I am Spencer Blackwell. I own Elmer Farm in East Middlebury. My wife and I founded the farm in 2007 after moving here from the Chittenden County. So we immediately, when we moved here, approached the co-op about what they would purchase from us.

When we started farming in Middlebury, we were on land that had been in hay and corn for a number of years and it hadn't been fertilized very heavily to the same extent that those soils in the Intervale and Burlington were. And so, where we were approaching growing with a mindset of, “We just have to stop the weeds from taking over,” which is what happens in the Intervale, we didn't have a whole lot of weeds, but we didn't have a whole lot of growth either, because our fertility was so low.

So our first year we were known for our miniature vegetables: our leeks that look more like scallions, and our brussel sprouts that look like peas—which, of course, generally, the... in the high-end marketplace anyways, miniature is desired. It's not desired in terms of production and getting paid by the pound. So we, we didn't make a lot of money our first year, but we did get a reputation for having gorgeous miniature little things.