1. Stop by any organic farm or farmers market in Maine, and you’d be hard-pressed to
find a grower who hasn’t heard of Eliot Coleman, dean of the sustainable farming
movement in the state who, along with his wife, food writer Barbara Damrosch, own
and operate Four Season Farm in Harborside, where they grow vegetables
throughout the year and market them locally.
Coleman, born in 1938, also is an accomplished writer and is the author of “The New
Organic Grower,” “The Winter Harvest Handbook,” “Four-Season Harvest,” and his
latest, “The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook,” written with his wife Barbara.
It’s a book about getting the most from your garden no matter its size, and choosing
crops by how much sustenance they will yield. A kitchen garden, if you will.
His passion for organic growing, healthy eating and sharing his knowledge of
sustainable farming practices and techniques with others for more than four
decades has earned him recognition among his peers and respect from up-and-
coming young farmers hitching their wagons to the farm-to-table movement in
Maine and other states.
These are but a few of the notable reasons why Coleman was chosen to receive the
Healthy Food Champion Award from the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation,
which selected him for his “contribution to the overall health and well-being of the
people of Maine by improving access to fresh local food, and your efforts to grow
Four Season Farm as a model of small-scale sustainable agriculture.”
Coleman was nominated for the award by his daughter, Clara:
“Not only has he innovated farming tools and techniques, pushed the limits of four-
season farming, and inspired thousands of new and beginning farmers to take up
this challenging and rewarding work, but he is also an amazing father, mentor and
'Gumpa' to my two boys, and it takes a really special individual who can inspire their
own children and grandchildren as much as they continue to inspire a nation.”
So, the next time you’re wandering around the farmers market, tilling the soil or
turning the compost for your organic garden, take a few moments to remember the
man who planted the seeds of the sustainable farming movement in Maine and
nurtured generations.