Seynab Ali plants Brussels sprouts at Packard-Littlefield, Cultivating Communities’ incubator farm, where she has been a farmer in training for nearly a decade.

Batula Ismail checks on seedlings inside a greenhouse at the farm.

Jabril Abdi checks on plants growing in a Packard-Littlefield greenhouse. The farmers are growing crops for the American market.

From left, Seynab Ali, Batula Ismail, Abdi and Mohammed Abukar. At New Roots Cooperative Farm they’ll be owner-operators rather than guests on someone else’s land. Somali-born, they are all graduates of Cultivating Community’s farmer training program.

Seynab Ali, one go the farmers of New Roots, works in a greenhouse at Packard-Littlefield Farm.

Seynab Ali came to the U.S. from Somalia and has been working the land in Maine since 2006.

Batula Ismail, right, and Seynab Ali, two of the four farmers of New Roots, in one of the greenhouses at Packard-Littlefield, which Cultivating Communities uses as an incubator farm.

Brussels sprouts are ready to go into the ground at Packard-Littlefield.

Seynab Ali plants brussels sprouts at Packard-Littlefield.