Meet the Farmers
Adam Hyde and Kaye Jones purchased Broadfork Farm in 2009. Broadfork is situated on a 22-acre historic farmstead in Washington State’s Trout Lake Valley — a farming community known for its volcanic soils, abundant water, dedication to pastured dairy and organic practices. Kaye and Adam started off grazing heritage livestock and running on-farm educational programs in the summer season. They both kept off-farm professional jobs to pay the mortgage and support their young family.
In 2018, a convergence of family health challenges led them to an epiphany — the soil health of farms and gardens directly impact human gut health through the food we eat, and the integrity of the microbiome influences both health and disease. Promoting living soils through products and services quickly became the focus of their farming vision and mission.
A year later, they decided to make the leap of transitioning the farm over to compost and soil amendment production, where Adam now works full time on the farm. Compost Earth! is Broadfork’s humus compost line, produced on-farm using a method developed and proven over generations by their close family friends in Austria and Switzerland.
Growing up on a 4th generation family farm in New England, Adam spent lots of time outdoors and developed a curiosity for and connection with nature. As a young adult he studied and experimented with ecological farming techniques, and he ran a small vegetable CSA on his family’s land. Adam’s professional background ranges from farmer entrepreneur, conservation land planner and manager, to corporate sustainability strategy consultant. The combination of academic training in plant and soil science and ecological systems, with years of experience managing diverse agriculture operations contributed to his ability to create a unique high-quality soil amendment that can scale profitably.
Using a natural systems lens, Kaye has spent the past two decades exploring the emerging paradigms of participation–including ecological farming, place-based transformative education, curriculum development, strategic facilitation, feminist theory, and embodiment practice. Kaye has her MSc in Holistic Science from Schumacher College (where she met Adam!), and is a student of Tibetan Buddhism. She is a certified Somatic Coach, and a doctoral student in Integral and Transpersonal Psychology, with a somatic focus, at California Institute of Integral Studies.
Broadfork’s farming philosophy is rooted in a reverence for the transformative properties of living soil. Adam and Kaye believe that soil is the best opportunity to address both carbon drawdown for climate change mitigation, as well as improving human microbiome health. They are currently in the process of expanding their compost product line and making their soil amendment offerings more widely available. In 2022, Adam joined the Gorge Farmer Collective—a growing online marketplace that has helped him get products in front of organic food consumers that are also gardeners, homesteaders and commercial growers. While Broadfork serves as their family home, Adam and Kaye also view it as a place of ongoing study that is seasonally available and open for others to come, stay, and learn.
Regenerative & Sustainable Practices
Broadfork Farm produces humus compost that is a living supplement and the best source of whole food for healthy soils. Their methods of production use high quality raw materials, free of contaminants and locally-sourced within 10 miles of their facility in Trout Lake, WA. Working in accordance with the earth, their farming practices include:
- Nutrient management: They carefully test and source raw material inputs from local organic dairy farms. Their soil health enterprise is a social venture that seeks to address persistent water pollution problems in the Trout Lake Valley due to the high concentration of dairy farms, while providing a critical soil and plant health supplement to regenerative growers.
- Recycling of organic wastes: All organic waste needs to be diverted from the landfill, where it would produce methane emissions that are released into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Broadfork turns bio-waste into a living soil amendment, bolstering the land’s ability to sequester and store atmospheric carbon.
- Organic certification: Their soil amendments are certified by the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) Organic Program, as a registered Input Material for Organic Production. In 2022, they are pursuing WSDA organic certification for their forage crops.
- Cover cropping: They use a low-till practice of farming and produce 15-acres of alfalfa-grass hay, and 4-acres of diverse cover crops that are harvested as fresh green chop for their compost–retaining soil nutrients and increasing fertility across the land.
- Living systems: Their compost is a living soil supplement that functions as a whole food and probiotic for soils. The humus provides the base material for many regenerative practices, including biopriming of seed, liquid biological extracts and aerated teas, serving as a living roof medium, tree restoration and native plant propagation, and enhancing plant resilience and resistance to disease.
