Good Heart Farmstead is a certified organic vegetable and herb farm in Worcester, VT owned by husband and wife, Edge Fuentes and Kate Spring. They grow about 40 different crops and market their produce mainly through a CSA, and also sell salad greens to Montpelier restaurants. Kate and Edge began the farm in 2013 with a small vegetable CSA and diversified livestock operation, raising sheep, broilers, laying hens, turkeys, and pigs. Now they focus on vegetable production and no longer raise livestock.

Good Heart Farmstead’s mission is to make local food more accessible to low-income Vermonters, and they partner with the NOFA-VT Farm Share Program to subsidize CSA shares. They hold fundraisers in the late winter and early fall, and in 2016 raised over $2,000 for subsidized shares.

They grow intensively on 1.25 acres and in 2016 served 80 summer shares and 60 fall shares, along with weekly wholesale orders of 60-100 lbs of salad mix. In 2017 they plan to increase their CSA numbers to 100, and increase their wholesale business through season extension.

A $5,000 Business Builder Loan from the VFF will allow Good Heart Farmstead to purchase a Paper Pot transplanter and expand their current irrigation system. Two of the weakest links on the farm, in terms of overall efficiency and quality, are related to time spent transplanting succession crops and reliable consistent growth (seen as inconsistent available water to young plants). This transplanter is designed to work on a farm that uses methods of intensive succession plantings to maximize the efforts put into growing on small acreages. Adding low-flow irrigation lines will also decrease labor spent irrigating, increase efficiency and consistency of irrigation, leading to more consistent crops and yields.