About The Farmers |
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Mary Ellen Chadd grew up in Portland. She left art school there in 2000 to work for New Leaf Farm. She apprenticed in 2001 with herbalist Rani Lyn in Brooks, and Fedco Trees growers Karen & Bennett (formerly ‘Steward’) in Thorndike. She worked for two years landscape gardening in Ithaca, NY while attending the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine (NSBM) and becoming a Master Composter. In 2005 through The Evergreen State College in Washington, she traveled studying tropical agroecology, and interned with the Nicaraguan National Farmers Union. Mary Ellen completed her degree in Sustainable Agriculture & Community Development from Evergreen in 2006, and realized she wanted to put “farmer” back on her career list. maryellen@oohfarms.com Tel. 773-2585 Austin Chadd started farming his senior year of high school, in 2001, when his father bought a couple acres in the Puyallup river valley in Washington State. The farm focused on heritage poultry, sheep, vegetables, flowers and berries. In 2002 he moved 40 minutes South to go to The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, and worked as a farm assistant to the incoming students. In addition to farming, he learned a bit about barn construction and aided the “Compost Project”, a student-run facility that composted on-campus waste.
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His senior year in college he joined the class Eco-Ag, which reinforced his understanding of the theories of sustainable agriculture, and his interest in a future Mrs. Chadd. He joined a farm crew of eight, the summer of 2006, at Kirsop Farm in Tumwater, Washington. The Kirsop farmers exposed him to a full production organic market farm that sold to local restaurants, co-ops and at the farmers market. After graduating, Mary Ellen and Austin worked together as farm hands for Kirsop Farm in before they moved to Maine to be close to her marvelous grandmother. Mary Ellen landed a job with The New American Sustainable Agriculture Project training immigrant and refugee farmers in production and marketing in Maine, which has inspired her to be a farmer herself. Mary Ellen and Austin are running the business Old Ocean House Farm in Cape Elizabeth and the stand at the Portland Farmers’ Market for landowner Rodney Voisine until they land their own farm (hopefully sooner than later.) austin@oohfarms.com Tel. 773-2585 |
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