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avatar for Helen Atthowe

Helen Atthowe

Woodleaf Farm
owner
Richland, Oregon
Helen has worked for 35 years to connect farming, food systems, land stewardship, and conservation. She currently farms and does no-till soil- and natural enemies’ habitat- building research on her 211 acre organic farm in Eastern Oregon. Helen and her late husband created educational videos at: https://www.youtube.com/user/AgrarianDreams/videos and did presentations about their ecological farming methods. She was a Horticulture Extension Agent in Montana for 17 years (1993-2010) where she designed, taught, and wrote the manual for an Organic Master Garden course. She also owned/operated a 30 acre certified organic vegetable/fruit farm in Montana (1991-2010) and co-owned with her late husband a 26 acre certified organic orchard in California. She conducted several on-farm research projects in Montana and California, including: ecological weed and insect management, organic minimum soil disturbance systems for vegetable and orchard crops, and managing living mulches for soil and habitat building. Helen has an M.S. in Horticulture from Rutgers University and has worked in education and research at the University of Arkansas (1984-1985), Rutgers (1986-1989), and Oregon State University (2011-2015). Helen was a board member for the Organic Farming Research Foundation 2000-2005 and advisor for Wild Farm Alliance in 2018 & 2019. Helen contributed to several Rodale Press organic gardening and farming books, including The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control, and is currently writing a book called, The Minimalist Farmer: managing ecological relationships rather than just crops.