Molly Zimmerman and Meredith Cohen focus on cultivating community around food and farming at One Soil Farm

By Leah Berry | Photography by John Michael Simpson

Few things forge a connection between two people quite like rising with the sun to tend to beds of vegetables.

In 2013, Meredith Cohen and Molly Zimmerman serendipitously met at Adamah Farm, a Jewish farm in rural northwest Connecticut where they lived and worked in community. At the time, Molly was in between finishing her master’s degree in soil science from Colorado State University and already had a base knowledge in farming. Meanwhile Meredith found her passion for the practice for the first time while tending soil. The intersection of farming and Jewish community, however, was new and transformative for both of them. “I really kind of fell in love with them both together.” Meredith says. “Those two things became very inextricably linked.” They developed a deep connection as “farm friends” during this time, as they like to call it.

After 2 ½ years at Adamah, Meredith, a Hillsborough native, was ready to return home, moving back to the area in 2016. Molly, a transplant from Los Angeles, went to work on farms in Southern California after graduating from her master’s program.

Then in 2017, Molly received a call from her farm friend with the rough idea for One Soil Farm.

“I’m all in,” Molly recalls saying, though it wasn’t until 2020 that she was able to officially move to the East Coast and join her on the 10-acre farm in Cedar Grove.

Planting Roots

For Meredith, the farm just made sense. When she moved back to the area and immersed herself in the Jewish community, she felt their farm would benefit from the themes they had explored at Adamah, from practicing Jewish agricultural traditions to commemorating harvest holidays with Sukkot and Pesach and being grounded to the land. “I really wanted to make this connection explicit for people and give people experiences on land,” Meredith says.

“The Jewish people are a people of diaspora – we have scattered and lived everywhere around the world,” she says. “Because we are a people that has moved around a lot, there’s something really powerful in creating home, community and safety where we are, rooting where we are. For us, that’s in North Carolina. For Southern Jews especially, building a sense of connection to the actual physical land where we live and that provides our food is so powerful.”

And like other farms, One Soil Farm is rooted in its mission of cultivating the land. “The main part of our mission is to feed people locally grown, sustainably grown produce that’s really delicious,” Meredith says. “But a lot of our organic relationships are through our Jewish community and Jewish institutions, and I think it adds an extra layer of meaning and relationship for people to get their food from someone they know and are in community with.”

In providing the area with fresh tomatoes and eggplant, Meredith and Molly also aim to connect the Jewish people to their agricultural heritage. “While a lot of the stories that we know about our holidays are based on biblical or historical facts, a lot of them are also very rooted in cycles of the year,” Meredith says. “A lot of our holidays are just agricultural holidays. … We have harvest holidays with Sukkot and Pesach and first fruit holidays with Shavuot. A lot of it is making that connection again and letting people actually experience those things as we experience them now.”

Meredith says that one of the things she connects to most in Judaism is a sense of gratitude and awe, which lends itself to naturally correlate with farming. “A lot of our blessings are specifically designed to help us appreciate a specific smell or taste,” Meredith says. “We have blessings that aren’t just for a vegetable but a different blessing for a vegetable that comes out of the ground versus a fruit that comes off of a tree versus a fruit that comes off a vine.

“To me, it makes so much sense when you’re experiencing it in real time,” she says. “These are distinct, miraculous experiences so getting to connect people physically to that sense of awe and gratitude is cool.”

One Soil Farm largely uses sustainable and organic farming practices that help improve the land. To keep the soil “healthy and happy,” as Molly says, they include cover crop, which prevents erosion, adds nutrients back to the soil and keeps the soil covered; it also reduces the need for bag fertilizer. Further, Molly and Meredith rotate their crops, which helps with pest control and allows the soil time to regenerate.

When the farm does use fertilizer, composted chicken manure is their go-to. “The goal is to move further and further away from that by creating our own nutrients,” Molly says. “Just constantly adding organic matter … that’s an important part of sustainability.” She also talks about the different “zones” at the farm, such as perennials and pollinator plants to encourage more diverse ecosystems. “This is only our third season on the land,” Molly says. “We established our field the first two seasons, and now we get to establish the ecosystem. … We can put more energy into having plants both for beauty and wildlife.”

The main facet of the farm and the primary avenue for support is their “(Jewish) Community Supported Agriculture” program, a vegetable subscription service. Each week, subscribers pick up a box of five to seven seasonal vegetables from Beth El Synagogue, Kehillah Synagogue, the Levin JCC or downtown Hillsborough.

Meredith pens a free weekly newsletter that includes farm updates, vegetables on the horizon and personal stories. Throughout the season she writes a separate one just for (J)CSA members, letting them know what veggies they can look forward to that week. “The newsletter is really important to me,” she says. “I put a lot of time and heart and energy into writing a newsletter because I think it’s a big part of our mission – to not just get people good food but to connect them to the process of growing it here in this particular place and with us as particular people.”

Molly and Meredith also host events on the farm from Sukkot gatherings with local congregations to school field trips. The most recent visit saw 25 third through fifth graders from Kehillah Synagogue planting blueberries and helping mulch for Tu BiShvat. Other gatherings include “schlep and schmoozes” to connect and work with other farmers and workshops on how to garden in your own backyard.

“Right now is actually a really exciting but a really critical moment,” Meredith says. “We are at a point where we need to scale up to provide ourselves with a living wage in the present and a living wage for staff that we would bring on.”

Their goal this year is to expand the (J)CSA program and grow their customer base. “Just getting the word out and getting people to sign up,” Meredith says. “We’ve had these beautiful organic connections that our farm has grown out of. … We’d love to expand our farm community to include members and customers who aren’t Jewish but want to support our farm, too.”