Amador Hill Farm and Orchard

Farm Programs at WEI serve our rural and urban communities by producing nutrient-rich, organic, locally grown vegetables and fruit as a strategy for environmental justice, regenerating the soil and regenerating human health.

WEI operates the Amador Hill Farm and Orchard, a 60-acre certified organic education and demonstration farm and woodlands. The farm also includes an heirloom apple orchard, which consists of many hard-to-find apple varieties and provides a delicious bounty for our Community Supported Agriculture program as well as our beloved annual Cider Saturday event in early November, when the community comes together to press delicious, organic apple cider together using an old-fashioned cider press.

Farm programs include the WEI CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), Fair Table (formerly Veggie Rx), the North Circle Online Farmers Market, the Mill City Farmers Market, and farm Volunteer and CSA Workshare programs. Amador Hill Farm is also the location for many of WEI’s educational classes and seasonal events.

In 2006, three years after Women’s Environmental Institute began, we purchased farmland on Amador Hill in North Branch in an effort to connect our environmental justice work in the Cities with agricultural justice. We started with a twenty-five-member CSA (which has now grown to over 100) and we focused on using the farm as a demonstration and education farm. The methods we use are based on organic farming best practices and Growing Power methods. We’ve spent the last two decades working to restore soil quality through cover cropping and rotation and we currently grow over 150 varieties of vegetables and fruit.