Follow up Resources From New Earth Farming Conversation

Blessings everyone!

We wanted to send some follow up info from questions we were asked during the New Earth Farming Presentation at Crystalline Convergence 2025.

Organic Growing Resources:

Most of them are only able to ship to the United States, but for anyone abroad, they can be a guide of what to search for.:

For seeds, we love High Mowing . They are a small business based out of Vermont and only sell certified organic seeds. We also sometimes source certified organic seed from Johnny’s.

For organic potting mix, look for McEnroe or Vermont Compost.

Growing/Starting a Farm:

We wrote a book called Direct Market Farming For The Homestead that draws from our farm,  David’s formalized training in CSA farming as well as the many visits he made to regional sustainable farms, showing efficiencies, design and management at scale. The book is on our website if you are interested. Feel free to email us any questions as well.

Our Crop Plan (that can be adapted to your garden):

From the book, we want to share with you our Sample 1 Acre Crop plan (The plan is in the “master crop plan” tab). This is an adaptation from the plan we used for the first few years of our CSA that includes the specific plant varieties that we chose for taste and crop performance. We are located in zone 6b, so if you are to use the plan, we recommend saving a copy and adjusting it to your growing zone.

Reddit Post with Photos of the farm:

David mentioned during the talk a post we shared on Reddit with photos from the farm when we arrived. In the first comment below the photos he shares a little bit about the history and what we worked on the first 3 years. Click here to read the article.

Listening to the Land:

Sandra asked about listening to the land during our chat. We shared some of our stories of the elementals showing us what and where to plant. I remembered we had also written an article on the journal page on our website about just this:

https://www.thefarmatcatawissacreek.com/blog/listening-to-the-land

Creek Restoration and Water Healing:

This was mentioned in our chat a few times and we wanted to share a little more on this. Like many watersheds in Pennsylvania (and in this entire area), the Catawissa Creek had been heavily polluted with Acid Mine Drainage from abandoned coal mines. The acidity was so intense that there was basically no aquatic life and the water was reported to turn people’s hair orange. About 30 years ago a group of locals started the Catawissa Creek Restoration Association (CCRA) and decided to start taking water tests and develop a plan for filtering the creek. They worked with the PA DEP and Eastern PA Coalition for Acid Mine Reclamation to establish 3 major treatment sites that account for cleaning 85% of the acid mine drainage in the creek. Life has returned to the creek and we now see fish in the water, bald eagles almost daily, turtles, water snakes and other life. You can read more on the website here: https://catawissacreek.org/ 

Seed Library:

Our friend started a library of seeds available to everyone at the local library. How it works is you “check-out” a seed for the season, grow the plant, enjoy the bounty, then save the seeds for your harvest and return them to the library. We know that seeds hold memory in their DNA, just like us, so what is wonderful is that these seeds that are returned to the library have now the experience of being grown in our local soil, ecosystem, elementals and environment. This means our community is theoretically building a bank of seeds that are suited to our local environment. You can read more on the website here: https://bloomseedlibrary.org/ 

Connect with us:

If you have any questions, want to chat further, share your garden plans or have an idea to co-create, please email us at catawissafarm@gmail.com! We would love to stay in touch. :)

Infinite Blessings from here at the farm,

Anne and David