About Katie
Katie Spring is a big-hearted, hope-oriented person who asks a lot of questions.
She believes that creativity is as essential as food, and her writing sprouts from the intersection of land, body, and art in all its forms.
At the heart of her writing is the question How do we grow a world of nourishment and belonging?
Katie writes poetry and essays, and grows food and flowers, on a hillside in Vermont. As a poet and gardener, she seeks to grow a world of belonging, where beauty wakes us up and food brings us together.
Writing in the World
Katie’s poems have been shared at weddings, protests, community meals, and conferences.
She is the author of two chapbooks: Lineage of Heartbeats and Light Heart.
She has poems published and forthcoming in Phil Lit, The Mountain Troubadour, The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener, PoemCity, and Stories of the Season: a Women’s Food and Ag Network Zine.
Read some of her poems here: Selected Poems
Katie’s essays and articles have been published in Taproot Magazine, Mother Earth Gardener, Vermont’s Local Banquet, Burlington Free Press, The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener, and the High Mowing Organic Seeds’ blog.
You can find more of her writing in her newsletter, Art & Soil.
If you want to dig a little deeper…
For over a decade, Katie and her husband, Edge, ran Good Heart Farmstead: an organic vegetable and herb farm. They grew year-round in Central Vermont, with a mission to increase local food access.
Those years were both nourishing and demanding. The best part was growing gorgeous food for their community and getting to know so many CSA members over many seasons and years. The most challenging part was dealing with climate change and the increasingly erratic weather, including the final two years that saw both torrential rain and long stretches of drought.
Like nature, everything has a season. After 12 years of running the CSA, they shifted away from farming toward other pursuits.
Now, Katie finds delight in gardening and giving away food and flowers for free.
And now for the really important stuff:
If I were a vegetable, I’d be snap peas
growing up and up, connecting sky and earth on tendrils much stronger than they appear.
If I were a flower, I’d be calendula
bright, inviting, soothing, self-sowing.
If I were an herb, I’d be mint
half wild, rambling, known to grow beyond whatever boundaries or limits you place on it.
If I were a fruit, I’d be a strawberry
my seeds on the outside, open, juicy, and sweet.
