If you’ve ever felt that tug in your heart to farm, you know the impulse cannot be denied. You might end up in something else, but no matter what you’ll always find yourself wistfully dreaming of rows of summer vegetables, rich, loamy soil, the red splash of ripe tomatoes, and the taste that makes supermarket ‘vegetables’ unworthy of the name.

Ever since she was very young, Tierney Dearing Medick has always had farming in her blood. When she was a teenager, she worked on a dairy farm, and her family owned a farm in Arkansas, so she was no stranger to the agricultural tradition. Yet, like so many people, she didn’t really consider farming a viable life aspiration.

Answering the Call of the Farm

When Tierney was 17, she started gardening—she uses the word Growing, which sounds much more significant—and knew it was her calling. “Growing is the only job that has felt completely fulfilling even when it’s horrifically hard work,” she explained, full of enthusiasm. So, she decided to start a farm with her partner, Amoreen, who grew up on a conventional corn and pig farm in Illinois. They are fully committed: “We decided a few years ago that our goal is to support ourselves solely from farming.”

Partners Trace, a vegetable, herb, and flower farm located in New Paltz, NY, was founded in 2010 by Tierney Dearing Medick and Amoreen Armetta to pursue their passion for Growing and that urge, familiar to so many of us, to live close to the land. The practicing organic, bio-dynamic farm produces 55 different types of vegetables, 40 types of flowers, and 30 types of herbs, all of which find their way into the CSA boxes of local subscribers and those in Brooklyn, 2 hours away.

More Than Your Average CSA

Tierney and Amoreen are definitely invested in their work. When I spoke to Tierney, her love of the land and the lifestyle came through clearly, despite the shaky phone connection. She spoke of the beauty of the countryside, the amazing sense of community she felt with neighboring Veritas Farm—from whom Partners Trace leases land—and the fulfillment she gets from growing vegetables that she could then turn into something delicious for people to enjoy or give as gifts.

What sets Partners Trace apart is the willingness to go beyond the traditional notion of a CSA. Usually, a CSA box consists of vegetables, and nothing more. There’s nothing wrong with this; we are talking local, seasonal, fresh vegetables after all. But Tierney has bigger plans this year: “Part of what we’re trying to do this year is to bring the farmers market to people in their [CSA] share: canned goods, vegetables, a little of everything.” In fact, when I spoke to her, they were in the process of testing out some new recipes, pointing out that “we can’t give our members something that we have not used ourselves.”

The CSA is expanding, with new winter rye going into the ground, new canned goods in the works, and even bitters made from the herbs grown on the farm, but it is hard work. “It’s a lot of work to get subscribers,” Tierney explained, “we’re really trying to get as many members as we can before the end of the year, before next year, to have the resources to plant.” Making ends meet on a farm is not always easy; Tierney works off-farm when Partners Trace slows down seasonally, and Amoreen is a freelance editor, copyeditor, and writer.

A Farmer’s Life

There is a very fine line between too few subscribers and too many, as a small farm can only produce so much. Add to this the need to have members in a small geographic area to keep deliveries feasible, and you can understand why running a CSA is hard work. There are always farmers markets, but Tierney says that their priority is the CSA shares