Katie Ward

     Katie Ward is a 9th generation family farmer from South March. She and her partner Matt grow vegetables, and raise sheep, chickens, and pigs in Woodlawn with a focus on building soil and rotational grazing on pasture.
     As the co-owner of Our Farm CSA, she strives to provide the community with healthy, sustainably grown, and delicious food.
     Furthermore, Katie has a passion for eating seasonally throughout the year, which has led to a love of canning, freezing and dehydrating food.

What made you want to be a part of the Deep Roots Food Hub?
The people who are involved are very committed and very effective at getting things done. I feel there’s a real need for improved access to food storage and processing infrastructure for small and medium sized farms to help fill the gap between small, direct sales operations and selling to massive grocery store chains because there has to be something in between.

What does food security mean to you?
While I understand that food security is an issue, I prefer to talk about food sovereignty. This is because I feel like it’s not just about the economics of people being able to afford access to healthy food but it’s also ensuring democracy in our food system and how its legislated. This way, everyone gets a fair shake because regulations that work for giant corporations don’t necessarily work for small home based businesses. I really feel that food sovereignty calls for us being able to feed ourselves as a nation and I feel there’s a lot of focus on exporting in agriculture today but there is a great demand for local food from local eaters.

What made you want to be a farmer?
I love food and I’m curious about how things work. I wanted to know how to grow my own food. I enjoy raising animals but mostly I love food. I have been farming since 2010.

What is your proudest accomplishment?
The first one that comes to mind is that I’m seeing more bio-diversity on my farm occurring naturally which tells me that my farming practices are paying off for the eco system.

If you had the power to solve one food related problem in the world, what would it be and why?
I would eliminate potato bugs and cucumber beetles because they are awful and they are swarming hoards.