The Tend team at EcoFarm conference in Soquel,
California.
A Seed Was Planted
Tend began when our Founder and CEO, Avi Benaroya, began growing food for his family on his
property in Northern California. After searching for software to help manage a diversified farm and
having little luck, an idea was born: a mobile and web app to help diversified farmers manage their
crops and sell more produce. It’s been a productive journey since then, and today we’re excited to
take one more step toward our mission of enabling quality food systems: the launch of our blog!
A Community Effort
Our goal is to provide actionable, educational content with every article we publish. You’ll see
articles ranging from how to write a great monthly newsletter for your farm and tips on attracting
new CSA members - all the way from water conservation strategies to thoughts on keeping bees - and
lots more in between. Our hope is that our blog will inspire a sense of community, and that farmers
will collaborate with us to make it valuable to all diversified growers. If you have a topic you’d
like us to write about, please send us a note - we’d love to hear your ideas.
What We’ve Been Up To
Over the past year we’ve been focused on building our product and working closely with farmers -
gathering their feedback on the tools we’ve created and putting their ideas into practice. This
collaboration has allowed us to create a product built directly upon the needs of the diversified
grower, and we’re deeply grateful for the contributions of our farming friends. Working with this
select group of customers has allowed us to continually expand our beta testing program and prepare
for a wider public launch of Tend, which we’re inching closer towards every day.
Who’s Blogging?
We’re excited to have three writers contributing to the Tend blog, along with periodic product and
company updates from myself and other members of the Tend team, as well as special guest writers.
Our blog authors include:
-
Jane Kuhn: When Jane lived in Charleston, SC it was through both hunger relief work and
studies in social stratification, that led her toward to the food movement. Since then,
she's worked on a variety of East Coast farms including animal integrated orchards,
non-profit community gardens, a 75 acre CSA farm, and acquired a certificate in Ecological
Horticulture from UCSC's Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS). She
now works as a Field Production Specialist at the UCSC Farm, working with CASFS apprentices
and assisting with management of the tractor cultivated fields and orchards. She takes great
joy in biking to work, baking seasonal-fruit-inspired treats, and putting her thrift store
wetsuit to good use.
-
Patrick Dunn: Patrick has been
farming for over 9 years and his
experience ranges from production
scale market farming to community
based urban agriculture. He studied
at the Center for Agroecology and
Sustainable Food Systems at UCSC and
co-founded Emerald Street Community
Farm and Master Street Farm in
Philadelphia, PA. When Patrick isn't
farming, you can find him dangling
from ropes high on the granite walls
of Yosemite or jetting off to the
mountains for solitude in the
wilderness.
-
Alexandra Kaplan: Alexandra is equal parts farmer, writer, community organizer, and salsa
dancer. She is a graduate of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC
Santa Cruz, where she fell in love with Meyer lemons and apple trees. After spending a
season at an organic CSA farm in northern California, she has returned to her native New
York to farm in the Hudson Valley. Alexandra's greatest achievements include helping to
launch a farm in New York City, pioneering the sale of broccoli leaves at her last farmers
market, and learning to hula hoop.
What’s Next?
We’ll publish new articles as often as we hear you’d like to receive them, so be sure to let us
know if you’re enjoying the content. If you want to stay up to date on the blog you can have the
latest articles delivered straight to your inbox. Just simply sign up for our blog email list by
entering your email address at the bottom of this page. You can also stay in touch with us on
Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, where we’ll share our blog articles and other fun things you might
be interested in.
Until next time,
David Howe
Customer Success Manager, Tend
If you liked this article, and want to see more like it, enter your email in the subscribe box to the top-right of this page and we'll send you new blog articles as we publish them.
David's job at Tend is to help make customers more successful. This includes wearing many
hats, such as managing the company blog. In his spare time you can find him growing
microgreens in his kitchen or working on his downward dog at yoga class.
AnnaMarie Dunn
Jun 25, 2016 at 2:19 AM
Great articles!!
Hieu Tran
Jun 29, 2016 at 8:33 AM
Great article, Waiting for more articles from Tend.ag
David
Jun 29, 2016 at 3:54 PM
Thanks AnnaMarie! Make sure to sign up for our blog updates to get the latest articles in your inbox!
Patrick Mitchell
Sep 13, 2017 at 3:19 AM
Nice job
Robin
Apr 13, 2018 at 3:15 AM
looking forward to your blog