“Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark,
but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.”
- Wendell Berry
Our first child, Nova, was born on the summer solstice of 2021. Holding her small life in our hands, we felt something ancient stir—a need to provide food that was clean, whole, and alive with the goodness of the earth.
Like every parent, we wanted the best for our child, and we knew it began with food: you are what you eat—and what you eat eats.
Not long before Nova’s birth, we were awestruck at the steady consumption of Pennsylvania farmland by out-of-town developers—historic fields traded for cul-de-sacs, solar fields, and quick profit. Once the topsoil is paved, it never grows again.
Something in us rose up against that loss. We wanted to protect a patch of land, to create nourishment that would outlast us, and to build a life measured mostly by peace, health, spirit and community.
So we began to learn. We fell down the rabbit hole of regenerative agriculture, permaculture, holistic management, no-till gardening, cut-flowers, and ancestral health. We studied the work of Joel Salatin, Jean-Martin Fortier, Jim Gerrish, Ray Archuleta, Richard Perkins, and Erin Benzakein. We traveled and spoke with Jim Gerrish, Ray Archuletta and Joel Salatin. We became disciples of John Jamison and Russ Wilson.
The more we learned, the clearer it became: the industrial food system had traded life for efficiency, and we wanted no part of it.
One misty spring morning, we stood on a green hill overlooking the old Ridgemeade Farmstead, notebook in hand and hope in our hearts. We built two large gardens—one for vegetables, one for flowers—and welcomed 80 laying hens, 150 broilers, 12 turkeys, 26 pigs, and 2 goats, all raised on pasture and moved in rhythm with the land.
Soon, we were sharing our harvest with family, friends, and neighbors. Our flocks grew, and we welcomed our 80 sheep after an intensive, nationwide search.
In that growth and community sharing, we discovered something deeper than self-sufficiency: a way of belonging. Ridgemeade was no longer just a farm—it was our covenant with the land, and the quiet promise that life, tended well, will feed so much more than the body.
