Young Farmers

With high land costs and more lucrative job opportunities in the white collar sector, it's getting harder and harder these days to attract young farmers into the business. The Granite State has been helping young farmers get and stay into the business for years. We'll have a panel of young farmers on to talk about their experiences, why they do it, and what they see as the future of farming as well as what the Granite State is doing to help keep them in business. Union Leader columnist John Clayton hosts. His guests are Greg Berger, who started working at Spring Ledge Farm in New London in the tenth grade and purchased the farm this year from the Clough family. Greg is thrity four years old with a wife and two kids and a degree in Plant Science from The College of Agriculture at Cornell University. Beth Hodge, who with her sister Courtney, purchased Echo Farm in Hinsdale in nineteen ninety and now co-manage it along with the Schofield family. Beth is thirty years old and Co-Manager of the farm and Director of Marketing for their pudding line, which was started in 1997. Her sister is twenty eight. Keith Chapin, who co-owns Pinball Dairy in Alstead with Keith Kimball. They purchesed the farm in 2003. Previous to that, Keith worked as a cow herder at a farm in New York. Keith is twenty nine and his business partner, Keith Kimball, is twenty eight. Gary Matteson, who owns and operates New England Anenomes, a flower farm in Epsom. He is Chair of the Legislative Committee for the New Hampshire Farm Bureau and Director for Northeast New Hampshire for the Farm Credit Bureau.