventure; and he learned how through books and making friends with farmers around the world. We learn who inspired and taught him, how he uses livestock on his farm, how he virtually moved his farm 500 miles to the south for the winter, and more.

• • Being a teacher so he could take adventures until he read a book about farming and picked that as his new adventure
  • His first farm in 1958 with lots of wooded land that needed organic material to help the topsoil
  • A visual perspective of his 14 acres
  • Growing food for the local area and the dedicated customers – not needing to wholesale
  • The key to his healthy products
  • The textbook that explained to him the microbiology in his soil
  • Farm generated fertility and the difference between organic gardening and organic farming

“We were not breaking any of the laws of horticulture!”

• • The importance of creating soil naturally using cover crops and chickens
  • Moving the chickens around to maximize their effect on the land
  • Being a book nerd and learning from them, as well as from other helpful farmers
  • This inspiration that led to the writing of the New Organic Grower
  • A friendship with a Frenchman built over the commonality of seaweed
  • Year-round vegetable farming and the adventure of trying the impossible
  • Really long winters and realizing he was shopping more than growing
  • Deciding to start farming in unheated greenhouses
  • Each layer of plastic moves the covered area 500 miles south

“Making sure that you are nurturing all of those powers that the earth has given for free, and directing them through natural techniques to make the soil more productive than it would be on its own.”

• • The benefits of growing, harvesting, and eating fresh
  • 50 years ago, mentioning ‘organic’ got a whole different reaction

As well as

• His failure – If you don’t fail, then you’re not trying anything new! We still don’t have a handle on the Colorado beetle though
• His success – The winter harvest!
• His drive – Working to make sure everyone is well-fed
• His advice – "If you want to eat well, and you want to trust how the food was grown, then know the first name of the grower. And even better, since you know your own first name, make sure you are the grower."

Books written by Eliot

Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long 2nd Edition 

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses

The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener, 2nd edition

The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener, 30th Anniversary Edition 

Eliot’s Book recommendations

Make friends with your land: A chemist looks at organiculture  – Leonard Wickenden

How to reach Eliot

Website:  fourseasonfarm.com

UrbanFarm.org/eliotcoleman

Note: You can also find these books mentioned above at one of our favorite local independent bookstores and have the satisfaction of knowing you are supporting a small business.

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