a shout-out to greenhorns friend & brilliant photographer Lily Piel up in Maine!   We'll be using Lily's photos on the blog periodically.  See more of her photos at lilypielphotography.com

Lily was raised in rural Vermont. Her father was a gardener and grew vegetables in the backyard for their family of 8. After studying history at Bates, she worked as a research assistant in marine labs (microbes, nudibranchs, sea urchins, and bottlenose dolphins over the course of 6 years), then taught herself Italian while living in Milan and outside Florence.
Returning to Maine in 2001 to study film-making at Maine Media Workshops, she discovered a love for still photography and local food systems, and spent a lot of time taking pictures of farmer friends in the fields while working on their CSA. At the moment Lily is a photographer and core team member at Farmers Fare, a new local foods community gathering place in Rockport.

She also photographs vegetables for Johnny's Selected Seeds in Albion. Lily sees herself as a kind of matchmaker - helping Mainers fall in love with the community of farms and farmers that's all around them. Her work celebrates the beauty and authenticity of sustainable farming in Maine. She dreams of homesteading in a tiny house she'll build herself, with a few acres for chickens, a Jersey cow, and Katahdin sheep.