Hartshorn Organic Farm Tours are hands-on, fully immersive experiences on a certified organic farm in Waitsfield, Vermont, led by Amy Hartshorn — organic farmer, green living educator, and TEDx speaker. Tours include the organic fields, hydroponic greenhouse, maple sugarhouse, and medicinal herb gardens, with options for a farm-to-table lunch made from ingredients harvested that morning. Tours run approximately 90–120 minutes and are available for individuals, families, and groups of up to 35.

This isn't a guided walk with a pamphlet.

It's a hands-on, fully immersive experience on a working organic farm in the heart of Vermont — where you'll harvest, taste, plant (season-dependent), explore a hydroponic greenhouse, discover the maple sugarhouse, and learn why real food grown in healthy soil changes everything. Led by Amy Hartshorn — organic farmer, green living educator, and upcoming TEDx speaker — these tours are part education, part adventure, part reset button. You'll leave nourished, grounded, and inspired.

WHAT YOU'LL EXPERIENCE

Every tour is unique — customized to your group's interests and the time in the season

The Organic Farm

Dave and his dad have farmed this land. Amy arrived 17 years ago, fell in love — with him, and with the land — and over the decades they've transformed the property into something far beyond a working farm. This land has hosted four food festivals, farm-to-table dinners, kids' farm camps, teen and youth groups, cow train rides, pizza nights, and haunted Halloween walks. What you're stepping onto isn't just a farm. It's a living educational center that has introduced hundreds of people of all ages to the real story of food, land, and the hands that tend both.

Pluck a green bean straight off the vine and eat it standing there. Push your hands into warm, living earth. Tear off a piece of fresh kale and taste the difference that real growing makes.

Taste as You Go

Forget what you think a tomato tastes like. Pop a sun-warmed cherry tomato straight from the vine and let that be your new reference point. Rub a fresh herb between your fingers and smell what your grocery store can never quite replicate. This isn't a tasting menu — it's a full-body education in what food can be when it's grown with care and eaten at the source.

The Hydroponic Greenhouse

Behind the farm sits a half-acre commercial hydroponic greenhouse — food growing at scale, without a single handful of soil. It sounds like science fiction until you're standing inside it. Then Amy will show you her own homeowner-sized hydroponic unit, and suddenly it sounds like something you could do in your kitchen.

The Maple Sugarhouse

Dave is a fifth-generation Vermont sugarmaker. That's not a marketing line, that's a lineage. Stand in the sugarhouse where his family has worked for years, hear how native peoples first discovered that tree sap could become something extraordinary, and taste Hartshorn maple syrup the way it was meant to be tasted: fresh, pure, and nothing like the bottle in your pantry.

The Healing House Gardens

Some of the most powerful plants on earth are probably already growing in your backyard, you just don't know what they are yet. Walk through Amy's medicinal herb and edible flower gardens, learn what heals and what nourishes, then wander into the home vegetable garden where lunch ingredients often come straight from the ground to your plate.

WHY THESE TOURS ARE DIFFERENT

This isn't a passive farm visit — it's an experience that stays with you

Embodied Wisdom, Not Theory

Amy didn't grow up on a farm, she grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and spent years longing for a different kind of life. She chose it deliberately, learned it deeply, and has spent 34 years living and teaching it. That journey is exactly why she's such a compelling guide. She knows what it's like to be completely disconnected from where food comes from, and she knows the specific moment that changes.

Genuinely Hands-On

Harvest, taste, plant, identify herbs, explore growing methods, ask questions. You're not watching, you're participating.

Multi-Dimensional Food Literacy

Organic agriculture, hydroponics, maple sugaring, soil health, flavor, nutrients, woven together into one cohesive experience.

Nature + Nervous System Reset

Slow down, breathe, feel the land. Guests consistently leave feeling grounded in a way that's hard to put into words.

A Spark That Lasts

Many guests say it changed how they eat, shop, and think about food, long after they've left Vermont. Parents report that kids who swore off vegetables are suddenly eating them. People go home and start gardens, or finally expand the ones they've been meaning to tend. Nearly everyone leaves with something harder to measure but just as real: a deep, felt appreciation for what it actually takes to grow good food, and a new respect for the people who do it.

Special Group Tour: 35 farmers and ranchers from Oklahoma

TOUR OPTIONS

🌸 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Cancellation & Rescheduling Policy