After years of working for other people’s farms and landscape services, my wife Emily and I decided to start our own organic produce operation in Walla Walla, Washington where she grew up. I started a small-potatoes tree service, anticipating it would be seasonal work when the farm wasn’t in production. We leased land for the farm, I rented equipment for the tree service. I bought some arborwear blue jeans because I blew out Carharts too fast. I happened to rent a chipper for my brush pile two day before a storm came through our region in January of 2008. We had gusts in excess of 90mph, and the phone rang off the hook for months. I kept that chipper for the next three weeks until we broke it. Nearly 5 years later, the phone has still not stopped ringing for the tree service, and I’m still wearing that first pair of blue jeans I got. With the help of our tree business’s success, we finally bought our own land, and continue to farm about 8 acres of mixed vegetables. Emily and I do the work with our team of Belgian draft horses, and you’ll find me in a pair of Arborwear pants whether I’m 80 feet up a Sycamore, at the Farmer’s Market, or behind the potato digger.