CHESTER, Vt. – When Lisa Kaiman began pursuing her dream of opening a small dairy farm, she didn’t get much encouragement.

Still, the Princeton, N.J., native who first milked cows as an aspiring veterinarian was determined to make it work.

She spent some eight years working on other people’s farms, studying what she liked and didn’t like. Then she bought an old farmhouse that had no running water or electricity and started remodeling.

In 1999, she officially opened her solo operation, Jersey Girls Dairy, a farm dedicated to providing her registered Jerseys with a comfortable life.

“I can’t even tell you how many people told me it can’t be done, you can’t do it,” said Kaiman, 35, who now milks two dozen Jerseys. “Which actually is really good because I’m stubborn as a mule, and the best way to get me to do something is tell me I can’t do it.”

Kaiman is one of a growing group of northern New England women who have been changing a traditional stereotype.

According to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture survey, New Hampshire had the highest percentage of female-run farms in the nation as of 1997. Maine ranked 11th and Vermont was 14th.

Those figures also represented a significant regional growth from a decade ago. Female-run farms increased 57 percent during that period in Maine – the sixth largest rise nationwide.

And farms operated by women grew by 39 percent and 37 percent respectively in New Hampshire and Vermont.

The ability for women to get started in agriculture may be easier because the region’s farms already tend to be smaller, according to Vivianne Holmes with the Women’s Agricultural Network in Lisbon Falls, Maine.

“Our regular traditional farms are small here in New England, and so if women tend to want to stay small, want to stay out of debt, want to be able to handle the whole process themselves … it’s less burdensome, it’s less frightening to get into it than it would out West where you’re talking thousands of acres,” said Holmes, who has her own Buckfield farm with small livestock, pigs and chickens.

Experts believe the figures actually underestimate the role women are playing in northern New England agriculture because they don’t account for farms that women run jointly with spouses.

“Women really are silent partners in a lot of farms where they don’t get a lot of credit,” said Mary Peabody, director of the Women’s Agricultural Network in Berlin, Vt.

They’re now stepping out of supporting roles in increasing numbers, said Peabody, whose organization offers workshops and support services.

“Women have money now that they haven’t had in past generations that they’re able to invest in their business,” she explained. “They have access to education; more and more young women every year are going through and getting college educations in animal sciences, and plant and soil sciences.”

Jennifer Mayo, 53, started Arbutus Hill Farm in Meredith, N.H., about eight years ago. She’d earned a master’s degree in environmental resource management, and knew she wanted to live and work off the land.

“If you’re a female farmer, I think you have to accept the fact that it is not the norm,” said Mayo, whose 50-acre farm now sells pork, lamb and organic vegetables. “A lot of the farming community is very traditional and if you’re a woman without a mate, I think it’s even harder.”

Mayo later started the Beginner Farmers of New Hampshire, a group with three-quarters female membership, to help other new farmers network with one another.

“I think it’s a process, and you just have to be patient and just keep reassuring people that you really are serious, and you have some very specific goals and you keep plugging away and you don’t let anyone discourage you,” she said.

Some farmers like Martha Izzi entered into agriculture after long careers in other sectors. Izzi, 63, a former federal employee, began keeping animals on her Shrewsbury, Vt., farm in 1986 and initially commuted up every weekend from Boston.

Izzi’s taken to farming in a serious way – she now lives there full time and raises sheep, goats and chickens, alongside her husband, a horticulturist.

“We both have found our callings in some ways,” Izzi said.

Demographic forces also are contributing to the rise in female-run farms around northern New England.

“As the average age of farmers increases, just by virtue of the fact that women live longer than men, women will inherit a substantial amount of farmland that they’re responsible for being the decision makers for,” Peabody said.