By Lea Camille Smith
In the Northeast, it’s easy to assume that once the frost hits and the farmers’ markets close, access to local food goes dormant. But Noah and Sophie Courser-Kellerman of Alprilla Farm in Warner, New Hampshire, have turned that notion on its head. While their farm tasks — planting, harvesting, storing, and more — span the calendar, their busy public-facing season runs September to April, when they sell a wide array of winter vegetables through their community supported agriculture (CSA) program, bulk order sales, and at a farmers’ market and other local retailers.
Both Noah and Sophie developed a love for farming early on, with Noah studying sustainable agriculture and Sophie environmental studies. Both were raised with their hands in the soil. Sophie grew up in Warner on her family’s farm and Noah grew up gardening in Essex, Massachusetts. Essex would later serve as the starting location for Alprilla Farm, when Noah and a friend launched the farm in 2011 on his family’s land while leasing additional fields in the neighborhood. The following year, friends sent Noah to the Common Ground Country Fair in Unity, Maine, with the rule that he could only return when he got a phone number. Noah met Sophie at the Fair and she joined the Alprilla Farm crew in 2013.
In the spring of 2022, due to pressures of the pandemic and the lack of affordable housing for farmers, Noah and Sophie moved to Sophie’s family’s land in Warner and started a new chapter for Alprilla Farm. The land, which is under a conservation easement, provided sandy soil that they are still learning the challenges and benefits of, after farming a heavy coastal clay in Essex.
The pair milled lumber from the lot they purchased near Sophie’s family’s land and built a homestead and barn with the wood. While finishing the house, they restarted Alprilla Farm in 2024, building back up to its previous scale at 3 acres in vegetables and 2 in wheat, rye, corn, and dry beans — all of which is certified organic by MOFGA.
Their vegetable acreage is devoted to winter crops like cabbage, potatoes, beets, carrots, and kale. “We switched to farming for winter about five years into our operation,” says Sophie. “We were just stretched too thin: small pieces of marginal land stretched over a mile of road, managing more crew than we’d like to, too many outlets between farmers’ market, wholesale, and CSA, and a grass-fed beef herd and hay operation.” After dealing with a drought-related water shortage in 2016, they returned to the drawing board to set up a farm where they were “still in love with farming.”
Having already grown storage crops, Noah and Sophie realized that if they weren’t harvesting and going directly to market, they could pare down their crew and grow the same acreage of vegetables in the summer to sell in winter. “We have strong inner squirrels,” says Sophie, “we like storing everything away. It’s very satisfying going into winter with the coolers full.” Fall and winter vegetables boast another advantage: in response to the cold, the plants will convert their starches into sugars that protect against freezing, tasting sweeter upon eating.
Noah and Sophie have experimented with different varieties of popular crops, growing rainbow carrots, yellow beets, and various types of radicchio, a delightfully bitter green in the chicory family. Radicchio stores well, provides a pop of gorgeous purple color, and tastes delicious whether cooked or eaten raw. Sophie admits to a bit of an obsession with the plant and is on a mission to spread radicchio joy across New Hampshire.
Finding it increasingly difficult to sell winter crops under the word “storage,” they employ terms like “waiting crops,” “expectant crops,” and “winter vegetables,” to bring excitement to a section of produce that can fall under a label associated with being stagnant, old, or devoid of life. “The vegetables are fresh and vibrant, so we’re trying to highlight that,” says Sophie. Most storage crops are biennial, meaning they set seed in their second year. “They are still alive, waiting for spring,” she adds. “We’re just tending them along that journey, giving them the conditions they need … and maybe we will eat them along the way.”
While many farmers harvest and go straight to market, Noah and Sophie had to build infrastructure that supports storage crops. They have both warm and cold storage areas so they can harvest, store, and then sell when the cooler temperatures roll in. The cold storage optimizes the crops’ freshness by slowing respiration and microbial growth, and by controlling humidity.
For many years, Noah and Sophie used a team of oxen for draft power on the farm. While they still used a tractor for most primary tillage, the four-legged teammates, Cedar and Clay, Red Durham Shorthorns, performed all the bed cultivation, keeping crops like cabbage and celeriac clear of weeds, and helped with potato digging and many more year-round tasks while being nimbler than a tractor and easier on the earth. In the 2025 growing season, Noah and Sophie slowly moved to more tractor cultivation while building more no-till practices into their rotation, and the oxen have less of a job. While not a strictly no-till operation, Noah and Sophie have experimented with the practices, which helped their clay soil in Essex drain better and their sandy Warner soil hold more moisture.
After learning how to work with more marginal land in Essex, they’re committed to using soil health practices in Warner, too. Cabbage is planted among crimped-down rye, providing weed deterrent and nutrients to the soil. The farm is guided by but not dogmatic in their four-year crop rotation, utilizing red clover to help rebuild soil structure and fertility after three years of yielding crops and grains. Growing grains provides conditions for under-sown crops of clover to thrive. They sow wheat or rye in the fall as a winter cover after a season of vegetables. In spring, they frost-seed clover into the grain, which establishes itself underneath. In the middle of the summer, the grain is harvested and the clover flourishes. The following (fourth) year, they’ll shallow plow — which doesn’t beat up the soil as much, and is the main tillage event in their rotation — and start the rotation over. While a four-year rotation is the goal, Noah and Sophie are guided by listening to the land and their markets, and adjust accordingly.
When the weather shifts to cooler temperatures, Noah and Sophie prepare for their winter CSA share, the Downtown Concord Winter Farmers’ Market, and bulk orders. “It’s important to the local food movement and for folks who are trying to eat locally and seasonally that there are some crops available in the time of year when local produce is harder to find,” says Sophie. “It’s also the time of year when a lot of festivities happen, so it’s fun to have good local food for the holidays.”
The CSA provides financial encouragement and resources to power the upcoming season for the farmers when costs are highest. Much of the share includes roots, tubers, bulbs, and winter squash, but fresh greens sometimes make an appearance. With 14 pick-ups from October to March, Alprilla Farm is closing the gap on eating seasonally. CSA members can choose from crates of produce until they’ve filled their Alprilla share box. This allows members to tailor their shares to specific recipes, nutritional needs, and flavor preferences. To make the CSA accessible to all, the farm offers a sponsorship fund, where members who are able to pay beyond the set CSA price contribute directly to supporting shareholders who apply for a partially or fully subsidized share.
Alprilla Farm also offers bulk orders at wholesale prices for shareholders wanting extra produce, or vegetable lovers that want to stock up, and they sell produce every Saturday from November through March at the Downtown Concord Winter Farmers’ Market.
On top of it all, the pair has a robust garden next to their house for summer eating, and they enjoy sharing the bounty through dinner gatherings and time with family and friends. They travel a little in the winter, too. But most of their time, hobbies, and focus are spent at the farm, fueled by their shared love of plants and community and staying grounded in a changing world.
Alprilla Farm offers a special opportunity for local food lovers who find themselves empty handed in the post New Year’s months leading up to the start of the next growing season. Noah and Sophie have employed growing, overwintering, and storage practices that have been around since before refrigeration. With proper care and techniques, local vegetables in winter are as vibrant as in summer. Noah and Sophie’s methods might look a little different than the more familiar harvest-to-market model, but they get to move through their fields in the summer without needing to go anywhere quickly — and the quality of the produce and the care for the land is all the better because of it.
Lea Camille Smith is the editor for Edible New Hampshire and works in communications for food systems nonprofits. Her work can be found in the Tiger Moth Review, Island Ink, Mt Washington Valley Vibe, and elsewhere. She lives in New Hampshire.
This article was originally published in the winter 2025-2026 issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener.