Farming Fools

and 20 years later, we're still growing!

Apr 01, 2025

From our very beginning, we were fools. Way back in 2005, the official start of Blue Gate Farm was on April 1. Yep, that's right we moved to the farm on April Fool's Day…and to varying degrees that observance has tickled me every year since.

What a journey it’s been! Had I known, when we started, the challenges we would face, I’m not sure I could have done it, but here at the start of our 20th season I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I could wax poetic about our experiences, or swear like a stagehand (truly) about some of the speed bumps but I’ll leave that for another day. Today, I mostly want to look at some fun photos and think back over the journey so far.

If you’ve ever taken a drawing or creative writing class, a common exercise in both is a speed challenge, a bit like speed dating, where you have an adrenalin-powered time limit to produce a fast result or experience, usually a simplified version of the full-featured version. The above timeline was rather like that for me, trying to distill the experience of a year down to one photo. Honestly, the easiest would have been to just pick one photo of each of our crops per year, but the farm is about SO much more than produce. Note the people; the family, friends, crew. See our fur-friends. Our efforts, our growth, our challenges, our celebrations. Notice there’s not a single photo of a weed…our farmer friends won’t miss that detail…but that’s not what the farm or this post is about.

So without further ado…I give you, 20 years of the farm.