At six feet, seven inches, Abdoulaye Niane towers over almost every crop he tends at his half-acre urban farm, located behind his family home in a quiet Berlin neighborhood just off Route 302. The sunflowers along the back fence of Khelcom Farm are a notable exception. “This is the first time I grew sunflowers,” Niane, 49, said with a grin. “They are as tall as me.” This year’s growing season also marks the first time that the Senegalese native and former machinist has run his own farm and raised vegetables for sale there. He spent May through October of 2021 participating in the hands-on University of Vermont Farmer Training Program, based at the Catamount Educational Farm in South Burlington. “It is a great program,” Niane said, noting that he has stayed connected with instructors and fellow students, who continue to support him. To establish the small farm, Niane reclaimed soil from under the lawn that covered the family’s double-lot backyard. It now blooms with 54 100-foot rows of vegetables, herbs and flowers. On a hot day at the end of July, more than 1,000 garlic heads lay drying under a red tent. Niane showed Seven Days around the compact, densely planted farm with his wife, Marja Makinen, 38, who helps out when her job as a nurse allows. A flock of chickens and a few ducks clucked and quacked from their roomy pen. The couple attends the Barre Farmers Market and sells their harvest from an on-site farmstand and to a handful of wholesale accounts. They’ve also landed an alternate slot at Capital City Farmers Market in Montpelier, where they sold for the first time on Saturday. Soil is not the only thing Niane has reclaimed with every gentle push of his broadfork into the ground. The career change has also helped him heal and move on from challenges he endured in his former profession, he said. Over the 11 years since Niane moved to Vermont, life has not always been easy, the couple said. They declined to share specifics, but Makinen said, “There’ve been some tough times for Abdoulaye and us as a family … The farm is a healing place and a safe place.” The couple met in 2012 at Red Square in Burlington and married five years later. They have three children: Zaal, 9; Khadim, 4; and Rokhaya, 1. Their baby daughter already knows how…