Pam Dawling, Sustainable Market Gardener
Name: Pam Dawling
Occupation: Organic vegetable grower providing for a hundred people
Place of Residence: Louisa County, central Virginia
Background and Personal History:
Pam Dawling was born in London, England, and while at Cambridge University in the early seventies, joined a group forming back-to-the-land communes. She saw co-operative organic farming as a healthy way to live and an alternative to industrialized agriculture. After gardening for about seventeen years in the UK, Pam moved to the USA.
Since 1991, Pam has been living in central Virginia, at Twin Oaks Community, (www.TwinOaks.org/) an egalitarian, secular, income-sharing, work-sharing ecovillage established in 1967. There she helps grow food for around 100 people on three and a half acres and provides training in sustainable vegetable production for community members, practicing farming with awareness of ecology, finite resources and the future of the planet.
Pam’s previous farming experience includes caring for cows, sheep, goats, pigs, bees, chickens, ducks and geese; growing small acreages of grains, field beans and hay; using old farm implements; and growing and cooking more than sixty different kinds of vegetables and fruits.
To make best use of every space in the garden, and every window in the calendar, Pam started to keep crop records and research better methods, varieties and timing. She writes up what she learns as monthly articles for Growing for Market magazine. After six years of articles she wrote Sustainable Market Farming for small-scale sustainable vegetable growers.
Current Projects:
Feeding the masses, passing on what she learns, appreciating life. Publicizing Sustainable Market Farming and The Year-Round Hoophouse, writing articles for Growing for Market and other magazines, speaking on sustainable vegetable production and garden planning, consultancy work, being an active participating member of Twin Oaks.
Values: Honesty, fairness,equal rights, equal pay for equal time, integrity, conserving and sharing resources, honoring diversity, co-operation, non-violence, doing our best.
Winter Projects: Pam likes knitting, quilting, reading and hiking, but sometimes winter in Virginia is not long enough to get all these things done!
More Places to Find Pam on the Web:
Sustainable Market Farming Facebook Page
Sustainable Market Farming book (New Society Publishers)
The Year-Round Hoophouse book (New Society Publishers)
