Janine Farm

Janine Ndagijimana

Janine Ndagijimana from Janine Farm in Colchester grows more than 8 acres of African eggplant, as well as other specialty vegetables like amaranth, beans, corn, pumpkin leaves, and other greens. She sells to customers all over the country, as well as the VT Food Bank. She also saves and sells eggplant seeds through True Love Seeds. She employs 6-10 part time workers to help her during the growing season.

Janine's VFF Business Builder loan will help her to purchase a cooler to store vegetables and keep them fresh. She has been farming in Vermont since 2013, and says the African eggplant grows well in this climate, although not that many Americans are familiar with the crop, which is a green-yellow color, not the dark purple most people associate with eggplant.

According to a 2018 article in Seven Days, "Born in Rwanda to Burundian refugees, she helped her parents with small-scale cultivation. When the Rwandan genocide began in 1994, she and her family fled to Tanzania. There she became a broker and developed her entrepreneurial skills, buying vegetables from farmers and selling them at markets.

In 2007, Ndagijimana and her husband and children came to the U.S., where she got involved in the New Farms for New Americans program. A community-based gardening and agriculture project run by AALV, it provides education and training to refugees and immigrants who want to continue their agrarian traditions."

You can also learn more about Janine and her farm on the recent Across the Fence feature: