Taproots Farm Hub - Emerging Farmers Field Day

On April 30^th Taproots Farm Hub hosted its Emerging Farmers Field Day in the Dry Creek Valley north of Boise.

It's a part of their outreach efforts where they try to bring together folks who want to learn how to farm and help them to see what functioning mixed vegetable diversified small scale farming operations look like.

CWI Horticulture students and folks from the public visited 5 farms to learn from small-scale urban farmers. Taproots has plans to support new farmers by securing land and offering them long-term leases along with training, mentorship, and access to shared equipment so they can build viable long-term businesses. 

 Verbatim:

Casey O'Leary - Executive Director – Taproots Farm Hub

“Formerly welcome to this 2026 Taproot Farm Hub and Dry Creek Valley Farmers Emerging producers field day!

So, today we're doing this Emerging Producers Field Day. It's a part of Taproots Farm Hub's outreach efforts where we're trying to bring together folks who want to learn how to farm and help them to see what functioning mixed vegetable diversified small scale farming operations look like.

The idea is we're visiting 5 different really cool little farms.

Black Fox Farm, Whistle Pig Farm, Fiddler's Green Farm, Sun Dog Farm, and Dry Creek Ranch Farm. So all within a couple miles of each other. And learning from these farmers, to learn from experienced farmers.

“I am Justin Moore of Fiddler's Green Farm. I started this farm ten years ago.

It's hard to find, but I know those opportunities are out there.  I mean, I think something like this Taproots program could be really cool. Linking want to be or potential farmers into land arrangements would be huge.  

A lot of people have land that they don't know what to do is, or they inherited land from a family member that they don't maybe know how to manage or they want to manage.

And really start small. Like we started with one little greenhouse. These high tunnels weren't here. And honestly, we just built a little bit more, a little bit more.”

Jack Vance  - Aspiring Farmer

“My name's Jack Vance.  I’m 12.

I've always wanted to be a farmer since I was like 5. Yeah. So, I've been wanting a farm for a while. And it just kind of became my passion.

I was hoping to pick up on how to farm and what different people are doing so I can put that into my future career.”

Casey O’Leary -

“Part of what we're doing today is partnering with CWI's horticulture program to bring their students out. And I taught at that program for the last four years. And what I've found to be true is that if these folks want to go into farming after they take this training, they have nowhere to get land. So what we're trying to do, we created Taproots Farm Hub as a way to get a big piece of land that we can get a really long lease on, 50 years, 99 years, you know, something that can be a legacy piece of land. Then we can sublease that to individual farmers. They can have long leases on that land. They can have access to shared equipment, shared infrastructure, shared markets if they want them, but then access to training. So they can come, they can learn about farming, but they can also learn about business because that's a whole different skill set. And then Once they've trained, they can get their own piece of land and then they can have ongoing mentorship from experienced farmers who are already on the same piece of land.

We're looking for 40 to 200 acres. And we figure in that space, we could probably accommodate 20 small farmers, potentially more than 20 small farmers, depending on exactly what they're doing.  

We've gotten some grant money through the USDA's Transition to Organics Partnership Program to work on convening this organization. So, we're building the organization with these grant funds and we're hosting events like this to get the word out and coalesce a community of people who are interested around this.

As far as how we're going to pay for it, we're just launching a capital campaign right now. But honestly, the startup costs, aside from securing a piece of land that will work for what we're looking for, the startup costs are not crazy. We're gonna, we're farmers are scrappy. We can do it for, build really nice stuff for fairly affordably and make something that's really valuable for not a huge amount of money. But the land is another piece. So we're looking for land. We're currently talking with landowners. If any of your viewers or listeners, any of the Farm Bureau members have connection to land, that it would be very helpful to talk with folks who are interested in seeing this happen. So we're looking for something, you know, that's close to the markets in Boise, but we're not delusional, you know, somewhere in Ada County or somewhere in the Treasure Valley, Canyon County, Ada County, Gem County. 40 to 200 acres, good water, somebody who's willing to work with us for the long term.

I mean I think farm retiring farmers whose kids don't want to take over the land. Nevertheless, their land is what their kids have for their inheritance. So there's a lot of complex issues around that, but we've been working with a lot of folks through the land trust system, through the APA that Idaho Farm Bureau has been a part of helping to start just trying to find creative ways to make sure that the next generation of folks who own the farmland currently but don't want to farm it can get taken care of financially while leaving the land in agricultural production and providing opportunities for future farmers.