Garden of Eve Organic Farm

Sometimes when Eve Kaplan-Walbrecht walks along the rows on her farm, she carries with her a gallon of ladybugs. She's reading nature and ready to assist with beneficial insects when needed. In farming, she's found a livelihood that calls her outside nearly every day of the year. "Farming is a profession based on the power of your observation," Eve explains.

Eve, and her husband, Chris, got started in 2000 during a prolific first season in the garden. They had a surplus of zucchini and were invited to sell at a nearby farmers market. By the end of the first market day they had $40 bucks and new careers.

According to Eve, since then "everything in farming has been a learning curve." She says one of their most important lessons has been to become efficient. "Farming can be unlimited work," she explains, "You have to be strategic. At first, we sold everything. Now, however, we focus on people's favorites - organic sweet corn, red, white, and blue potatoes, tomatoes, head lettuces, and other foods - the things people look for."

In their latest nod to efficiency, Eve and Chris recently added a self-powered weeding machine to the farm. As a certified-organic farm, they do not spray herbicides; they pull up weeds by hand. It can be backbreaking, and Eve describes the new machine as "revolutionary." Two people lie on it like a massage table, and as it slowly rolls down the planted rows, they reach down and uproot the weeds. "Only a person can tell a weed from a carrot," says Eve, in evidence that everyone at Garden of Eve Farm grows with the power of observation.