Boiceville Cottage
A Home Garden and Community Farmstand

We participated in an organic farming internship while living in upstate New York, part of an innovative Sustainable  Farming and Food Systems program. We spent the winter and spring tapping maple trees, prepping production beds, planting seedlings, and learning how to operate a productive farm. In the process, we gained valuable insight into how farming can benefit local communities. At the end of the program, Farmer Todd gifted us a variety of vegetable seedlings which we grew in our home garden. Over the next few months, we ate an abundance of fresh vegetables and herbs from the garden along with wild-foraged mushrooms, berries, and leeks - we found that food we had grown ourselves and picked straight from the garden or forest was exponentially tastier than what we found in stores. We wanted to share our success with others, so we helped local individuals start their own vegetable gardens and consulted with them to ensure a successful crop throughout the harvest season. Growing our own vegetables led to us eating more vegetables, and we often had so much to harvest that we created a small stand by our house to share produce with our community. Inspired by our successful harvests and the rich organic farming culture we were surrounded by, we took courses with the Cornell Small Farms Program, and completed a number of plant science courses including Medical Ethnobotany and Hemp Production Systems. These experiences led us to shift our career goals, and we developed a long term plan to own and operate an organic permaculture farm with a focus on providing medicine to our local community in the form of vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, nuts, spices and herbs. Drawn by rich cultural values of land stewardship and an ideal growing climate, we moved to Maui and have been farming and consulting across the island.