Page 10 - BUZZ Magazine - Issue No. 3 - Summer 2022 | University of Rochester

ALUMNAE
ENTREPRENEURS

Although Rainwater’s career Twice a week, they sell their
took a non-linear path, Salama, produce and crafts at the
an ecology and environmental Westside Farmers Market and the
biology major, stayed true to Brighton Farmers Market. They
her course. After Rochester, she also offer a Community Supported
earned her veterinary degree Agriculture (CSA) program, which
from Cornell University, where provides a weekly bounty to
she and Rainwater lived for a those who sign up for farm shares.
year, homesteading with their first
seven laying hens and dreaming Down season
of one day starting their own farm. When the farm is quiet, especially
They even got married at the in the winter, Rainwater and
Ithaca Farmers Market in 2015. Salama play music by the fire,
plan for the next season, and
In season spend a lot of time in their
In the summer, the farm comes converted garage. That’s where
alive with colors, texture, and Rainwater makes handcrafted
smells. Heirloom tomatoes adorn cutting boards, wooden butter
vertical trellises and cherry knives, wooden boxes, and soaps.
DISCOVER MORE tomatoes grow inside a 70-foot- Salama makes carved spoons and
rainwaterfarmsny.com long row. Kale and other greens, utensil kits, jams, baskets, and

shiitake mushrooms, asparagus, leather crafts.
and zucchini—along with flowers
and perennial herbs—flourish. “Diseased ash trees turn into
Their tiny orchard also produces wood objects, dried herbs find
apples, cherries, peaches, pears, their way into our homemade
plums, and pawpaws—a tropical soaps, and soft woods bend into
fruit native to the eastern baskets,” says Rainwater. “We
United States and Canada that try to use everything on the farm,
tastes like mangoes. to perpetuate nature’s cycles in
ways that can nourish ourselves
and others.”

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