Claire Morenon (she/her) is the Communications Manager at CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture), the western Massachusetts nonprofit behind the regional “Be a Local Hero, Buy Locally Grown® public awareness and marketing campaign. CISA provides business assistance to local farms and related businesses, and Claire works to engage the public in supporting local farms and building a stronger local food system.

Benneth Phelps is The Carrot Project’s Executive Director. She brings a deep and dynamic knowledge of our work from 12+ years of on-the-ground experience uplifting New England’s farmers, and a clear vision for building a just and resilient future for agricultural entrepreneurs.

Benneth worked as the Director of Farmer Services at Dirt Capital Partners for seven years, developing the company’s organizational culture and infrastructure, and its approach to investing in farmland, farms and food enterprises. At Dirt, she developed a track record of making complex land acquisition and transition challenges both simple and achievable; crafted fair, long-term arrangements that allowed farms to expand securely; and provided defined pathways to ownership for every farmer partner. Benneth’s approach of repeatedly rolling up her sleeves to work alongside her clients and partners, while bringing deep listening, expertise and compassion, builds trust and achieves unique outcomes.

Benneth has a long history with The Carrot Project. As Carrot’s first full-time employee, back in 2011, Benneth laid the groundwork for many of our current programs, earned the trust of hundreds of clients on their path to financial viability, and cultivated relationships with Carrot’s collaborators and supporters. In addition to her years of experience helping farmers execute business plans, secure farmland, and access capital, Benneth holds a Masters in Regional Planning from UMass Amherst. She has served on many boards and committees including the PVGrows Fund Committee, The Carrot Project Loan Review Committee, and the Vermont Grass Farmers Association Board. Before working at The Carrot Project, she farmed vegetables and small fruits in Western Massachusetts’ Connecticut River Valley for close to a decade. She lives in Sunderland, MA, with her son.

Jeff is a 9th generation farmer in Sutton, MA with over 40 years of farm ownership, operating, and financial management experience as well as facilitating farmer support. He organizes and provides farmer education and technical support for The Carrot Project, and serves on the PVGrows loan advisory committee.

Throughout his career Jeff has worked to create systemic change through collaboration, education, and building networks of support for farmers. Jeff advised the USDA in the creation of the Know Your Farmer Know your Food Program and USDA AMS on a number of their grant programs. He serves on the Worcester County Farm Bureau Board of Directors and the MA Food System Collaborative working group on Boards of Health. He currently supports immigrant and refugee farmers on his land. He has a degree in Economics from Bates College.

Marina is a gastronome and educator, with a passion for building resilient farm and food systems. Born in California to Latin American parents, her wanderlust took her to Europe, where she obtained a bachelor’s in Gastronomic Arts & Sciences from the Basque Culinary Center. Marina’s study of how different regions approach their food systems has enabled her to apply insights into consumers' gastronomic literacy, cultural complexities of value-added goods, labor legislation, sustainable technologies in food manufacturing, and food physiochemistry—which can be used to offer financial guidance to farmers and small businesses. Marina’s worldview has led her to work in Michelin-starred restaurants, universities, laboratories, non-profits, and rural development entities in several countries. She joined The Carrot Project to increase the accessibility of farm and food education, as well as to promote sustainable networks in the policy space. Marina is driven by her respect for the agents that preserve local food heritages, year after year.

Cian Dalzell works with The Carrot Project and operates Three Maples Market Garden, which he started with his wife in 2010. Cian's areas of expertise are financial analysis and planning, including cash flow and enterprise budgeting, competitive analysis, business planning, and systems for efficient time management. Cian also brings a decade of experience working in natural foods retail, which informs his market understanding and business planning approach. A former farmer client, Cian now spends his winters working with other farmers both in educational settings and 1:1 at The Carrot Project. On the farm, he works toward the mission of reviving fallow farmland in Berkshire County and producing nutritious vegetables that are accessible to all members of the community. He has slowly built both the soil and the financial records and systems at Three Maples and finds meaning in working with other farmers to achieve their goals. 

Laurie works with The Carrot Project and offers other services at Laurie Freyer Consulting. Before starting her own practice, Laurie spent over 15 years as a food and farming non-profit professional, focusing on programs, funding, and education for small business owners and other leaders in the sustainable food world. 

Ayesha Ali supports the advocacy work of the Agriculture Viability Alliance for The Carrot Project and is the co-founder of InCommon Group. A skilled climate & science communicator, Ayesha works to engage broad audiences in the collective development of resilient food and agriculture systems. She previously led campaign communications for the national Farm Bill advocacy campaign, Regenerate America; conducted qualitative research on green consumption habits for the Swedish state; and developed multinational sustainability campaigns for clients like Vateenfall and COOP. She holds a B.A. in Legal Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in Global Environmental History from Uppsala Universitet, where her research centered around agricultural production and global food supply chain policies.

Erica Campbell works with The Carrot Project to move forward the Alliance's advocacy and research agenda. She is the co-founder of InCommon Group, a strategic communications, research, and policy firm focused on the farm and food sector. Erica previously worked for the U.S. Senate, the national nonprofit Kiss the Ground, the Center for an Agricultural Economy, and the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, where she directed the Farm to Plate initiative. She has served on the board for the Vermont Council for Rural Development and as an advisor to UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Cooperative Extension Services, and has had volunteer leadership roles at Food Solutions New England, NESAWG, and the American Planning Association. Erica is passionate about food systems transformation, and believes that viable local farms are essential for healthy, vibrant, equitable communities and ecologically resilient landscapes.

Rich works with The Carrot Project to coordinate programming for the National Farm Viability Conference and offers other services at Alder Street Consulting. Based in Portland, Oregon, Alder Street Consulting provides business support services to agricultural producers, businesses, organizations and governmental agencies at the intersection of food production, sustainability and social justice. Services include business plans, financial modeling, enterprise planning, budgeting, cost accounting, feasibility studies and market analysis. In addition to founding Alder Street Consulting in 2016, Rich has volunteered for numerous community, environmental and social justice organizations, and is currently serving on the boards of directors for the Portland Farmers Market and the Farmers Market Fund.

Brian is the Principal of BusinessOpportunities Management Consulting. Since its founding in 1998, BusinessOpportunities (based in Defreestville, New York) has helped many companies successfully grow and achieve their goals. Brian builds on 30 years of experience with marketing consulting in the agriculture, food, and technology sectors in Upstate New York, and he holds a BS from Cornell and an MBA from Dartmouth. Brian’s areas of expertise include developing and implementing business plans, analyzing financial needs, conducting objective situation analyses to assess company strengths and opportunities, securing funding for start-up and expansion, developing new products and markets (including international distribution), preparation and support in presentations to potential investors, and developing economic impact estimates.

Dorothy is a consultant helping social-purpose organizations grow from strength, working with leadership teams to translate goals into achievable, impact-oriented metrics, coherent budgeting, flexible forecasting, and effective funding applications. She also provides financial management consulting to nonprofits nation-wide at BDO-FMA (formerly Fiscal Management Associates). Dorothy serves as Board Chair of Capital for Change, a community development financial institution (CDFI) providing community financing for nonprofits, affordable housing, energy-efficiency, and micro-enterprises, and she is a co-trainer for the SEAT program training urban minority community members to serve on nonprofit boards. Dorothy holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton and an MBA from Wharton.

Ellen is a farm consultant and workshop leader. She leverages her 35 years of
biological vegetable farming experience to help growers around the country to
achieve more satisfaction and better profitability from their farm businesses.
Ellen was one of three owners of Potomac Vegetable Farms in Northern Virginia
where she grew Ecoganic produce for 7 farmers markets, a 550 member CSA and
two roadsides stands. Ellen is a co-author of the book Start Your Farm and writes
the farmer-to-farmer profile column for Growing For Market magazine. She lives
in suburban Maryland with her husband, where she gardens like crazy.

Jed has been operating FarmSmart Maine since 2014. In that time, he has worked with over 100 small farms and food producers, helping them to establish and reach their business goals. Jed and his wife own and operate 3 Bug Farm, a diversified organic vegetable farm in Lincolnville, Maine. They raise four sons on their farm as well; Jed knows how important it is to balance family and farming life, and he takes this lens to every one of his client meetings. He also has an M.B.A in organizational and environmental sustainability, as well as years of bookkeeping and financial experience.  

Kerry has spent more than twenty-five years exercising his passion for efficiency in the areas of environmental research, operations, and policy within academia, industry, and government (with a focus on food, water, and energy in recent years). Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent onslaught of racial injustice, the two biggest crises facing the United States (and the world for that matter) were the wealth gap and climate change. They will remain after we have tackled the pandemic, and racial injustice is definitely a factor in the wealth gap. Climate change only exacerbates the disparities of our most vulnerable communities. While Kerry continues to work in the environmental and energy space, especially as it relates to climate change and social equity, he has formally expanded his passion for efficiency to the areas of entrepreneurship and innovation, especially as it relates to entrepreneurs from underserved groups and/or ventures targeting their products/services at underserved communities.

Specialties: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Environmental Services, Environmental Policy, Food, Water, Energy, Climate Change, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Startups, Non-Profits

Kevin Channell is the principal owner of Farm & Forest Business & Tax Services.  Kevin and his wife, Laura, moved to Vermont in 2005 and co-founded Your Farm in Fairlee in 2006.  The farm produced and sold produce, meat, and eggs direct to retail and wholesale accounts in the Upper Valley from 2006-2013. They were blessed with twin boys in 2013 and transferred the farm to a young couple who continue to grow the operation.

Kevin soon began graduate studies in farm business management and economics, while continuing to consult with farms and organizations, and develop rural real estate.  In 2016 he began working as a loan officer at Yankee Farm Credit. There he analyzed farm finances, evaluated industry benchmarks, closed real estate transactions, ordered and reviewed appraisals, evaluated deeds and title opinions, processed loan requests, and provided underwriting services and tax analysis. From there he began working as a farm business planner for the Intervale Center within Vermont’s Farm & Forest Viability network focusing on farm acquisitions, enterprise analysis, farm successions, and transfer planning.

Kevin enjoys providing a range of business planning and real estate services along with the tax preparation for farms and small businesses.  Kevin and his family now own and operate Vermont Alpine Farm in Reading, VT where they raise beef cattle and greenhouse crops and host a farmstay.  He is committed to making a positive impact on the future of your farm, your small business, and your family.

Laura Meister is the farmer/owner of Farm Girl Farm, founded in 2005 and located in the southern Berkshires of western Massachusetts. She specializes in heirloom and specialty vegetable varieties, with a focus on heirloom tomatoes and micro greens. Laura also grows vegetable, herb and annual flower seedlings for sale to local gardeners every spring. She has sold directly to CSA shareholders, as well as at the Great Barrington Farmers’ Market. From sowing to washing and packing, Laura does almost all of her farm work by hand, so that the final product reflects a high level of attention to detail. In addition to running the farm, Laura sits on the board of Berkshire Grown; she also tutors fellow farmers in the power of utilizing Quickbooks to take charge of their finances. Laura’s areas of expertise are Quick Books setup and operations, and financial review and analysis, including cash flow planning and business planning.

Mike is the owner and operator of Sleeping Lion Farm—a grassfed beef enterprise—in Cooperstown, NY, and a co-founder of Farm Generations Cooperative, a national agricultural co-op that operates GrownBy, an ecommerce marketplace for farm sales. He also provides business technical assistance services to farmers in New York and New England. Previously, Mike gained experience in and understanding of topics including farmland access, farm financing and grant programs, business strategy, cooperative development, and online marketing through positions at the National Young Farmers Coalition, Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, and other farm technical assistance organizations. He holds a B.S. in Business Administration with concentrations in Accounting and Operations Information Management from Georgetown University.

Stevie works with The Carrot Project as an independent consultant advising farm businesses. She worked in urban agriculture in New York City for nine years before moving to Western Massachusetts to work for Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) as a Farm Business Assistance Coordinator. In 2022 Stevie became a full time advisor and now focuses on bridging the gaps in financial literacy to make record keeping and planning more accessible. She uses her background in Whole Farm Planning and her experience as a former farm manager and community educator to develop meaningful tools and trainings for farmers.

Lori and Venus Corriveau have leveraged a lifelong love of growing community to create a farm-based venue for bringing people together. Collaborating with other professionals, they are building out a series of businesses revolving around the center enterprise of the farm, including farm dinners, live music, hiking, and glamping. After their first two seasons of rapid growth, Venus and Lori reached out to The Carrot Project for help sorting out which income streams to prioritize. After working with their Carrot advisor, they are optimistic and empowered to step into their business’s next stage: “We had a giant wake-up call and feel really good about our learning curve. People are in love with the property and the feeling of being there. Eventually, it’s going to work!” Read the full story.

A self-described first-generation farmer, Lucía Cueto Kearney grows diversified vegetables on the 36-acre property of the Wolf Tree Cooperative in Foster, RI. She supplies food for both the Cooperative and two farmers’ markets. For off-season income, Lucía sells soap hand-made from sustainable ingredients, including flowers and herbs from the farm. The 2023 growing season was Pea Shoot’s first. As she establishes her farm business, Lucía is focused on balancing viability, sustainability, and a commitment to community: “I’m planning to stay hyper, hyper-local.” Read the full story.

Full Well Farm produces 120 vegetable and flower CSA shares and sells through one farmers’ market and 17 wholesale accounts, including North Adams’ public schools. Two years into production, co-owners Laura and Meg were facing major decisions about growing their operation, and realized they needed to hone their business planning skills. They participated in The Carrot Project's Making it Happen Workshop (MIH), and followed up with one-on-one business assistance. 

After working with Carrot advisor Brian Zweig to get their financial statements into shape to show to lenders, Laura and Meg gained access to loans and grants that made it possible to complete the building of a 30’ x 96’ greenhouse. In previous seasons, Full Well rented space at other farms. Now, having their new greenhouse not only makes their workflow more efficient, but also sets them up for four-season growing and offers another tool for climate resilience.

Laura, initially hesitant to take business risks, found that “working with someone else and having them give feedback and help us learn how to decide if an idea is good” was extremely helpful. “I’m pretty risk averse, and taking on loans and big projects feels like a big deal." Meg agrees: “We were at a phase in the business where we were looking for advice on being financially viable, figuring out how to support employees and work towards the livable wages that we both want, what to invest in, and how to make a longer-term plan.” Read the full profile.

Rosangela Teodoro's upbringing on her family’s nationally-renowned cattle ranch in Brazil immersed her in ranching, husbandry and finishing. Rosangela’s dream to operate her own butcher shop came to fruition in 2023. Her shop, Teodora’s, is named to honor her father' legacy, and features high quality, ethically and humanely raised meats sourced from small-scale local cattle farms. “Working with the animals is a sacred thing,” Rosangela says, and she honors them by using the whole animal in the store. 

She found The Carrot Project online, reached out and was matched up with a business advisor who worked with her to create a strategic plan for the business, budget projections, cash flow plans, and a roadmap of how to raise the capital needed for the shop’s buildout. Before working with Carrot, her strategy was always “just work very hard, live very frugally, and put everything possible back into the business.” Working with an advisor showed her how to capitalize on her instincts, mapping this strategy to monthly benchmarks and details. Read the full profile.

Farmer/Owner McDonough Scanlon (Mac) is bringing High Road Farm into its eighth season of production. Growing on five acres equipped with three greenhouses, one propagation house, and two high tunnels in Newbury, MA, Mac has a 65-member CSA, sells at one farmers’ market, and serves four wholesale outlets. She is “non-certified organic,”— “my customers know me, and they know I grow without commercial pesticides.”

To hone her knowledge, Mac talked to other farmers and took classes, including The Carrot Project’s Making It Happen workshop. In 2020, Mac applied to TCP for technical assistance to develop better systems of tracking her income. She worked with business advisor Julia Shanks, who taught Mac how to use QuickBooks. Mac says that she found it difficult at first to have enough bandwidth during the season to learn a new tool, but Julia was “super patient.” They spoke every few weeks, and the result, “totally transformed the way that I view my business—I’m able to make more informed decisions because now I have data to guide me. With more information, I see my business in a different light.”

Read the full profile.

Turner Hill Malting Company is one of only two malting houses in Massachusetts supplying local breweries with malted barley. Farmer/Engineer Darrell Turner contracts directly with owners of two local brew houses who’ve long sought a local source of this primary ingredient for their recipes, now produced in small batches in Darrell’s new facility in Egremont, MA. He retrofitted the assets of his family’s mid-size dairy farm, reimagining the operation to ensure its future, meanwhile capitalizing on local demand for farm-to-mug beverages to found his own company.

With a 2017 Carrot Project micro-loan, Darrell designed and built his prototype malt house, a two-vessel, mostly-automated system that first soaked the raw barely until sprouting, then dried the grain. Darrell then cleaned the malted barley with an 1890s seed cleaner he modified for his purposes. In 2020, based on the success of the protype, and backed by strong demand for locally malted barley, Darrell secured funding from Berkshire Agricultural Ventures to build a 20 x 30 building, outfitted with equipment all of his own creation. The new building tripled the size of his operation, and now that he can produce bigger batches, he can begin to truly meet demand.

Read the full update.

Jill Verzino and Will O’Meara grow vegetables at Hungry Reaper Farm, on four acres in Morris, CT, a town in Litchfield County. They have a 50-member CSA and sell at one farmers’ market and to selected wholesale outlets. As they enter their third season, they are beginning an expansion to a 104-acre property near their current rented fields.

Jill and Will spent summer breaks through high school and college working on farms together. In 2019, with several solid years of farming under their collective belts, they were presented with an opportunity to rent some farmland, and they decided to go for it. Will and Jill built a 30’ x 94’ greenhouse and a walk-in cooler, they grew on one and a half acres for their first season in 2020, and they have incrementally increased to their current cultivation of four acres.

In the winter of 2020-2021, Will participated in The Carrot Project’s “Making It Happen” workshop. He said that working through real-world strategies and scenarios for farmers pivoting in a rapidly changing sales landscape was a particularly valuable experience in the backdrop of the pandemic. As a result of the course, he and Jill “made significant changes to how we were recordkeeping and planning for 2021.”

When they were matched with a TCP business advisor, Jill and Will went to work immediately to prepare a capital budget for expansion, along with new cash flow plans and projections to reflect business growth. They also hammered out a plan to eventually purchase their new land in a way that their business and personal finances could sustain. Will says: “it’s been so great to have someone help us distill all of our ideas into actionable plans.”

Read the full profile.

Marleen and Dan raise sheep, goats, bees, and two boys on a leased 350-acre farm in Falls Village, CT. They sell meat boxes and honey online and at the farm. “One of our biggest desires for the farm is for it to become a place where we can grow community,” says Marleen. “In fact, this is THE reason Dan farms.”

After several seasons of building a customer base and establishing the production side of their farm, Marleen recognized a need to shift her focus to setting up a financial tracking system. She and Dan needed to be able to see which parts of their operation were most profitable, and to have better information on which to base their decisions. She found Julia Shanks’ “The Farmer’s Edge” course online, and successfully applied to The Carrot Project for a small scholarship to help her pay for the course. Marleen participated in the course in the early spring of 2020.

Read the full profile here.

Ray Shatney and Janet Steward have been raising prizewinning Highland cattle on their family farm, Greenfield Highland Beef, in Greensboro Bend and Plainfield, Vermont, since 1967. In May, Janet joined us for a virtual panel to share how COVID-19 has affected small farm businesses. The virus “has changed most everything that we do,” she told us. 

Read the full profile.

Lisa Evans and Tim Smith grow microgreens in Boston's Hyde Park neighborhood, the first commercial urban farm started under Boston's new urban farming regulations. They attended The Carrot Project's urban agriculture business training workshop, Deepening Roots, Growing Success in 2017.

Read the full profile. 

Apolo Catala grows diverse vegetables on a half-acre plot in Boston with help from formerly incarcerated men of color, and sells his products locally to provide access to fresh food in food deserts.  In 2018, he enrolled in The Carrot Project’s nine-week course, “Deepening Roots, Growing Success,” designed to strengthen business skills for farm and food business operators. Here he realized the importance of understanding and caring for the “engine that drives the farm operation,” i.e. the business.

Read the full profile.

It was a classic tale of sheep meets goat: Lizzie had sheep, Emerson had goats, and now their small ruminants graze together happily on 45 acres at Woven Stars Farm in Ghent, NY. In 2018, after hearing about The Carrot Project through word-of-mouth from farmer friends, Lizzie and Emerson received a loan from The Carrot Project to assist them in expanding their mushroom barn and outfitting it with the appropriate equipment to provide optimal growing and storing conditions. Lizzie says the business loan provided by the Carrot Project “gave us the confidence and means to take the leap from farming as a hobby to making farming our full-time jobs.” 

Read the full profile.

In 2014, Steve and Sarah Murray started their own operation, Heart Beets Farm, on five certified organic acres. They now manage 36 acres, which allows them to rotate crops optimally, and for the 2020 season they’ll grow on about 10 acres, in anticipation of increased CSA membership.They use deep organic techniques, which, in Eliot Coleman’s words, mimic the elegant patterns of the natural world’s “soil-plant economy.” 

Read the full update.

The Milkhouse is a dairy farm and certified organic creamery located in Western Kennebec County, Maine. Owned and operated by Caitlin Frame and Andy Smith, The Milkhouse sells milk from their dairy cows, as well as yogurt, beef, eggs, and pork. They own and help care for about 100 cows and currently milk 25-40 of them. The investments that Andy and Caitlin made in the creamery were integral to the growth of their business, and ultimately, have made The Milkhouse more resilient to unexpected challenges in the dairy industry as a whole.

Read the full profile.

Friends Jeff and Abigail Fisher, Ben Whalen, and Melissa Law grow certified organic vegetables, herbs, and flowers on The Weeks Farm in Windham, ME. They have an 80-family CSA program, sell at 3 Portland farmers’ markets, and supply 15 area restaurants.  The four friends began growing vegetables and flowers on just two acres of leased land in Buxton, Maine, in 2014. “For new farmers, finding land that is affordable with the necessary infrastructure to run a business is challenging. You really have to make do with what you have and make it work,” said Jeff.

Read the full profile. 

Tyler Sage raises and breeds 10 sows yearly, maintaining a herd of 55 pigs which are sold throughout the year to butcher shops and restaurants, and at the Greenfield Farmers’ Market. Tyler also has a horse-powered logging business based on his leased 50 acres.

Tyler began working with The Carrot Project in 2015, soon after beginning his own operation. He worked with staff to develop cash flow projections and write a successful application for a three-year, no-interest crowdfunded loan through Kiva, allowing him to scale up to his current level of production.

Read the full profile.

Ironwood Farm is a certified organic vegetable farm run by three women on eight and a half rented acres.  Ironwood Farm started in 2014 with four and a half production acres, no employees and two owners working part-time, a few local restaurant accounts, a twenty-five person winter CSA and two winter farmers markets. Now in our third season, the farm produces on eight and a half acres. All three owners are working full time at a livable wage. We have two full time employees and will employ a third in 2017.

Sparrowbush Farm has moved operations to Hurricane Flats in South Royalton, VT.

This profile dates from 2018, when Sparrowbush Farm was operated by Ashley Loehr in Livingston, NY. Ashley used sustainable and innovative farming practices to produce vegetables, grains, eggs, chicken and pork. Sparrowbush Farm was started in 2011. Ashley has over 10 years of experience in agriculture, including working in various capacities at other Columbia County farms, working at a Finger Lakes winery, repairing farm equipment, and taking classes at Cornell’s Ag School. Ashley’s partner Antoine Guerlain, assists in the business and used the farm’s grains in an on-farm bakery.

Read the full profile.

Shadow Creek Farm was a startup market garden farm in Fairfax, VT operating on 1 acre. Owners Eli and Valerie now operate Honeyfield Farm nearby. This profile of their previous operation details Eli's work with Carrot to access loan financing for a mix of farm supplies and working capital needed for the first year of operations. The farm sold fresh salad greens to local restaurants, as well as cucumbers, radishes and hot peppers to regional distributors and processors.

New Beat Farm grows certified-organic vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Farmers Adrienne Lee and Ken Lamson sell directly to customers through CSA shares and at farmers markets. Now in their fourth year in this location, Adrienne and Ken are assessing how to fine-tune the farm business.

Corie Pierce and Adam Wilson of Bread & Butter Farm (Chittenden, VT) worked with The Carrot Project almost ten years ago to add a wood-fired bakery to their young farm.