SweetRoot Farm is a product of unique combination of strengths, dreams, and stubbornness of partners Noah Jackson and Mary Bricker. Noah brings the big-vision, idealistic dreamer influence; Mary brings the attention to nitty-gritty detail that can anchor a dream to the ground, map it out, and identify the next 3 steps. Neither can be sure who’s idea this whole thing was in the first place, but without either, the farm as it is would never have come to be.

We were not the youngest of young-farmers when we started out, launching this ship in our upper-middle 30’s. We came to farming from other careers: Noah in tropical forest conservation and photography/ storytelling. Mary from field ecology and academic teaching as a biology professor. We both grew up with family gardens, and our first home together involved reclaiming a neglected backyard, revitalizing old garden beds, and establishing a first laying hen flock with 4, and then 8, chickens. Things have just progressed ever since.

In the current iteration of the farm, we work together on planning, big-picture vision and goals, and core infrastructure projects. As Noah is stepping away from quite so many farm hours in order to learn the craft of documentary film-making, Mary takes on the bulk of the day-to-day team management, markets, and on the ground work. Noah’s farmwork tends to fall into periodic pulses in between film projects, but he’ll dive in for large blocks of field prep, training crew, and winter building/ repairs.

Mary’s farm-task loves include nerding out on soil health, microbes, and crop planning (the satisfaction of a good spreadsheet). She is the water-queen of the farm, whether that’s relishing the petrichor when turning on the overhead sprinklers, installing plumbing, or watering the greenhouse seedlings. She thinks baby plants are cute, frets over plant health everywhere, knows the location of every crop at any point in the season across the entire farm map, and always has a favorite farm zone. She finds few things more satisfying than pruning and trellising tomatoes, but has learned to share the fun and train others to help out. She’s known for having a half-eaten carrot, pepper, or cucumber in her back pocket for much of the summer. She holds firm in her belief that the right pocket notebook and a good pen are critical farm gear, but has an unfortunate habit of dropping her favorite pens all over the farm. Never throw her work-pants in the laundry without a deep pocket check. Despite being a confirmed introvert, she fires up for market morning and actually loves talking to all of you, challenging people to try new veggies, and hearing about everyone’s favorite recipes (but she ideally gets to crawl into a quiet green space to recover for Saturday afternoon). She’s the force behind the flowers on the farm, and has been known to stress-plant flowers in response to darkness and chaos in the world news, because while it won’t solve anything, it can’t hurt, right? Outside of farming, she sets over-amibitious reading goals, loves to cook and ferment with the food we grow, and relishes taking the dog out to hike in the mountains.

Noah has always been the chicken-boss and poultry instigator (from the very first 4 hand-me down hens that he brought home before finishing their coop build). He argues there’s not much more satisfying than enjoying a cup of coffee early on a summer morning while watching the hens emerge from the barn that he just moved to fresh pasture. He masters the electrical elements of the farm, from hand-made light fixtures based on repurposed old farm equipment, to solar panels for the hen systems. He has been the design-builder of everything from the mobile chicken barns to the row cover storage bins, landscape fabric micro-sheds, and loves watching a new farm build make the place “a little less janky.” As a wild creative with a background in photography, writing, and video, most things on the farm that actually look nice have had some of his influence (and definitely anything really good photos on the website). He’s still the best at the BCS and making it look way easier than it is, and the fastest harvester of beans, cabbages, and melons. Off the farm, besides documentary work, he runs ridiculously far distances in the mountains.