Author: bloomingglenfarm

25 Apr

Posted at 14:09h in Classes by
11 Likes

We are delighted that herbalist Susan Hess of Farm at Coventry is returning to Blooming Glen Farm this season.  From May to October she will teach a wonderful variety of herbal classes, as well as her very popular cheese-making class.

Susan Hess is a therapeutic herbalist, educator and proprietress of Farm at Coventry’s handcrafted herbal product line since 1997. Susan teaches a 9-month course at her homestead in Chester County, entitled “Homestead Herbalism”, now in its tenth season.

Below you will find the class descriptions and dates for the classes that Susan Hess will be holding at Blooming Glen Farm this season. This is a wonderful opportunity to learn from a master herbalist. You will be surprised at the many things that you can easily integrate into your own life, from first aid to wellness remedies, using both cultivated and wild herbs. You may sign up for as little as one class, or all seven, it’s up to you! (**If you do decide to sign up for all seven of the classes, one class will be free of charge!) Pre-registration (with payment) is required. To register, please click here. Registration is through Susan’s website: FarmatCoventry.com.

Dreaming the Herbal Garden: Make your dreams of an herb garden a reality this year!  Organizing a plan on paper; site preparation; seeds or transplants?; friends and invaders of the herb garden; container gardening; companion planting and more! Plenty of handouts and inspiration for following your herbal dreams! Wed. May 23, 6pm. Cost: $30

Soft Cheesemaking: It’s easy to make soft cheeses using farm fresh cow or goat milk and culture!  Unlike cheeses that need to be aged and carefully tended for months, fresh cheeses are ready to eat within a day and can be easily incorporated into any kitchen routine using basic kitchen equipment. Susan will demonstrate the simple step-by-step processes of making a soft cheese such as Chevre or Fromage Blanc and at the end of class we will sample a variety of cheeses. Instructional handouts, a resource list and one packet of culture is included in the cost of the class. Additional supplies will be available for purchase. Register early…this class has been wildly popular! Wed. June 27, 6pm. Cost: $30

Your Natural Medicine Cabinet: Keep your family healthy and comfortable the natural way! Discussion of gathering supplies for a natural medicine cabinet and first aid kit, quick home remedies using common kitchen ingredients and relief for stings, burns, tummy troubles, etc. As always, abundant handouts will be provided. Wed. July 11, 6pm. Cost: $30

Art and Craft of Topical Remedies: Understanding that the skin is the largest organ system in the body helps us to utilize herbs in ways that don’t always require ingesting them! This presentation will specifically focus on the craft of topical applications: from green plant poultices to warm tea compresses, plasters, liniments and more. Demonstrations accompanied by plenty of handouts. Wed. July 25, 6pm. Cost: $30

Infused Oils and Salve Making: Learn the time-tested secrets to making beautiful, consistently concentrated herb infused oils for creating your own homemade salves, massage oils and liniments. Susan will discuss the step by step process of making great herb infused oils and utilizing a wide variety of herbs. We’ll finish by making simple salves with the class. Participants will receive take home goodies and handouts. Additional supplies will be available for purchase to make your own at home! Wed. August 22, 6pm. Cost: $30

Preserving the Herbal Harvest: Join lively discussion and hands-on demonstrations of the many techniques for preserving the herbal harvest. Topics will include: proper harvesting techniques, proper drying and storage methods and basics of making vinegars, syrups, pestos, etc. Know what supplies to have on hand before you are blessed with baskets and buckets of your favorite flowers, berries and herbs. Abundant handouts, recipes and take home goodies will be provided. Roll up your sleeves…we’re going to work this one! Wed. Sept. 12, 6pm. Cost: $30

Winter Health~ Preventive Care and Comfort Measures:   Learn how to build strong immune health before the cold and flu season hits by incorporating simple preventive measures, utilizing tonic herbs and stocking up on nutritious foods in the kitchen. We’ll also discuss what to have on hand for acute symptoms of a cold and comfort measure for fever, coughs and sniffles. An additional emphasis on children’s health will be included. Abundant handouts and hot tea will be provided. Wed. Oct. 3, 6pm. Cost: $30

For more information about Susan, the ‘Farm at Coventry’ herbal product line, ‘Homestead Herbalism’ first and second year courses on the farm and 2012 Herbal Hands workshops please visit www.FarmatCoventry.com. To register for these classes at Blooming Glen Farm, click here. Pre-registration, with payment, is required. Contact Susan directly if you would like to register for all seven classes, and receive one for free. Questions? Please call Susan at 610-587-7301 or email farmatcoventry@aol.com

Susan Hess is a 1996 graduate of the prestigious Herbal Therapeutics School of Botanical Medicine’s 2-year Herbal Practitioner’s Program in Washington, NJ. (Currently called David Winston’s Center for Herbal Studies.) She has also completed the schools 1-year Graduate program and studied extensively with director and ethnobotanist, David Winston AHG (Professional Member of the American Herbalist Guild). In the past 15 years she has used her skills and training in the natural food industry and as a sales associate for Herbalist & Alchemist, Inc. of Washington, NJ.  Susan is qualified to consult with practitioners, retail stores and private individuals on the proper uses of medicinal herbal products. In 2000, Susan completed a clinical training at the Wellsprings Centre for Natural Healing in Fairfield, Connecticut with noted herbalists, Donald Yance, MH, CN, AHG (author of best-selling “Herbal Medicine, Healing and Cancer”) and Chanchal Cabrera, MINMH, AHG. She has also completed one year of apprentice studies with Jennifer Tucker, a well-known herbalist and author from Spring Mills, PA. To keep abreast of current herbal information, Susan regularly attends conferences and lectures throughout the Northeast.

 

19 Apr

Posted at 18:00h in Crew profiles by
5 Likes

Spring has officially arrived at Blooming Glen, and with it has come three new interns! This newest crop of folks joins us from far and wide across the country. With a few weeks of farming now under their belts, the interns are getting to know Blooming Glen, but the greater farm community still needs to get to know them! Over the next several weeks you will be introduced to all the new faces on the farm. This week we meet Mike Lasecki.

Mike, 25, comes to us from the Madison suburb of Middleton, Wisconsin. After graduating from UW-Madison with a BA in History and Conservation Biology, Mike has been working and living all across the country. From park ranging for the Middleton and Madison Parks Departments, to fighting wildfires in Washington State, Mike has been keeping busy with a wide range of adventures. Most recently, he and his girlfriend (Claudia, a fellow Blooming Glen Farm intern) lived and worked at Plowshare Farm, a residential community for adults with special needs. At Plowshare, Mike had the opportunity to do extensive land management work and try his hand at vegetable and dairy farming. 

“After I graduated from college I really didn’t know what I wanted to do for a living. I had a lot of different interests that I thought might be possible life pursuits, so I just decided to immerse myself in each to see what really fits me best. So far it has been fun and very educational.”

Mike describes his childhood as a “farm boy without the farm.”  He spent much of his formative years out in the garage with his dad and grandpa, splitting wood, fixing old tractors, and generally learning to do things with his own hands. Mike’s family has been in Wisconsin for more than 6 generations. However, a lot has changed even just within Mike’s own lifetime. During middle school, Mike’s neighborhood transitioned from waving corn fields to a gated community with a manicured golf course. The homestead (as he calls his family’s home) is now essentially an island-surrounded on all sides by a suburban country club. These changes in the land affected Mike deeply and contributed to his fascination with the relationships between people and natural places.

“I’ve always been attracted to farming.  I come from a family of farmers, been around farms most my life, and have always been an active vegetable gardener.  I think what attracts me the most to farming as a life pursuit is the combining of hard manual labor that’s rewarding with the mental challenges of planning and understanding a farm’s ecology.  That combination of physical and mental work just really excites me.  As for my first season here at Blooming Glen Farm I’d like to master the necessary physical skills needed to farm and increase my mental capacity and ability to plan a small farm.”

When he’s not farming, Mike enjoys picking his mandolin, practicing air bass, and hunting for wild edibles. He recently purchased a fishing license and can’t wait to get casting. We are excited to have Mike in our farm family!

Written by Claudia Hartley, first year Blooming Glen Farm intern, Washington grown, weasel enthusiast.

17 Apr

Posted at 14:53h in Recipes by
3 Likes

Radishes are one of the first crops to pop up in the spring—a sign that warm days are coming and heavy winter eating is coming to an end. They’ve got a crisp crunch and bright spice, but somehow still have a root-crop earthiness about them.

Crudités is just a fancy way of saying raw, bite-sized vegetables served with a dipping sauce. In this recipe, that slightly spicy bite of the French breakfast radish pairs perfectly with creamy and salty feta. 

Radish Crudités with Creamy Feta Dip

– Wash and cut the greens off 1 bunch French Breakfast Radishes. (Reserve greens for another use.)

– In a food processor, combine:
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/2 cup plain yogurt
juice of 1 lemon
2 minced garlic cloves (or two stalks green garlic)
a handful of chopped chives (or scallions)
pepper (to taste)

– Pulse ingredients into a creamy consistency.  Serve as a dip for radishes and other raw veggies.

Alternatively, you can make a thicker spread with a pop of color by mixing a ½ bunch of grated radishes into the feta dip. Serve on top of a piece of crusty bread or (in my case) some gluten-free crackers.

Text and photography by Kate Darlington – Blooming Glen Farm second year intern, Colorado native, and food lover.

13 Apr

Posted at 17:24h in On The Farm by
2 Likes

What a difference a year makes! Looking over blog posts from this time last season, we were drowning in rain. Plants were waiting, and waiting, to go into the wet soggy fields, we were doing lots of construction projects to keep busy, and we were generally frustrated by too much water. This Spring is the complete opposite. The lack of rain wouldn’t be too bad, we do have a great irrigation system after all, however the wind adds another level of stress to the plants.

Transplants that go out into the field are either hooked up to drip irrigation, which delivers water through tubes directly at the base of the plants, or by overhead sprinklers, which creates a shower-like effect in a 40 foot radius. Overhead is necessary for our direct seeded crops like radishes, spring turnips, arugula and carrots. And with the wind, you can imagine that any overhead watering is quite a challenge. Even when we do get something nice and watered, it quickly dries out again.

Because of this dry windy weather, we have had some difficulty getting germination from our first rotation of carrots, so we’ll be trying again next week. Even the transplants themselves are dealing with wind stress. We often utilize hoops and row covers to try and protect them a bit, but they can act like giant wind socks and cause more harm by banging against the plants.

Blowing in the wind: Row covers (or "remay") over the lettuce seedlings.

We are seeing some wind damage on our transplants, but our hope is that they will be very strong after this week, and will grow in leaps and bounds as soon as they are given calmer weather!!

Sugar Snap Peas

What’s growing out there? Lots! Our crew of 8 has been busy planting, planting, and planting, oh, and a little weeding too! Spring onions, sugar snap peas, lots and lots of potatoes, broccoli, lettuce, swiss chard, kale, bok choy, kohlrabi, beets, fennel, radicchio, and Chinese cabbage are all out in the fields. As our harvest start to trickle in, our farmers markets will begin May 5 and 6th (and we’ll be at the Wrightstown mini-market Saturday April 14) and then once we have enough volume, and when those strawberries ripen up, we will start the CSA pick-ups. Keep an eye on your emails, the blog, or the website. As soon as we know when that first week of the CSA will be, we will let you know! We are in the process of adding classes and events to our online calendar. Check here on the blog, or on our website’s calendar , for updates. We hope you’ll join us April 29th for our Spring event at the farm: a Cookbook Swap and Food Tasting Adventure! There are still CSA shares available, so please spread the word. We have flyers if you’d like to hang any in your neighborhood.

Brian potting-up flower seedlings. Spinach seedlings.

09 Apr

Posted at 16:31h in Classes by
6 Likes

Join local food blogger, canning instructor and cookbook author Marisa McClellan of Food In Jars at Blooming Glen Farm on Saturday, May 19 at 10 am for a Strawberry Vanilla Jam canning class.

Whether you’ve been thinking about learning to can or you’re well-versed in the ways of homemade jam, this class is for you. In this two-hour class (10am to noon), Marisa will walk you through the basics of boiling water bath canning. The class will include information on food safety, best canning practices, recommendations on how to store your newly canned goods and much more.

You’ll learn to make Strawberry Vanilla Jam, and will go home with small jar of the jam, as well as a printout of the recipe. It’s the perfect class for beginner and intermediate canners as there will be plenty of time to have all your food preservation questions answered.

Marisa’s first cookbook, called Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year Round, will be published by Running Press in May 2012. It is currently available for pre-order from a number of booksellers.

This canning class costs $50 per person. Pre-registration is required. Please go to this eventbrite link to register: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3251891495

If you have questions, email Marisa at foodinjars@gmail.com.
Strawberry Jam Photo courtesy of Marisa.

02 Apr

Posted at 18:28h in Events by
2 Likes

Are you adventurous in the kitchen or do you prefer to play it safe? Do you enjoy poring over recipes from cookbooks of all kinds or do you keep to your tried and true food formulas? Will a full color food photo sometimes leave you drooling then racing to the kitchen? Are your bookshelves overflowing or in need of a cookbook makeover? What about seeing what others in your community are cooking and tasting a bit of everything?

Bring a gently used cookbook to Blooming Glen Farm Sunday, April 29th at 3:00 pm for a spring cookbook swap and food tasting adventure. The catch? You must bring a dish to share made from a recipe from the cookbook you are bringing to swap. 

Your cookbooks reflect your changing tastes, so if you no longer indulge in butterlicious cupcakes (really?) or that well-intended macrobiotic phase is over, maybe someone from the community will have just what you’re looking for now. But for sure, one of your well-loved but no longer active cookbooks can find a new home, and you can be inspired by the recipes in someone else’s old favorite. 

If you don’t have a used book on your shelf that you want to swap, check out the local thrift stores, or splurge on a new copy at the bookstore in town!  You may even have a food memoir with recipes in it that you’d like to trade.

How will this swap work? To determine the order of cookbook selection, come prepared for some “family feud” style fun. Participants will be broken up into teams to answer fun farm facts and veggie trivia. Winners of each round will select a cookbook to take home, until all cookbooks are gone. (**You must bring a cookbook to leave with one- however, all family members are welcome to participate in the trivia fun.) Tasting will begin promptly at 3:30, trivia and swap begins at 4:00. (**Please arrive around 3:00 to be ready for tasting by 3:30.)

Bring to the Cookbook Swap and Food Tasting Adventure:

  • The cookbook you wish to swap.
  • A delicious dish for the tasting to tempt swappers to choose your cookbook. Remember to select a recipe from the cookbook you are swapping away. (Bonus: Tasters’ favorite dish will win a door prize!)
  • A notecard with the following information on it: your name, the name of your dish, the main ingredients, and the name of the cookbook you have brought with you to trade.
  • A beverage and place settings for you and your family.
  • An appetite for farm fun and trivia!!

Come on out and meet other food lovers in our farm community; taste new recipes and leave inspired and ready for the farm season ahead with a new favorite cookbook in hand! Please RSVP to the farm by April 22nd if you will be attending.

Email: info@bloomingglenfarm.com

 

21 Mar

Posted at 23:04h in Community Connections by
14 Likes

Going to the seafood counter at the grocery store is a downright overwhelming experience, if you ask me. Last time I stopped by to pick up some fish for a recipe, I got so overwhelmed that I nearly left empty handed. Most neighborhood grocers provide little information about the fish they offer. Even when they do offer info about origin or catch method, it’s hard to decipher what it all means– and what is the best for our bodies, our environment, and our budgets. Plus, there’s this business about modern-day slavery aboard fishing vessels in New Zealand that I read about the other week. What the heck is a fish lover to do?

Luckily, at Blooming Glen Farm we’ve got Amanda Bossard, owner of Otolith Sustainable Seafood, in our corner.

Amanda started Otolith in 2007 with her husband Murat, when his fishing boat and business in Alaska were under severe threat of financial ruin. Based on what commercial fish processors were paying per pound for their catch, it was impossible to keep up with boat maintenance, permits, and employee salaries—let alone take in a profit each year.

Murat Aritan and daughter, Isabella in Adak, Alaska

It was then that their accountant gave them the idea to start a fish CSA. Amanda was a member of a Lancaster CSA, and it was easy for her to see how the direct harvest-to-consumer model would work for her family’s fish. Much like the CSA at Blooming Glen Farm, the Community Supported Seafood (CSS) program at Otolith provides a steady and fair income for the fishermen while providing you, the consumer, with the highest quality fresh and sustainable food. And here’s the best part: you can pick up your seafood share right here at Blooming Glen!

Otolith is on a mission to promote sustainable fishing and bring you the best the ocean has to offer. Amanda describes herself at “just a fish snob with two little kids,” but she is much more than that. She is one of the most passionate people I’ve ever talked to, and once you get her started on fish, watch out. With a background in marine biology and over a decade as a fisherman’s wife, she knows what she’s talking about, too. With Otolith, you can be sure your fish is good for the planet, good for your health, and good for the people that catch it.

Otolith has committed to:

1. Eliminating trawling as a fishing gear method. As Amanda told me, the oceans simply can’t sustain the pressure of commercial trawling (that would be the way your run of the mill, grocery store seafood is caught). The ocean does produce an abundant supply of the renewable resource that is seafood, but we’ve got to be responsible in the way we harvest it.

2. Reducing pollution in the oceans. By committing to purchasing from small independent harvesters (including her husband’s boat), Amanda can be certain that the boats catching your fish have a low environmental impact.

3. Creating a new generation of fishers that are concerned with sustainability. Amanda is a firm believer in economic incentive. “I don’t believe in a million years that change can ever come unless it’s in your financial interest,” she says. By providing the CSS model that is economically viable, she is proving that sustainable seafood harvest is in the fishermen’s financial interest as well as moral interest.

The Otolith CSS offers a variety of different options including halibut, rockfish, sablefish, Pacific cod, and Dungeness crab, and wild salmon. All of the fish is sushi-grade, long-line caught in Alaska by small boats, blast frozen and packaged into conveniently sized pieces, and delivered direct to your chosen pick-up location during its appropriate season.

I’m signing up for the salmon share because Amanda said it changed her life—and at $12 a pound, it’s a downright bargain. Which one will you chose?

How to participate:

·      Log on to Otolith’s website and read about your different CSS options.

·      Fill out and send in your enrollment form for one (or more) of the shares.

·      Pick up your sustainably caught seafood at Blooming Glen Farm when you come to pick up your CSA share.

For questions or clarifications about the Community Supported Seafood program or sustainable seafood in general, you can contact Amanda at Otolith by calling 215.426.4266 or emailing inquiries@otolithonline.com

Written by Kate Darlington – Blooming Glen Farm second year intern, Colorado native, and food lover.

14 Mar

Posted at 13:57h in On The Farm by
1 Like

We’re excited to announce that the Outstanding in the Field bus is returning to Blooming Glen Farm on Sunday, September 23. Chef Mitch Prensky and his crew from Supper in Philadelphia will be manning the field kitchen again. Tickets go on sale on March 20, the first day of Spring! Tickets for these events sell out quickly- anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 weeks. Join the OITF mailing list to get updates leading up to the release date.

Outstanding in the Field is a roving culinary adventure that travels around the country setting their long table in fields, gardens, beaches, barns and vineyards. Their mission is to promote local food and agriculture and get people out to the farm to see where their food is coming from and meet the producers. Their long table has graced farms from Hawaii to Florida, and even has headed oversees to partner with the esteemed chefs at the famous Noma restaurant in Denmark. (Read about it in their blog.) And now they’re coming back to Bucks County! Last years dinner at Blooming Glen Farm drew people from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. Join us in the field for a farm dinner experience not to be missed. Tickets available on the Outstanding in the Field website on March 20.

29 Feb

Posted at 21:39h in Crew profiles by
4 Likes

It’s almost March- I guess on most other years it would be already! As busy as we’ve been, it kind of feels like this leap day, we get a “free” day. It’s been an incredibly mild winter- I don’t need to tell anyone it feels like Spring. Tom was able to work up some ground yesterday to get ready to plant our onion sets, it’s been that dry. The propagation greenhouse underwent a makeover. Thanks to some “new” used greenhouse benching, our flats now actually lie flat- no more wavy gravy, which means less water pooling and more even germination. Today the onions are being seeded, and already you’ll see tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, kale, swiss chard, kohlrabi and cabbage sprouting in the greenhouse flats.

Garlic sprout

One of the great things about Blooming Glen Farm is the influx of new faces and energy every season. One of our highly valued missions here at the farm is to mentor and train future farmers. In another month our interns will be joining us, a great new group of young people from Washington, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, as well as Kate, returning for another year from Colorado. You’ll be hearing more about all of the new farmers joining us this season, so you can have an idea of the many hands behind the harvest headed for your dinner plate. Our skeleton crew of employees has been busy these past few weeks, seeding, working on construction projects and winter repair, and thinning out the thick blanket of straw that covered the garlic all winter, so that the new pale green garlic shoots can poke through. Our early crew consists of: Jillian Herschlag, our assistant manager, returning for year three; Brian Smyth newly engaged and returning for year two and a half; and a new face on the farm, Brandon Grossman.

Brandon, 24, comes to Blooming Glen Farm with a few years of experience working on a farm on Mount Desert Island in Maine that he started with his girlfriend’s family. Together they ran a small CSA and market garden, growing throughout the summer and into the cold winter months in Maine using a wood heated greenhouse for season extension.

Brandon graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in Neuro-Science. Not too long after graduation, a job in his area of study brought him to Maine. However, he quickly decided to trade in a laboratory of beakers and research for the broader laboratory of farming.

“I think I was initially rebelling from the standard path of what was expected of me- get a degree, get a job in your career path. The idea of what a farmer was- an uneducated tobacco spitter- I wanted to break down those misconceptions. Farming was so different then how I grew up. I grew up eating Wonder Bread and Dunk-a-roos. I was always that kid in class and in the office, fidgeting, and wanting to be outdoors. So I chose to go down a path that would get me outside, living a healthy lifestyle.”

Brandon at his farm in Maine.

However after three years living in a half-insulated shed, struggling to make ends meet and chopping firewood all winter, both his hands and soul grew cold and homesick. He decided to return to Bucks County where he grew up- Brandon attended CB West and when his folks moved to New Hope area, he graduated from New Hope Solebury High School.

“Most of the things I learned about farming were self-taught, through trial and error. I’m ready to learn farming from professionals, and be closer to family.”

When Brandon’s not at the farm, you can find him and Chad, his close friend and identical twin brother, on Sundays down in Suburban Station in Philadelphia playing music to the subway riders. Brandon comes from a very musically gifted family. Lately you’ll find him on guitar and his brother on ukulele, both doing the vocals, but Brandon also plays the saxophone, drums and ukulele. We’re happy to have him on the farm!

22 Feb

Posted at 19:35h in Community Connections by
10 Likes

Blooming Glen Farm CSA is committed to providing its customers access to not only fresh sustainably grown produce but also to sources of protein raised by farmers who share our values. Our 2012 CSA members will have the option to sign-up for pastured-poultry shares from Ledemete Grass Farm, grass-fed beef shares from Tussock Sedge Farm and sustainable seafood shares from Otolith Sustainable Seafood in Philadelphia, all to be conveniently picked up at Blooming Glen Farm when you pick up your produce. Since one of the wonderful parts of Community Supported Agriculture is the opportunity to get to know your farmers and their stories, this week’s blog post features April and Rob Fix of Ledemete Grass Farm.

Animals, including chickens, turkeys and pigs, at Ledamete Grass Farm (pronounced “Let ‘em Eat”) are raised on pasture in the sunshine and fresh air and fed a grain mix grown by a local farmer who uses organic practices. April and Rob Fix are passionate about what they do, and we feel very fortunate to be able to include them in our CSA community.

Rob and April, tell us about how you first got into farming.

April: Rob and I both traveled far and wide before settling down at Ledamete Grass Farm in Schnecksville, PA.

After graduating with an Environmental Studies degree from the University of Pittsburgh, I apprenticed on a few diversified family farms in Vermont and Virginia. I worked as an Organic Research Assistant on Virginia Tech’s Kentland Farm and as a Farmer/Teacher at the Farm School in Massachusetts. Rob and I met at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) Conference and brought our lives together shortly thereafter at Fielder Farm, in Central Pennsylvania. There we raised pastured poultry and pork that we sold through CSAs, and we raised a Jersey cow and heifer, for our own milk, butter and yogurt.

Rob: Prior to landing at Fielder Farm, I spent time studying at Penn State, working as a sous chef at fine, local foods restaurants in Scotland and Montana, and hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Real food, hard work and the great outdoors are at my heart of hearts.

Rob and Tessa

What brought you back to Pennsylvania?

A desire to be closer to family brought us to Lehigh County where we started Ledamete Grass Farm. To keep things exciting we decided to buy a farm, start a business and have a baby all in the same year. And so it began, a few years ago. Tessa Wren, now nearly two, loves life on the farm and is especially fond of collecting “eggies” and placing them carefully into their cartons!

What is it about farming that appeals to you?

Since we first met, we have always loved to sit down together to a beautiful meal brimming with food grown by ourselves or by family and farmer friends. We enjoy the unique personalities of all the livestock and are grateful for the opportunity to be stewards of the animals and the pasture ecosystem where they dwell. Starting a farm from scratch is no small feat, and it’s been many a long day for sure, but the hard work feels worth it when the bellies are nourished and the faces are smiling.

How have the first few years at the farm been?

Now beginning our third season at Ledamete Grass Farm, we are thrilled about all of the improvements we have made to the farm in just our first two years. We recently completed a two-year Natural Resources and Conservation Services (NRCS) Environmental Quality Initiatives Program (EQIP) contract which provided partial funding for several large projects including installing permanent fencing for 15 acres of pasture, digging a water line and installing 5 frost-free hydrants throughout the pasture, creating a gravel access road, and planting a 1/2 acre of native wildflowers as a pollinator habitat. To prevent drainage issues from the new access road, we installed a large swale and catch basin along the road that they will plant with native grasses and trees this spring. New and improved farm structures include a large chick brooder, an on-farm poultry-processing house, an equipment barn and a livestock barn. 

Rainbow at Ledemete Grass Farm

What lies ahead for you?

As we look into the future we see our small family farm thriving, nourishing ourselves and our neighbors with our thoughtfully raised chickens, turkeys, pigs and cows. We plan to expand our specialty products, such as our farm-made turkey and pork sausages. We hope to add a flock of laying hens laying delicious pastured eggs with bright orange yolks. We see a beautiful farm that’s well-cared for; a sustainable business as well as a happy home for ourselves, our children, and our animals.

Thanks Rob and April Fix, of Ledemete Grass Farm!

Click on this link for registration information for chicken shares for the 2012 season, or go to their website for more information.