aboUT the farm
Photo by Zachary Barkley
Dirt Rich Farm is a Certified Organic vegetable farm located a little north of the Village of Springville. We started out farming on rented land near East Aurora in 2015, then bought farmland and relocated our farm to its current location in 2020. We now have about 1.5 acres in vegetable production and grow over 40 different kinds of vegetables and herbs. Our crops include lots of familiar favorites, like lettuce, carrots, sugar snap peas, and potatoes, in addition to crops not commonly grown in our climate, like baby ginger and amaranth greens, and many heirloom and unusual varieties of vegetables, including over 15 varieties of tomatoes and a dozen different kinds of peppers.
We are committed to organic farming, because we believe it is the the healthiest way we can grow food for ourselves, our customers, our workers, and all the living creatures in the farm’s ecosystem. We have been using organic practices from the start, and our produce has been Certified Organic by NOFA-NY Certified Organic LLC since 2017 and additionally has been Real Organic Project certified since 2020. (Click here to read more about these certifications.)
Photo by Zachary Barkley
At Dirt Rich Farm, we know that good food and healthy plants come from good soil, which we feed with compost, fish emulsion, and pelleted chicken manure. We never use synthetic pesticides or herbicides. Weeds are prevented with tarping, landscape fabric, and flame weeding where possible, and where that’s not possible, are battled with hoes and good, old-fashioned hand-weeding. The drip irrigation that irrigates many of our crops not only conserves water, but also reduces the conditions in which fungal disease flourishes on plants. We prevent damage from hungry insects by covering whole rows of sensitive young plants with a lightweight white fabric called row cover or, in the case of cucumber and summer squash plants, a cool kind clay that gets painted on the plants so that they're too slippery for pests to easily walk on. When necessary, we spray with National Organic Program-compliant products to deal with pest and disease problems, including Bt (a bacteria that attacks larvae that eat many vegetable crops), hydrogen peroxide (which kills fungi and bacteria that can be harmful to plants), neem oil (which is derived from the seed of a tropical tree and is harmful and repellent to many pests), and garlic oil (which repels pests).