Spring 2026 | Edible Notables, Notes From the Farm

Where Real Food Begins

How one local couple embraced farming.

It only ever feels right to begin at the beginning. Hello, my name is Courtney. I run Prema Farm north of Reno, alongside David, my partner in love, soil, and daily existential crises. We stepped into stewardship of Prema two seasons ago, inheriting it from our friends Zach Cannady and Kasey Crispin.

If this story has a prologue, it’s set in a scrappy college backyard in Reno, where David, Zach, and friends hosted RSVP-only dinner parties with mismatched chairs and a suggested $20 donation. Backyard Bistros, they called it. The magic wasn’t just the ambience, it was the insistence on cooking with local, seasonal, organic food. I don’t know about you, but my college years looked … different. Let’s just say curated dinner parties were not part of the curriculum.

When I met David, he was a kind of glorified gardener. A serial renter with an expensive habit of transforming every patch of borrowed property into a blooming paradise of desert vegetables. He cooked like a poet, invited me to pull fresh garlic from the ground, and considered the hardware store an acceptable date.

Taking over this farm wasn’t an easy decision. But here we are on two acres in Long Valley, parenting thousands of plants, worshipping soil as we would scripture, and reluctantly cohabiting with voles, pests, and weeds. This is not work for the weak or the clean folk. You can kiss tidy fingernails goodbye, and prepare to find dirt in your bed, even after showering. Farm work is never finished, it just shapeshifts, and you’re always asking the same question: What needs me most right now? Everything feels important, immediate, and alive all at once. It’s a juggling act we didn’t train for, but one we’re getting good at.

But the real reason we’re here, the deeply rooted heart of it all, comes down to food. Real, organic food your grandmother’s grandmother would recognize. In this new column, I hope to share what we’re learning: stories from the field, tips, truths, resources, and the rhythms of a life built around feeding our community.

And because it’s spring, I can’t help but think about all the small farms across the country opening up their CSA (community-supported agriculture) programs. If you’ve never joined one, consider it a front-row seat to your local food system and the best-quality produce you can buy. CSA members have the chance to eat with the seasons, directly support small farms, and taste vegetables grown with human hands instead of machines and marketing budgets. Whether you join ours or another farm’s, I hope this is the year you meet your farmer and discover just how much a simple weekly box of produce can change the way you eat, cook, and belong to your community.

For details, visit Premafarm.com/csa.