Eco Farm History

Cindy first joined the Carrboro Farmers' Market in 1994 not as a farmer, but as an artist. She created fabric appliqués depicting her customers, their houses, and their pets. Cindy gradually added spearmint to her table since their land has a field of spearmint, and then she added some of the many tomatoes she grew in the ample garden John had plowed for her. Cindy had grown up with gardening; her father had raised apples, pears, peaches, plums, blueberries, grapes, and raspberries, and her mother had grown a few tomatoes and other vegetables.

John had had no gardening experience as a youth. He spent many years working as a machinist in his father's machine shop in Lynbrook, Long Island, and left his machinist job to become a fisherman in the Long Island Sound. When John and Cindy moved to North Carolina in 1992, John got a job as a carpenter.
After Cindy and John had been in North Carolina for five weeks, their family was involved in an automobile accident that put them through years of surgeries and therapies. John went back to college to become an occupational therapy assistant, and then got a job at Murdock Center in Butner. Ultimately John began putting more effort into working their land, so that he and Cindy could grow more produce to sell. When he realized the productivity possible in farming, he quit his OTA job, bought a tractor, and became a farmer.

John manages Eco Farm working with employees and volunteers raising vegetables, fruits, herbs, and livestock.
Cindy concentrates on growing flowers, weeding, and feeding everyone.