Louis Pulver, Surfing Veggie Farm Louis came to Vermont in 1979 and worked on a dairy farm in Waitsfield. He says, “I started to see all these longhaired, bearded freaks around who were doing vegetables.” Louis sensed a movement was afoot and he wanted in. “It was an exciting time,” he says. “Farmers’ markets had cropped up in Montpelier and Randolph.” He signed on for a season with Hardwick vegetable farmer Robert Houriet, despite protests from his Waitsfield friends. “You are moving to the armpit of Vermont!” they warned. After a few years with Houriet, Louis and his wife Ann started their own homestead as self-described “back to the landers.” However, by 1984 they were producing crops for market, and in 1986 they became certified organic. “I was becoming a player in the Vermont Northern Growers Co-op [which pre-dated today’s Deep Root Co-op].” The co-op members shipped their crops through what was then Northeast Cooperatives, where vegetables were transported to Boston and then distributed up and down the east coast. They also sold their produce to local markets such as the Hunger Mountain Co-op in Montpelier, Onion River Coop in Burlington, and Buffalo Mountain Co-op in Hardwick. There was a small farmers’ market starting in Hardwick, where at one point Louis was the only vendor. He continued to show up, displaying his produce on tables improvised from his surfboard collection. Surfing Veggie Farm was known for the diversity of potatoes they grew. During the 1980s and beyond Louis and Ann grew up to 16 varieties of potatoes. They marketed the diverse array as “Intense Potatoes.” Keep in mind that this was a time when the general population was aware of only Russet and red potatoes. Louis was definitely ahead of his time, and this is one example. In fact, Louis says he was the first grower in Vermont to grow the now famous Yukon Gold potato. “It was smuggled across the border from Quebec,” he recalls. His love for potatoes led him to attend the annual University of Maine Potato School. Each year, Louis and Jim
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“We were the only organic farmers in the room.” Louis Pulver, Surfing Veggie Farm, 1980s Gerritsen (of Wood Prairie Farm potato fame) would attend the threeday conference along with dozens of conventional potato growers. Louis remembers, “We were the only organic farmers in the room. We were long-hairs and they didn’t think we’d amount to much.” Today, Louis, Ann, and Surfing Veggie Farm are still going strong. While they have cut back their vegetable production to one acre, they are also producing eggs and hay, and experimenting with small grains on their land. “We bought a combine,” he says. Louis is learning from other Vermont grain growers and continues to be excited about new crops and forms of production.
David Allen, Hazendale Farm David is a native Vermonter and the third generation on his farm in Greensboro. Historically, the farm was a dairy and when the cows were sold, David began selling hay. In the late 1970s David was part of a NOFA pilot project to grow grains in Vermont for flour. This venture pre-dated today’s Northern Grain Growers Association by about 25 years. David was growing winter rye, oats, and buckwheat. At the time there was a mill in Plainfield, which he used to mill his rye and sell it to local Vermont food co-ops. After the 1978 season, the mill closed, so David was left to find a new facility. David says the next year he brought his crop of oats over the border into Canada to have it hulled and rolled. To bring it back across the border, he had to fabricate a story for the border patrol explaining that the freshly milled oats were pig feed. At the time, David says, only animal feed could cross the border. In 1979, David turned to vegetable production. He started with a half acre and grew from there. Like Louis, David also mentions Robert Houriet, saying that he spearheaded the organic vegetable movement in Vermont. David was a founding