“We’re growing more than vegetables here.”

HELEN MARTIN, 2008

 

In 2006, I moved from New York City to a 12-acre farm north of Taos, New Mexico. After eight years working in Manhattan, having babies, and taking the F train back and forth to Brooklyn, I found myself perched on top of a hill overlooking the Hondo Valley, with the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the east and the Rio Grande Gorge to the west. Working at my computer, I would look out the window at the landscape singing a siren song to me, and realized I needed to be working outside.

Looking east at the Sangre de Christo mountains, with the farm down the hill

We grew chickens and shared eggs with our farm workers.

At one time, we had seven varieties of garlic growing in the Valdez rim field.

We sold at the Saturday Taos Farmers Market 2009–2013.

Helen is a genius in the kitchen, using our farm produce.

I began as an intern with two women who were farming three acres and running a CSA as well as selling to restaurants. They were called “Two Blondes Farming in Arroyo Seco”—I was compelled to make this bumper sticker, which, at the time, was a chuckle.

 

We rebranded as Ladybug Farms in 2009. At that time we worked a three-acre field using traditional flood irrigation, a garlic field, two greenhouses, and another quarter-acre field on drip irrigation. We sold at the Saturday farmers market and had another harvest on Wednesdays for restaurant sales.

Lo-fi branding materials

 

What we needed most were package labels for all the prepared foods we made from the vegetables we grew and fruit we harvested from friends with trees. A low-cost solution that could be made on demand was required. I used simple images to quickly describe the main ingredient and clean, consistent typography with the logo “prominent and dominant”—and a visual system emerged that was quick and easy to print on label paper.