A quick note on who we are and our farming/gardening background. . . Megan and I both grew up in northern NJ. Megan has always been interested in gardening, while I used to make fun of my high school buddy that loved to work in the vegetable garden at his house. By the time Megan and I were dating in college, I had changed my views and one of our cheap dates was to work in our little garden in front of the house I was renting. We got married in 1999 and we've planted some kind of garden every year ever since. Sometimes it has been small because we've moved during the summer or space wasn't easily available. But we always found a way to plant something somewhere. We learned a lot from 1999-2002 when we joined and later lead an organic gardening club at Benner's Farm in Setauket, NY (Long Island). Anne Patterson was a wonderful mentor there and we still email her when we run into trouble! When we moved to Iowa, we joined the ISU Student Organic Farm and just about keeled over when we saw the beautiful rich ROCK FREE topsoil that covers practically the whole state.

During our last year in Iowa, we cut loose and started our own little produce business that we called "Rusty's Produce". Dale Hughes, who farms 100's of acres of corn and soybeans, let us use about 1/3 of an acre on his property to grow veggies for the Ames Farmer's Market. He got a kick of seeing me mess around on my hands and knees with my hand tools while he drove his 2-story tractors and combines around. I did catch him enjoying a few fresh tomatoes though! That season was successful enough that, when we moved to NY so Megan could pursue a PhD at Cornell, we decided to look for a property that would let us take our produce business to the next level (which wasn't really all that big of a step up . . .). Megan's constantly prodding me to get this produce business going so that we'll have something to fall back on when she flunks out of school! Don't tell that to anyone at Cornell . . . When I was picking a name for our farm business, my old cronies from a band that I was in called The Happies kept telling me I had to find a way to incorporate the word "Happy" into my new business. And thus The Happy Farmer was born!

We have three kids: Vera (8), Jethro (6) and Mary (3). They take up a lot of our time now, but they are already getting to be great helpers around the garden. Jethro's favorite job is pulling weeds and Vera's favorite job is picking strawberries and cherry tomatoes. Mary mostly eats dirt for now, but I'm sure she'll learn something useful soon. We hope you'll come visit our farm and get to know us a little better!