By contemporary measures, our farm is small, but it is well diversified and extremely productive. We manage our livestock and crops in a symbiotic relationship, attempting to mimic nature's own methods. By working in partnership with our environment, instead of resisting its natural tendencies, we produce food without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. Our only amendments to the soil are compost made from humus-rich manure, minerals and organic material. We use an intensively managed rotation method in our garden and greenhouse beds, preserving the soil and locking in important nutrients.

We produce fresh, healthy produce year-round, including in the winter, when we'll continue to harvest vegetables grown in the greenhouse, using very little heat aside from what the sun provides. In January and February, when temperatures outside drop into the teens, we'll be growing up to 35 different kinds of hardy winter crops, including little-known varieties such as claytonia (a succulent, small-leaved green rich in vitamin C), minutina (a tender, crunchy relative of the common plantain weed) and skirret (a delicate, aromatic white root vegetable). Many of the farm's products are offered at one time or another on the menu at the restaurant and café, with the surplus available to retail customers at farmer's markets and traditional food outlets.

The greenhouse operation and outdoor gardens were developed by Eliot Coleman, creator of Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine. Eliot is also the author of Four Season Harvest and other best-selling books on organic farming, and co-host, with his wife Barbara Damrosch, of The Learning Channel's popular Gardening Naturally series. Through years of experimentation, Eliot has discovered how to make the most of the sun in winter, even in the Northeast, where weather conditions in the colder months are severe. His farm in Maine, he reminds us, rests on the same latitude as the Provence region of France; and the Hudson Valley lies as far south as Barcelona, Spain. French and Spanish growers get enough daylight to farm year-round, and so do we. To make up for the temperature difference, all we need is a little low-tech intervention, in the form of minimally heated greenhouses, plastic-covered tunnels or old-fashioned cold frames.

The Center's livestock program is built on the same philosophy of environmental compatibility. Our animals are raised on pasture that's kept healthy and productive through intensively managed rotational grazing. Ruminants do best when they are allowed to eat this way; confined, grain-fed animals, in contrast, are much more susceptible to illness. Grass-fed animals have dramatically lower cholesterol and saturated fat than their feedlot counterparts, and far higher in omega-3 fatty acids and monounsaturated fats--the "good fats" that protect against heart disease. Treating animals with respect--letting them eat and live the way nature intended--has serious benefits for humans, too.

We are raising free-ranging animals (poultry, pastured veal calves, sheep and hogs) at the Center that are suited to our own unique ecosystem. Our vision is inspired by people like Joel Salatin, a Shenandoah Valley farmer whose own successful pasture operation has been a model to others all over the nation. His no-nonsense books, which include Pastured Poultry Profits and Salad Bar Beef, are prized by small-scale grass farmers for their wealth of practical insights and strong focus on farm finances. Joel argues that animals, like vegetables, should be grown in season, so they might develop naturally and more healthfully, without expensive artificial inputs. Point them in the right direction, he says, and they'll do much of the farmer's work for him. Cows can fertilize and pack compost in the barn through the winter; rooting pigs will gleefully aerate it in the spring. Grazing cattle will contentedly spread their own manure if they're kept on the move with the help of portable waterers, structures and fencing.

Joel refers to pasture as a "salad bar" for farm animals. We like that. A good salad bar offers a full complement of different delicious, nourishing grasses; and it's kept fresh and appealing at all times. Our strategies for maintaining the salad bar include intensive paddock management, so grazed pasture has ample time to recover, and natural refuges for birds and other wildlife, essential for the maintenance of ecological balance. In this way, we not only get healthy animals and high-quality meat and eggs, but also a beautiful, sweet-smelling farm that can sustainably co-exist with the wild flora and fauna that surrounds us for generations to come.