At Yellow Boots Farmstead, we work in tandem with nature to grow food that’s good for our neighbors and good for the planet. We’ve been in the Scottsville, Virginia community for nearly ten years, and in that time we’ve slowly and mindfully scaled up from garden to homestead to microfarm. We consider ourselves the stewards of our living soil and the ecosystem that thrives on our 2.4 acres, supporting birds and pollinators as a critical part of our overall farm management.

We are a family-run operation. Megan is the farmer-in-chief, Nathan has built or fixed every single part of the farmstead (including our roadside farmstand), and our little farmer-in-training provided the inspiration for our name with her signature yellow boots.

Our dogs Biggs and Wedge have yet to find their niche on the farm (besides troublemaking). We’ll keep you updated.

Our growing practices and values:

We are a no-till farm. Once beds are established, we use compost, mulching, cover cropping, and crop rotation practices to build healthy living soil. We do not practice any form of deep tillage to avoid damaging the soil’s rich microbial life at root depth. We will occasionally employ some light broadforking or surface-level tilthing to aid the germination of fussy seeds like carrots, but always in service of feeding our compacted clay soil.

We are not certified organic, as the certification process is expensive and doesn’t make sense for an operation as teeny tiny as ours, but we voluntarily use growing practices required for organic certification.

• We are a solar-powered farm. We have a 100% offset photovoltaic system on site. Still grid-tied for now because battery systems are horrifically expensive, but our goal is to get there eventually.
• We do not spray our vegetables at all and use protective insect netting and soil health as our primary methods of pest control. We also encourage a thriving farm ecosystem for natural pest control: birds, beneficial insects and spiders, natural habitat, and flowers for our pollinators are all critical parts of our farm infrastructure.
• Use of fertilizer is rare. When compost and broken-down mulch aren’t enough to support our plants through the growing season, we choose only organic, slow-release fertilizers.

All that to say, if you see us with a sprayer in our hands, it’s probably our homemade garlic-and-egg “stinky deer spray” that we spray around trees and beds to deter deer and rabbits! This is the food we feed our family, and we hope you’ll find it worthy of yours. Feel free to ask questions anytime.

Microfarm and… Creative Studio?

Yes! Megan is a writer and crafter, and Nathan learned woodworking from his grandfather and graphic design at art school. We both sell our creative works at our farmstand, from handmade wood crafts to t-shirts designed in-house to paintings and cross stitch. The little farmer-in-training even offers a few of her own creative works for sale—and yes, all the money goes to her so she can learn to budget.

Why Yellow Boots?

If you ever see our kid running around the farmstead, she’ll almost certainly be rocking her yellow rubber boots. She got her first pair when she was just a year old and we have a whole collection of them in increasing sizes on a shelf down in the Plant Lair (our basement seed starting and microgreen growing area). She’ll get bored of them one day, surely, but those yellow boots will always be synonymous with those early days of scaling up our growing operation with her toddling around right alongside.

We Buy Local, Too!

Whenever possible, we source our farm needs from local producers, even if it’s a bit more expensive. When that is not possible, we move next to worker-owned businesses, smaller operations, and regionally or at least U.S.-made choices. We personally recommend all these companies!

Our local vendors:

• Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Louisa, VA
• Panorama Paydirt in Earlysville, VA
• Brent & Becky’s Bulbs in Gloucester, VA
• W.F. Paulette’s Ace Hardware in Scottsville, VA
• Crimson Clover Apiary in Buckingham, VA

Other vendors:

• Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine
• Northspore in Maine
• Field and Forest Products in Wisconsin
• Four Winds Growers in California