PROUD FOOD VEGETABLE MARKET

Proud Food Farm is a small 2 1/2 acre farm located in Silver Spring. We specialize in growing a wide variety of unique and ethnic vegetables, herbs, & berries. Since we've opened, the stand has become a community hub selling one neighbor's fresh eggs and another's local honey. Now in our third year, we have teamed up with other local farmers to make organic farming more successful. This allows us to offer you more variety, to specialize in crops, and crop rotate more effectively. We sell to the public once a week on-site, so you can see where your food is grown. Keeping it small allows us to give the best care and attention to growing healthy food for our immediate community. Our partners follow the same practices with a firm commitment to growing healthy food.Our partners include: Bird Nest Farm, Blueberry Gardens, and Sandy Spring Farm all located in Sandy Spring, MD.

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We grow sustainably.

We are part of several ecosystems on the property, including: a grassy meadow, a creek, and the woods. We take that responsibility very seriously by recognizing how each action impacts the rest and how each strata is related to another. Below, are some of the practices we use to take care of the land:

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•  We protect the plants: We don't use chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or genetically modified organisims (GMOs). 

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• We protect the soil: We create healthy soil by feeding it with organic matter including grass clippings, straw, crop debris, high-quality composted manure, and slow-release amendments like greensand, lime, bloodmeal, and feathermeal.

  • We protect the soil by not tilling. No-tilling protects not only the structure of the soil, but the critical life within the soil (like worms & microbes) which play an important part in feeding our crops.

  • We protect the soil from erosion. We prevent the soil from eroding by keeping strips of grass in between each cultivated row.

  • We keep the soil in place by making sure it is covered at all times, once a crop is finished, we plant a cover-crop in it's place so there is never bare soil.

  • We have no tractors or heavy equipment that compacts the soil. What is left is a rich soil, full of life and nutrients in which to grow your food. 

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• We protect the water: the biggest pollutant in the Chesapeake Bay is due to run-off from fertilizers we apply to our lawns and crops. We don't use them!

  • To prevent run-off, we only cultivate a quarter of the land. By leaving the hillside in pasture and strips of grass in the field, we keep the soil in place and prevent pollutants from running into our stream.

 

• We protect the wildlife: our pollinators, our revisiting birds, our family of foxes, our large herd of deer, an American eel, northeastern water snake, Monarchs- our farm is teeming with life.

  • We create a safe and rich habitat for pollinators and pasture life by keeping the hillside in pasture.

  • We plant and sell native wildflowers to encourage pollinators. 

  • The clover and buckwheat we use as cover crops are also pollinator favorites.

  • We have hives set up by our neighborhood beekeeper, Charlie Brandts, to help ensure good pollination in our small orchard and fields.

 

About me.

My name is Jeanette Proudfoot. I grew up and went to school in southern Ohio

where I studied religion & culture. Ironically, while studying people and working indoors,

I found my interests were pulling me toward plants and I discovered the joy of

working outdoors.

 

My love of plants developed further when I started working in the herb garden at the

National Arboretum in DC. I began to understand the role plants have in our lives,

even the ones we call weeds. Over time that understanding eventually led me into farming

at Clagett Farm in Upper Marlboro. The more I work with plants, the more I realize how

interrelated life above and below the soil is. The way that every component affects every

other, and the way that each task performed affects the whole continues to amaze me.

My goal is to produce food in a way that takes into consideration the life of the soil, the life

in our streams, and the health of our pollinators. If I can do that while making safe, fresh,

nutritious, and better-tasting food affordable; I will have made something I am proud of.

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