Innovation makes a farm for all seasons

Pete Johnson is already harvesting the vegetables grown in a heated half-acre plastic hoop house at Craftsbury Village Farm in Northern Vermont. (Globe Photo / Jonathan Levitt)

CRAFTSBURY, Vt. - It's mud season in Northern Vermont. Some hillsides are green, others still piebald with old snow. The rivers are running heavy and the ground is a sloppy wallow. Most local farmers are still weeks away from being able to work their land.

Not Pete Johnson.

At Johnson's Craftsbury Village Farm, what's growing is under the cover of a heated half-acre plastic hoop house. The farmer is already waist-deep in hardy greens, perfect heads of baby bok choy, salad turnips, and strapping young cucumber plants. "In here it's like mid-June," says Johnson. "Even in Vermont there's plenty of light to grow most of the year - just not enough heat. Under the plastic we'll be picking tomatoes when a lot of farms are waiting for peas."

Johnson's farm is an innovative, four-season, organic vegetable operation. He, his girlfriend Meg Gardner, and a crew of workers farm year-round using greenhouses and root cellars to extend the season. They sell crops wholesale to restaurants in Vermont and all the way down to Boston and New York, and also offer locals a community-supported agriculture program called "Good Eats." At the Montpelier farmers' market, Johnson sells directly to customers, and on the farm from a sod-roof stand. "Good Eats" includes a locavore option with products from other farms selling cheeses, grains, and Vermont sunflower oil. "Eventually we'd like to eat only local food and to sell everything we grow within a few miles of home," says Johnson. "It will happen."

With the income from vegetables, Johnson, 36, has invested in infrastructure: equipment to make the work more efficient, and refrigeration and freezers for storing crops. "We pick food from the soil until mid-December and then start again by late February," he says. "There is always a lean time. But with proper storage many crops can keep for months. Actually, in the root cellar most of it just gets sweeter and sweeter and nicer and nicer."

This summer Johnson and his crew will process and preserve seasonal food in his farmhouse kitchen for themselves and "Good Eats" members, making soups and stocks, fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut and kimchi, pizza and pie dough, pesto, salsa, salad dressings, sausages, apple butter, and apple sauce. Nobody will need to go to the grocery store.

Johnson has always had his hands in the soil. He and his parents and his three siblings moved here from Whidbey Island, Wash., when he was 12. They drove cross-country in a moving van and carved a small homestead farm out of the woods in Greensboro. He was home-schooled as a kid, but went mainstream after high school, majoring in environmental studies at Middlebury College. After graduation he spent eight years growing on leased land and on his parents' land, while he saved to buy his own spot. "I knew that I needed a place with potential, a big farm with good soil," he says. In the spring of 2004, Johnson bought 190 acres of old dairy land - flat, stone-free loam with a barn and big yellow farmhouse right in Craftsbury Village.

The farm Johnson created is bursting with life, intensively cultivated, and large enough for him to be inventive. "Last year we grossed a few hundred thousand dollars," he says. "Vegetables are easy. They grow on soil and solar energy. Tiny cheap seeds become valuable crops."

He likes the life - and the challenges. "There is pleasure in deprivation, but by extending the season, and storing and processing crops we can actually eat really well all the time," Johnson says. "I'm not a spiritual person, but eating a meal of local and seasonal food makes me feel nourished in a way beyond being just fed and full."

Pete's Greens at Craftsbury Village Farm, 266 South Craftsbury Road, Craftsbury, Vt., 802-586-2882, petesgreens.com.