Coleman, Eliot (1939 - )

Genre: Non-Fiction

Eliot Coleman grew up in Redbank, New Jersey, and has lived in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

In 1968, after reading Scott and Helen Nearing's book The Good Life, Coleman bought 60 acres of Scott Nearing's land in Harborside, Cape Rosier, near Brooksville, Maine.

Coleman made his living for the next two decades working on other organic farms, including, in the late 1970's,the experimental Coolidge Center in Massachusetts, where Coleman developed the idea of using cold frames inside hoop houses to extend the growing season, and in the early 1980s at the Mountain School in Vermont, where he directed the farm program.

He also traveled in Europe in the mid-1970s when he was working on his graduate degree in Spanish literature, and while there toured organic farms.

In the early 1990s he bought back the land at Harborside, and he and his third wife, Barbara Damrosch, have lived there since, earning much of their livelihood by selling the organic produce they raise from October to May each year at Four Season Farm.

Coleman and Damrosch were featured in the Sept/Oct. 1998 issue of Hope. Coleman has been a keynote conference speaker at Northeast Organic Farming Association. The couple also answered gardening questions in American Homestyle and Gardening magazine for several years, and they both give numerous gardening talks.

Coleman is known as an innovator in farming systems and tools, and has written several gardening books.

Selected Bibliography

• The New Organic Grower: A Master Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener, (1989/1995)
• The New Organic Gardener's Four Season Harvest: How To Harvest Fresh Organic Vegetables From Your Home Garden All Year Long, (1992)
• Four Season Harvest: How to Harvest Fresh Organic Vegetables From Your Home Garden All Year Round),(1999)
• The Winter Harvest Manual: Farming the Backside of the Calendar, (1999) with Barbara Damrosch,