Cultivating Biodiversity
A Soil Profile of a New England Farm
Editor’s Note: In his book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry writes: “The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” Here, Josh Anderson articulates what the nature of soil looks like on a small Connecticut farm, and Austen Camille’s accompanying art gives life to the shared reverence of the life that cycles endlessly under our feet. – Alex Redfield
Nestled between Salmon Brook, the largest tributary to the Farmington River, and the Barn Door Hills, Holcomb Farm in West Granby, Connecticut, squats on 318 acres that once bloomed in shade tobacco. The surrounding hills were blanketed by hay meadows grazed by dairy cattle. Remnant trees from the historic apple orchard still produce fruit along the small arboretum known as the Holcomb Tree Trail.
The quaint romance of a New England farm is often at odds with the region’s history of soil degradation rooted in earlier eras of poor farming practices, as well as the loss of biological diversity caused by rampant deforestation from the colonial era through the mid nineteenth century. But today, farmer Joe O’Grady is among a growing number of New England farmers working to restore soil health by recognizing the interreliance of farms and forests. “I guess you could say we’re still learning to see the forest through the trees,” O’Grady joked, pointing out the window to the protected forests of the McLean Game Refuge that surround the farm. “Our next goal is to get to an ecological flow state where the whole farm is organized like a symphony. But we’re not there yet. It’s still year to year.”
Compost Bin / To Become Soil (carrots, onions, greens, and so on). 23”x17”. Acrylic and graphite on paper. 2026. Original artwork © Austen Camille
Established in 1756, Holcomb Farm is now home to a thriving New England CSA, where the definition of “community” in “Community Supported Agriculture” extends beyond the farm’s customers and neighbors to the microbial life in the soil. Now owned by the Town of Granby and operated by the nonprofit group Friends of Holcomb Farm, the historic New England farm represents a unique CSA model that combines municipal oversight with grassroots community support.
On the business side of the operation, O’Grady considers soil the literal bottom line. “We first feed the soil,” O’Grady explained. “And what we don’t harvest, we try to give back to the soil.”
I spoke with O’Grady in mid-April, as dappled sunlight broke through the sycamores and glinted in Salmon Brook, turning the meandering stream the color of hard apple cider. Red trillium bloomed along its banks. Red velvet mites, bright as a drop of blood, crawled along the leaf litter. The head of a water snake breached the river’s surface, flicking its black tongue into the air. The vernal pools along the riverbank were necklaced with toad eggs, the long strings of tiny black pearls guarded by little more than the surface reflection on the water that displayed the overstory of the riparian forest.
Indicators (water snake, water strider, cloud of midges, reed grass, and so on). 22.75”x12”. Acrylic and graphite on paper. 2026. Original artwork © Austen Camille
Inside O’Grady’s office, socked away in a repurposed tobacco barn, was a bookshelf lined with soil literature: Jerry Brunetti’s The Farm as Ecosystem, Gary Zimmer’s Advancing Biological Farming, John Kempf’s Quality Agriculture, and Dale Strickler’s Restoring Your Soil.
O’Grady noted how, for him, soil has become both a vocation and an obsession, as he spends the slower winter months rooting through books about the rich, biodiverse ecosystems held in the soil. We discussed how just a spoonful of living soil can contain as many microbes as there are human beings on earth. How the springtails, protozoa, mites, and nematodes, as well as bacteria and fungi, are essential to the soil food web, an often overlooked but crucial foundation for biodiversity. How the combined weight of microbes living in just one acre of topsoil is equivalent to two full-grown cows. How farmers who wish to regenerate their soils wonder: How do we feed this “underground herd?”
Underground Herd II. 23”x3.25”. Acrylic and graphite on paper. 2026. Original artwork © Austen Camille
For O’Grady, it’s a question that challenges him to continue to see the forest through the trees.
Under O’Grady’s management, the abundant biodiversity surrounding the farm has become a recognized part of the community that supports the CSA. “We go into the forest to find worm castings,” O’Grady explained. “We’ll lift a patch of leaf litter in search of gold: the thickest worm castings we can find.” While harvesting the worm castings that O’Grady uses to restore and enrich the greenhouse soils, the crew marvels at the abundant fungi in the forest: turkey tails, chicken-of-the-woods, hen-of-the-woods, yellow morels, chanterelles. They note the thick blooms of mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies that hatch in Salmon Brook, feeding hungry trout and birds. They listen to the dawn chorus of winter wren, blue-headed vireo, belted kingfisher, and pileated woodpeckers.
The interreliance between the farm and the forest is evident at every turn. As the farm crew re-skinned the greenhouses with fresh layers of plastic, praying mantis nymphs waited to burst from their spongy, Styrofoam-like egg cases, called ootheca, that their parents had fastened to the plum trees in the fruit orchard. As the crew raked the straw mulch from the rows of strawberries, Salmon Brook rushed with snowmelt, while the wind carried the scent of northern spicebush and eastern white pine. As the crew seeded spring onions, peppers, tomatoes, and wildflowers in the warmth of the greenhouse, a passerby spotted a mother black bear near the farm with a record-breaking litter of five cubs, the most ever seen in Connecticut.
Ootheca. 22.5”x16.75”. Acrylic and graphite on paper. 2026. Original artwork © Austen Camille
The biodiversity of the surrounding forests contributes directly to the viability and vitality of the farm. The praying mantis and fledgling birds eat the aphids and beetles that would otherwise feast on the crops. Coyotes limit deer pressure, while bobcats, hawks, and other predators cull rabbits, mice, and voles. Moreover, the diverse crop species grown at Holcomb Farm support a wide range of bees, butterflies, moths, and other pollinators, and their roots foster a diverse microbiome in the soil. Unlike the large-scale monocrop farms of the Great Plains, which rely upon pesticides and herbicides to keep pests and weeds at bay, Holcomb Farm relies upon the biodiverse forest and riparian ecosystems for pest control. And, when one crop is lost to pest pressure, Holcomb Farm still has dozens of other crop varieties to replace it. As O’Grady explained, “biodiversity is one of the ways our farm remains resilient.”
“Our next goal is to get to an ecological flow state where the whole farm is organized like a symphony.”
The farm is coming off one of its most abundant winters, delivering over 40,000 pounds of fresh vegetables to nearly 200 winter share CSA members and to people in need through the farm’s Fresh Access food donation program. The winter share included over 50 crop varieties, including some of New England’s most flavorful beets, onions, sweet potatoes, carrots, brassicas, bitter greens, sweet spinach, and spicy arugula. Remarkably, the farm produces this abundance on just over 20 acres of farmland. Nearly all the remaining 300 acres are conserved woodlands, crisscrossed with hiking trails that connect the McLean Game Refuge with forests and fields protected by the Granby Land Trust, all part of a coordinated effort to protect and restore the surrounding natural areas.
But O’Grady is hesitant to join the chorus of community supporters who sing the praises of Holcomb Farm. “People rave about this farm now,” O’Grady said. “They tell me what an amazing job I’m doing. And how great the food is. But the bar is so low. The nutrient quality of food has been so depleted and deteriorated over time. But it can get better, though, when we feed the soil.”
Underground Herd I. 23”x4.75”. Acrylic, chalk, and graphite on paper. 2026. Original artwork © Austen Camille
After his ritual first tractor pass of the farm this spring, O’Grady elaborated on this view, citing a metaphor drawn from his love of classic Russian literature. “I was obsessed with Silver Age Russian authors there for a while,” O’Grady explained. “Dostoevsky especially would often use external deformity as a sign of the deformity within the soul. I thought about that when I checked on the fields. Where the cover crops look good, you know that good stuff is happening underneath. But, usually, I’m on the tractor looking for the deformities. The places where we still need to improve the soil.”
“Just a spoonful of living soil can contain as many microbes as there are human beings on earth.”
O’Grady is well-versed in both the ecological function of soil and the economic realities of running a farm, which, in many cases, remain at odds. To cultivate a thrumming world rich with biodiversity, a farm must feed and restore the soil. But to remain in operation, a farm must turn a profit.
“I used to call them red-winged ‘anxiety’ birds,” O’Grady joked, noting the electric-guitar-like blare of the blackbirds that trilled over the pick-your-own fields. For O’Grady, the call of the red-winged blackbirds always signaled the end of winter and the rush of spring seeding, the finalization of spring planting maps, and the tough decisions he’d have to make about labor costs and where and how to apply soil amendments.
Pest Control (Northern flicker; Eastern bluebird). 23”x13.75”. Acrylic, chalk, and graphite on paper. 2026. Original artwork © Austen Camille
O’Grady elaborated: “I realized that each season we really only get one shot. All these crops we grow, we only get one chance. We can make some tweaks while the crop is in the ground, nudge things in different directions, but it’s hard to accept that we pretty much get one shot. If it doesn’t work out perfectly, we’ve got to learn from it and try again next year.”
A similar lesson is evident each spring along the West Branch of Salmon Brook that, for centuries, has flowed behind Holcomb Farm. In 2019, Salmon Brook was designated a Wild and Scenic River due to the abundant flora, fauna, fungi, and aquatic species that call the river home. While O’Grady and I seeded a row of dwarf grey peas in the pick-your-own field, countless other species emerged for their seasonal “one shot” at life along the banks of the river. The first hatch of mayflies bloomed. The mating pairs of ruby-crowned kinglets and eastern bluebirds gathered materials for their nests. Young bear cubs trailed their mothers to the berry patches. Golden Alexander peeped through the forest leaf litter. That night, tiny-bodied spring peeper frogs trilled out a triumphant song of spring emergence.
A sycamore holding the banks of the West Branch of the Salmon Brook. 23”x17”. Acrylic, chalk, and graphite on paper. 2026. Original artwork © Austen Camille
The soil profile of a New England farm carries this living history through geological epochs, ecological disturbances and restorations, seasonal cycles of drought and flood, and the daily acts that can nudge the balance in one direction or another. The deep, ongoing histories held in the soil are difficult to fathom. And, in many ways, the restoration of soil health involves far more than a farmer’s adherence to the basic principles of reducing soil disturbance through minimal tillage, maintaining perennial living roots, and covering the soil with “armor” or cover crop residues. To support a biodiverse and ecologically resilient soil, O’Grady and his crew must also perennially recommit to a different conception of the word “community.”
As O’Grady concluded, “One way or another, we’re feeding our community. We’re either feeding our customers or we’re feeding the soil. But a farm teaches us they’re all part of the same community.”
Joshua T. Anderson is a writer from rural North Dakota committed to foodways and flyways. His featured article on the intersection of soil health and human health appears in the fall issue of Earth Island Journal, and his creative nonfiction essay on the dominance of the sugar industry in North Dakota’s Red River Valley appears in Open Space (the online journal of North American Review). Josh is the co-founder of the Flyway Institute, which brings artists to rural communities in support of conservation efforts throughout North America’s migratory flyways. His first narrative nonfiction book, Soil Horizons, will be published in 2027 by Plainspoken Books.