Farmer Consultant Program
The purpose of the Healthy Soils Farmer Consultant Program is to provide farmers who are newly adopting healthy soils practices, with access to farmers who are experts in specific healthy soils practices (across scales, areas of expertise, and farm products), while compensating experienced farmers fairly for their time. A secondary purpose of this program is to improve the quality of local agricultural research and technical support by allowing our Healthy Soils Farmer Consultants to be a sounding board for non-profit technical service providers.
Each farmer seeking consulting services can request up to 6 hours of consulting time with one or more of our available consultants.
This program is limited to Massachusetts farmers. It is funded by support from the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture and is managed by the Massachusetts Coordinated Soil Health Program
How To Utilize This Program
Massachusetts farmers seeking advice about soil health practices such as tillage reduction, cover cropping, organic transition, compost and manure management and related practices are welcome to reach out to directly our farmer consultants to request support.
If you do not see a farmer consultant who matches your needs, please email the program coordinator a brief description of your technical support needs and we will try to find someone outside of this program who can help you.
Each of our Farmer Consultants has preferences about how you reach out to them to request support and when they are generally available for consulting. The farmer consultants are all full time working farmers so please be attentive to their availability constraints. Please see below for a description of each farmer consultant, their expertise, and their contact information, and their availability.
Jen Salinetti (she/her) is a co-founder, farmer, and the Director of Education & Community Engagement at 
Wally Czajkowski (he/him) is a lifelong Hadley farmer growing vegetables and tobacco. For 10 years Wally has been successful growing winter squash and pumpkins using zone tillage and wants to share that experience. Wally is interested in reduced tillage strategies, cover cropping, and is insulted when he hears folks calling soil “dirt”.
Laura Davis (she/her) has 11 years of experience with hand scale no till vegetable farming. She co-founded and co-runs 
Mike Davidian (he/him) grows 70 acres of vegetables and corn, using both synthetic and organic fertilizers, with cover crop mixes and reduced tillage practice. After adopting soil conscious practices Mike has seen an increase in marketable product yield. Davidian’s Farm Market was able to achieve a total conversion of equipment using both MDAR grants and USDA conservation programs. Mike attended the UMaine Compost School and makes all of his own compost on farm.
Jim Koebke (he/him) runs Walnut Lane Farm, a dairy and beef production with 100-150 head of cattle. Jim has transitioned his land from primarily silage corn production to 130 acres of perennial hay crop and no-till mixed cover crop for bailage (rotated through the hay crop fields) and 100 acres of permanent pasture. Jim’s farm is entirely no-till and soil health focused; Jim has completely transitioned away from synthetic fertilizers in recent years and has been experimenting with the use of foliar organic fertilizers to improve crop performance and nutrient cycling. This has reduced Jim’s fertilizer costs and improved his soil health.