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Meet Your Farmer: Susan at Little Toccoa Creek Farm
Written By: Brigitte Hoarau. March, 2024
Visitors to Little Toccoa Creek Farm may be charmed by the sight of baby goats prancing in the pasture, chickens and ducks ranging freely, and dewy purple cabbages flanking bountiful patches of seasonal produce in the fields and high tunnels, but what runs underneath it all is equally impressive. The farm is Certified Naturally Grown, and farmer Susan Caster puts a lot of thought and energy into how she lives and farms. “I originally got all of the animals to improve the soil – not to market their products,” she says. “For example, chickens fertilize the hay field, which I cut and bale to feed the goats, [who] provide manure for compost for the garden.”
For Susan, growing good food means fostering biodiversity and improving the land, which uncoincidentally involves organic practices that produce nutrient-rich, healthier produce. After retiring from teaching Biology, Susan worked on organic farms in Australia and New Zealand “to make sure [farming full time] was something I enjoyed,” she says. Spoiler alert—she really does, so she set out to create a farm of her own. When she purchased the 92-acre Toccoa property five years ago, it had been used for many years for cattle, so it needed some restoration. Susan put her science background and environmental health values to work bringing back a more natural ecology without chemicals and using regenerative farming practices such as broad-forking, cover cropping, and using water efficiently. “I’ve improved pastures from being hard packed to being soft enough to turn over by hand,” she says. She has also built up a farm that supplies produce, eggs, and goat milk products through Northeast Georgia Locally Grown and her own CSA May-August (see details below).
To encourage biodiversity, Susan grows a smaller amount of a wide selection of plants suited to each area of the farm, and she enjoys “experimenting with unusual plants such as Wax Melon, Magenta Spreen or Kiwano.” Working with nature also means planning for continual harvest, so Susan tries to plant something every day, of course matching seeds to the season, but also taking advantage of practices such as using high tunnels to grow greens, radish, and brassicas through the winter, employing short slopes between gardens for herbs and onions, nurturing the upland cress and blackberries that like to grow in low areas, and using the shaded buffer along the creek for mushroom logs.
Beyond the 12 acres she farms, Susan is in the process of putting the other 80 acres that make up Little Toccoa Creek Farm into a permanent conservation easement that preserves the forest’s natural functions into perpetuity. This wild buffer supports wildlife and the biological cycles that allow nature to thrive on the farm and beyond.
Growing good food while improving the land is a continual process of learning, practice, and experimentation, which Susan eagerly takes on. “I don’t ever want more than the land can sustain,” she says, and adds that she strives to increase her self-sustainability. “I would love to move toward producing my own dog food and other animal food instead of buying some of it.”
She also aims to continue growing unusual plants along with the more traditional fare. Chinese python snake beans are a recent favorite. “They have a stunning flower!” she exclaims, looking out over the fruit trees just beginning to bud.
A breeze wafts up from the creek, and a toad trills. Little Toccoa Creek babbles just beyond the trees, this farm a harmonious pocket in nature’s apron.
Little Toccoa Creek Farm 2024 CSA
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) connects people directly with farms. Members pay in advance for a share of the farm’s harvest. Little Toccoa Creek Farm’s CSA offers 15 weeks of freshly harvested Certified Naturally Grown produce May 5-August 15. Each week during the season members will get up to 7 items that can vary from week to week. Produce is harvested within 24 hours of pickup to insure peak freshness and optimum nutritional value. Members pay $450/share for the full season and pick up at the farm on Thursdays between 5-6:30pm. Add-ons such as pasture-raised, organic, corn- & soy-free chicken and duck eggs and goat milk products are also available. Contact Susan.Caster@gmail.com or 404-512-5621 for more information.
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