For the Love of Outside

August 4, 2026

I’m falling in love with teff. Yes, we’re still in the honeymoon phase, but I have a feeling that years from now, wherever I wind up, I’ll still be devoted. Teff is an Ethiopian grass that came onto my radar in 2021, when I learned that farmers were using it as a drought-tolerant cover for the pathways between cash crops. I finally bought a bag last winter, intending to seed it between the fall broccoli. Then, in June, Dan got ahead of himself and started cultivating the peppers, forgetting I’d seeded ryegrass in the pathways just days earlier, (i.e. he was killing my grass). He aborted the mission, I quelled the urge to kill him, and we prayed the ryegrass would pull through. As Dan’s luck would have it, there was zero rain in the weeks that followed, and no ryegrass germinated anywhere. Just bindweed. So I waved the white flag, Dan cultivated the pathways again (this time with permission), and I seeded a second time. Only instead of ryegrass, I decided try teff. Whoa baby! It germinated instantly (well, in 4 days, but still), and it outraced the bindweed by a longshot. Smitten, I proceeded to seed it between cabbage, kale, chard, and flowers; in a few weeks, I’ll seed it between the broccoli, as planned, and anywhere else I can find an opening. Talk about a honeymoon! Having success with a new cover crop would be exciting in any year, but there’s an additional upshot in this year, with this cover. Teff winterkills (dies over the winter), but as a grass, it’s a wonderful nurse crop for clover. I had planned on turning most of the fields into a timothy clover "meadow" after harvest, but I had no plan for the fall fields, where carrots, leeks, and broccoli stood in the way. With teff, however, I now have myriad opportunities to slip in some bonus clover, and a partial pasture is better than none. Like a mom who sneaks vegetables into her kids via zucchini bread, I feel like I’m scoring a big win.

 

Three weeks ago, while I was swooning over teff, wildfire smoke was drifting overhead. The media, predictably, was telling everyone to stay inside, run the AC, and avoid strenuous exercise. Big cringe. Two weeks before that, during a heat wave, same warning, same cringe. Obviously these warnings weren’t intended for farmers, as most people understand that crops left unattended will bolt, wither, or rot. But so long as farmers are laboring thousands of miles away, they’re easy to overlook. When farmers labor in full view of the public, however, the warnings land differently. As one Michigan farmer put it, Y’all! Our farm is outside. I’m sorry, but we’re going to be outside. Sounds miserable to some, but here’s the thing—in having no choice but to labor outside, farmers find relief and resilience in unexpected places. Like the shade of a carefully pruned crabapple tree. Or in the tenacity of teff. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy inhaling smoke or picking peppers when its 100°. But I can do it because I’ve conditioned myself…and learned a handful of tricks along the way. All of which is to say, we lose so much—too much—when we spend so much time cowering, and ignoring the bigger problem of climate change, inside.

 

In fact, getting people to spend more time outside has been part of the Restoration Farm mission from the beginning. Dan and I always felt an obligation to make the farm accessible not just to CSA members, but to the public, because the land belongs to the public. Field tours, pick-your-own options, and potluck dinners were the first lures. Concerts and workshops came with the Tin House. During the pandemic, we focused on kids, with rock hunts in the spring and Halloween plays in the fall. Through the years, we held onto the activities that complemented our operation and shed the ones that didn’t. Just last weekend, we celebrated Lughnasa, the pagan holiday that marks the midpoint between summer solstice and fall equinox. The Tin House was filled with zinnias and sunflowers, and CSA members were urged to pick their own flowers in the field, mosquitoes be damned. When I look back on the past 20 years, spreading the love of being outside is one of my proudest accomplishments.

 

If you ventured into the fields last week, you may have caught the fleeting but spectacular flower show in the potato field. I usually seed buckwheat in the potato pathways because 1) it germinates in nothing but condensation (quoting another farmer, here), and 2) the flowers are mesmerizing en masse. Unfortunately, the buckwheat was starting to smother the potatoes, which was not part of the plan, so Dan mowed it down last Sunday. Readers may recall that our first potato planting failed in May, but we managed to get a second planting established in June. I should have delayed the buckwheat accordingly, so that it would flower after the potatoes died back, but like a server trying to juggle the timing between appetizers and entrées, I missed the mark. It happens. But kudos to the folks who got outside and caught the buckwheat show while it lasted.

 

Blackberry season is underway. I did an aggressive pruning last winter, to compensate for beds planted too close together. Credit goes to CSA member Mike Hearney, who’s observation during a winter walk that the previous year’s blackberries were “a little jungley” spurred me to take action. I thinned the beds by as much as 75% in March and hoped that would be enough. The beds remained neat and orderly through much of the spring, but by July, the jungle had returned. I couldn’t see more than ten feet into the rows, and the branches had more fruit that I could ever imagine ripening. So I spent two steaming days layered up against mosquitoes, thinning out primocanes of all sizes, as well as and the weakest floricanes, even though they were loaded with fruit. I hoped no one would see, because I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing, but with Mike's voice in my head helped me stay the course. Days later, the plants rewarded us with the first flush of ripe fruit. Big, black, and absolutely delicious. They’ve been going strong for three weeks, and one CSA member, Suzanne Grossman, even found a heart-shaped berry the size of a walnut. "The blackberry of the century!" she called it. It’s possible my aggressive summer pruning will take a toll on next year’s crop, but if ever there was a year to binge on blackberries and not worry about the future, this is it.

 

A final note from me about the future. Last week, Dan and I formally withdrew our proposal to continue operating Restoration Farm. We have not received a reply from Nassau County, and we are moving forward with our plan to complete the 2026 season. Fall crops are being planted. Winter shares are on sale. Our final farm stand is scheduled for December 19. After that, however, we will no longer be open to the public. With that in mind, we encourage you to take advantage of every opportunity to get to the farm. We don’t know what will happen once we are gone, but for now, the land is still open, still beautiful, still productive. Still a community farm. So please, get out outside, and enjoy it while you can.

On that note, I'll pass the mic to our summer apprentice, Sophia Marchioli.

Thanks for reading,

—Caroline

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The “Farm Family” as the Ecosystem that Small Agriculture Thrives On

By Sophia Marchioli

At this point in the summer, I have spent 11 full days working alongside the team at Restoration Farm where, in exchange for labor, I get a CSA share and weekly crash course in farming. On my first day, I showed up to Caroline and Dan running the whole show, just the two of them and me, the new summer intern, working the fields. I would quickly learn that although this couple is the powerhouse team orchestrating this symphony, they have been supported by a mass of people over the years. However, on that first day, the quiet gave us extra space to fill with our meaningful “getting to know you” conversations. I left in awe of the parallels between my and Caroline’s many shared experiences as two Long Island girls, and Vassar students, who found an unexpected passion for farming. Our Vassar stories could not be more similar: we were both athletes, we both have a passion for history as American and International Studies majors, we both had our first farming experiences at the Poughkeepsie Farm Project (PFP), with more commonalities I will spare you from. All of a sudden, my cold email to Caroline that I sent from my dorm desk on a random day in April, made perfect sense. It all seemed very serendipitous, and I could tell this is where I needed to be for the summer, especially as I have been lucky enough to catch Restoration Farm during their last season. 

These conversations continued and expanded across the next 8 weeks, with my Wednesday volunteer shifts being filled with new faces popping in and out every week. I met many of the Fanning-Holmes relatives, the farm's regular staff and volunteers, long-time CSA members, and acquaintances that they have gathered over the years who are now dear friends, and as Caroline would say, part of the “farm family”. This network they have built is vast, and filled with remarkable people with remarkable stories. 

Furthermore, I think it is extremely important to point out that this network did not come together by any means that could be considered “random”. This interconnectivity at Restoration Farm is something that I was impacted by at the PFP too. I believe this is common across all of small agriculture. It’s a feeling you can only access when you are out in the fields. It’s something built into the roots of the small farm’s business model. It makes the experience of farming feel so personal, yet simultaneously, so entrenched in the systems and networks that have been developed for centuries, and which stretch across generations. 

This network is akin to that of the ecosystem that it relies on. A healthy ecosystem is reliant on the relationships between the pollinators, the plants, the soil, the decomposers, the rain, the sun… I could go on and on. The abundance of food that fills the Tin House every Tuesday and Saturday can only make it to those tables with the support of this ecosystem. However, one thing that makes the food in the Tin House, and at the farmers markets of small, local farms unique is that it also relies on the relationships between the people; the “farm family”. Every person in this network has clearly been invaluable in sustaining this farm, and consequently, every small farm in the world. The methods used in the fields of Restoration Farm are informed by the methods used in the fields of the PFP, which are informed by the methods used at a previous farm, and so on. It is a constant give-and-take, a cycle of lessons and teachings from the environment and its people that are passed on. 

As supporters of Restoration Farm, you all understand how important small agriculture is for environmental sustainability, and community health, and equity. But what you may not see is that you are a small cog in this invisible machine that has allowed small agriculture to thrive for so long. Even when the farm's last season comes to a close, you must remember that you have given something to the future of small agriculture. For instance, you have single handedly opposed global capitalism’s efforts to standardize farming, a practice that for all of history has relied on alterations and adaptations made by humans, not machines. By investing in the farm, you have rebuilt local agricultural economies in the face of a globalized food system riddled with labor exploitation and inequality. You have supported environmental justice by engaging in a food system that prioritizes environmental health during the climate crisis. 

Without the network you are a part of, I would never have found my way to Restoration Farm. And as a new member of the farm family, I want to thank you for all you do for small agriculture, and for welcoming me into your world.

—Sophia