Welcoming the 2008 season at...   The mission at Laughing Dog Farm is both to grow the finest year-round produce for ourselves and others - as well as to help teach, promote and inspire greater participation in sustainable, micro-farming, especially by beginners. Look around and take heart. We are not alone! Getting Started in Backyard Intensive Food Production CSA Partnership with LDF Farm Mentoring at LDF Starting Out With Goats A Photo Essay of Laughing Dog Farm, 2006 2007-Year in Pictures What's So Special about Heirloom Tomatoes? What are"Food Politics"? Why Save Heirloom Seeds?S Footbag Peace Studies   This website is lovingly dedicated to our dear, departed dog friends, Loretta, Sheba and Topher .

Assessing the state of our World today, we asked ourselves,

"what's the best use of this beauteous and fertile ground...

...and this fleeting time we've been gifted?"

...To practice and teach sustainable micro-agriculture?

...To share its precious fruits, spreading sacred seeds of knowledge, inspiration and connection?

...To grow family, community, baby goats and PEACE along with the good, green grub???

"Yeah, yeah... that's it. That's it!", we said.

398 Main Rd. Gill, MA 01354 *dbotkin@valinet.com * 413-863-8696

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Agriculture Supported Community at Laughing Dog Farm

My sweet wife Divya and I, (Danny Botkin) our daughter Leylee, along with our dear, near neighbors, Chris and Laura - and various seasonal interns - "operate" an innovative, diversified homestead and organic micro-farm in central Franklin County. Laughing Dog Farm consists of 3+ acres of raised beds, two greenhouses, inter-planted vegetables, flowers, herbs, fruit trees and a batch of dairy goats...

This sunny hilltop we inhabit was once part of a well-known New England commune with a long and facinating history, now past. Through our quiet lives and steady work here this past decade, we seek to connect with and add to the legacy of family, tribe, land stewardship, social activism and co-creative inter-dependence. That's the goal, the Bigger Picture, per se. However, like everybody else, we're just practitioners, working and learning every day, imperfectly attempting to do it over, better.

In 2000 I left a 20+ year career in teaching, counseling and human service to dedicate myself to micro-intensive food farming. For me, micro-intensive food farming differs from simple "gardening" only by perpective and degree. For some, "gardening" connotes a more laid back, recreational, hobby-oriented approach, with less priority given to production of high-value, staple food crops. However semantical this difference may be, we support all, non-toxic gardening so long as it's done with with consciousness and love, and with an eye toward the Bigger Picture!

Here our pragmatic goal is to produce ongoing abundant harvests of seriously useful, highest quality food crops, using only organic, soil-enhancing methods, manure-based compost, etc, on marginal acreage, by hand.

We look at the world and observe a ubiquitous need for greater knowledge and awareness of food... production, storage, cooking, nutrition, etc. In this age of rising fuel and food costs (not to mention poverty, "terror" threats, pesticide residues, obesity and eating disorders...) we realize that the traditional farming skills we're learning and practicing at LDF are as valuable as the fresh bounty we harvest. We continue to explore ways to teach and spread this knowledge more widely and to inspire others to grow food in non-traditional spaces. For five years we've had a series of wonderful, seasonal interns ("WOOFers")who come to live and volunteer on our farm in exchange for food, community and learning. These mentoring relationships have been quite rewarding, both ways.

CSA Foodshares Laughing Dog Farm is organized around a small Community Supported Agriculture project, which is a group of lucky folks who sign up and pay in advance for a weekly delivery of premium Laughing Dog produce, from May to October. At this scale the "CSA" isn't profitable in money. However it has provided the farm with an important community focus, definition and ample practice farming. CSA's work best when there is a two way, mutually beneficial relationship between farmer and consumers. Since starting the CSA in '02 we've polished our art and now are selling fine Laughing Dog food at local farmers markets, as well. It is our invitation to the eating, caring local public to join us over time in creating a CSA farm which serves best the needs of people and honors the spirit imbued in the land.

We offer technical support and consultations to other beginning farmers and backyarders who are serious about growing food. I am also available, both formally and informally, to teach a variety of practical skills workshops related to organic gardening, farming, homesteading, cooking and food processing, as well as selecting and saving heirloom and other open pollinated seeds. If you, like us, see the wisdom of local, sustainable, grassroots food production -- and just need a bit of support getting started on your own backyard (or rooftop!) venture - please inquire to Daniel.

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Laughing Dog Farm is seeking one or more serious, substantive, long-term comrades/housemates/farm partners to share our home, land and vision into the future. We're especially interested in individuals, couples or a small family who share similar green values and a farming bent. Though sobered by the challenges of cooperative living, we remain clear and committed on this path. Please inquire!

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Laughing Dog Farming Methods:

We raise all our crops by hand on less than three acres, using traditional, "bio-intensive" methods, raised beds, permanent trellises, low hoops, cold frames, extensive inter-cropping and a steady supply of rich, goat manure compost. Healthy soil translates into healthy plants which thrive with little or no pest or disease pressure. We use no chemical inputs, GMO seeds or poisons, whatsoever and produce an extended season of high quality, delicious produce of great diversity. Aside from feeding our friends and CSA partners, we also feed ourselves year round on these precious gifts. I am an inspired chef who grows dream vegetables. Nobody loves fresh, gourmet quality produce like we do!

On Varieties and other Perks:

Our farm specialties are many, although we're very partial to exquisite lettuce mixes, salad and cooking greens, multicolored and uniquely flavored, heirloom tomatoes, pungent garlic and leeks, rich, buttery, ultra-healthy collards and other leafy brassicas, old fashioned beets, various humble storage roots, rare pole beans, heirloom melons and diversely colored flowers. We use early and late (Eliot Coleman-inspired) season extension techniques to offer longer harvest periods of many popular crops. We also grow spring vegetable and flower starts, cut flowers and herbs. Our dried heirloom tomatoes and other fruits are legendary.

A Partial List of What We Plant:

Veggies: Mesclun, peas, carrots, lettuce, spinach, chard, Asian greens, asparagus, collards, beets (seven varieties), carrots, leeks, onions, garlic, basil, dill, thyme, cabbage, parsnips, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, kohlrabi, turnips, squash (winter and summer, multiple varieties), pole beans, bush beans, edamame soybeans, spuds, (multiple varieties) peppers, sweet and hot, tomatillos, cucumbers, corn, pumpkins, heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, watermelons, muskmelons and cantaloupes.

Flowers: Sunflowers, cosmos, zinnias, sweet peas, marigolds, nasturtiums, calendulas, calla lilies, ornamental beans, amaranth, echinacea, bee balm, asters... and many, many other common and culinary and medicinal herbs and plants...

For The Future: We also have 2-7 year old plantings (originally Y2K inspired...) of fruit trees, raspberries, chestnuts, gingko, peaches, pears, kiwis, cherries, plums and Asian pears which have now begun to yield. I always did want to live somewhere long enough to plant fruit trees...

Laughing Dog Farm, like each of us, is a work in progress... Here's hoping that you can share with us in the next chapter of this deliciously vital, growing adventure. Your participation and input is highly valued. Join with us in whatever way feels right...

Lovin' you with food,
Daniel "Dog" Botkin

398 Main Rd. Gill, MA 01376 * dbotkin@valinet.com * 413-863-8696

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"This final truth is self-evident. You are the one you’ve been waiting for... You’ve been here the whole time." ~ William Rivers Pitt