This past Saturday I attended a workshop on growing paddy rice right here in the northeast! The Aakaogi’s farm in Putney, Vt is quite a vision.

(In their two rice paddies(about15×15 and25×25) they grew 45 varieties of rice

and yielded 500lbs, or 4600lbs per/acre!)

Yes that’s right…rice CAN be grown productively in the northeast. The photo(photos courtesy of MOFGA) above is of a rice paddy in Southeastern Vermont at Linda and Takeshi Akaogi’s farm in the town of Putney. Even at 900 feet elevation(comparable to Quebec in temperature) they are growing rice with great productivity. Inspired by rice growing in the cold temperate region of Hokaido Japan, several years ago, the Akaogi’s decided to give it a try. To their delight they had immediate success and applied for a grant from SARE. They received this grant last year and began work in earnest to introduce rice to regional growers as yet one more possibility for diversifying the small organic farm.

(Here, Takeshi describes rice growing techniques)

We heard from several insightful rice scientists from the University of Cornell including Dr. Susan McCouch as well as an inspiring talk from the Owner of The South River Miso Company, Christian Elwell, who has been growing small plots of rice in Conway, Ma for the past twenty five years!

Well…it was all quite inspriring and beautiful and we hope to introduce rice as part of the Grain, Bean and Seed CSA share over the next couple of years. So much thanks to Linda and Takeshi for pioneering such a wonderful idea!