– Amit Ray
Dancing Sprouts Farm is a small farm on shared land in Puyallup, WA. Our half-acre lease is tucked along the fertile Puyallup River, in the majestic shadow of Mt. Rainier. We grow more than 200 varieties of fresh vegetables, salad greens, herbs, and fruit -from your favorite standbys to unusual heirlooms- for our Seattle and Tacoma CSA.
The land we farm is on the traditional lands of the Puyallup Tribe. We acknowledge their historic and continued presence and stewardship of the place we now work.
Our Practices
Healthy soils grow healthy food and resilient plants. We never use any synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides and make farm decisions based on the health of the soil, the pollinators, the community we’re a part of, and the broader ecosystem we inhabit.
This also means we get to enjoy visiting hawks, dragonflies, and even elk from the native hedgerows and wetlands around the farm!
staying small
When we say we’re small, we mean really small – one farmer on less than an acre of land!
Small, diverse farms more closely mimic how nature works, helping us to minimize pest outbreaks and focus on building deep, fertile soils. It’s remarkable just how much beautiful produce we can grow in such a small footprint.
working with our hands
We like keeping our farm intimate and our feet on the earth. We plant in permanent beds and use mostly hand tools, tarps, and other equipment designed for very small farms.
This helps us reduce tillage and focus on building living soils full of healthy microorganisms and strong plants.
THE seeds WE SOW
Seeds are a precious inheritance from millenia of farmers who came before us. Alarmingly, our industrial food system has put that inheritance in danger, focusing only on hyper-uniform, good-for-shipping, monocrop seed varieties.
As a local farm, we love doing our part to steward and reinvigorate our rich agricultural history. We grow more than 200 varieties of vegetable on our farm: tasty heirlooms with incredible resilience, newer varieties specifically bred for small organic farms, and rare finds from around the world.
keeping it fresh, keeping it local
Vegetables often travel hundreds or even thousands of miles before reaching the grocery store. Beyond the enormous environmental impact of transporting food these distances it also means that, by the time they get to you, they have already been in storage for weeks or even months.
Our vegetables are always harvested just for you and never travel more than 40 miles. Fresh food not only tastes better and lasts longer, it holds onto more of its nutrients.
Thoughts from your farmer
Passion for real food and healthy land led me to work in food policy for nearly a decade where I collaborated with schools and low income urban communities to make fresh produce more available. I learned from small-scale farmers what they were doing to grow food sustainably for the land, for their communities, and for their own well-being.
All these years later I still get that childish delight each time a seed sprouts or I snack on veggies in the field. Even when the work is hard and the days are long, my joy in farming is getting to share a piece of that delight with you.
-Gillian