2025 Recap!
I see it’s been a year since I’ve written one of these and what a year it was. We welcomed a new baby into our family, little Ellis is now a year old and I’m sure will be running the farm market soon enough, he’s a real people-person. Construction was finally completed and we started a new business - Amara Kitchen and Tasting Room where we are hosting cooking classes, farm dinners, pizza and market nights, CSA pickup, and winery tastings with small plates and glasses of our house made Aperitivo. We grew 6 acres of vegetables for 150 CSA families and delivered vegetables to local restaurants, and farm distribution companies in New York and Philadelphia on a weekly basis. Our crew of six extraordinary humans, two of which hail from Mexico on H2A visas (seasonal farm work visas) did an amazing job through a wet spring, a hot summer and chilly fall growing, tending, harvesting and distributing vegetables. We like to say that farming is just a lot of picking things up and putting them down and our team members do that with humor and strength every day.
A highlight for me has been our Wednesday pizza nights. Every week from 2-7pm families and neighbors have come to pick up CSA shares, buy veggies and stay for a wood-fired pizza with a glass of Amara or a beer. While I never envisioned my role on the farm go from farmer in the morning to serving pizza and wine at night, our kitchen space turns into a neighborhood hang out. Kids playing soccer outside or drawing, parents getting a moment to hang out in the middle of the week, neighbors stopping by for a pizza to-go and a bag of salad greens. This is exactly the kind of space we wanted to create where community just happens over food and drink from the farm. This has always been the goal and we so excited to build on what we have started.
It’s hard to write about our successes without also noting our challenges, it’s been a tough time to start a new business and run a small farm with the added expenses of tariffs on everything we purchase. We try to be conscienscious about our prices, balancing the need to cover rising costs with the knowledge that everyone is having to pay more for everything. Our community has been nothing but welcoming to our H2A workers who are at this point, indispensable to our operation but we worry about their safety as the environment around immigration becomes increasingly chaotic. Our priority is and always will be keeping our workers safe, which is an added layer to an already challenging job.
In the long run, we believe that our small acts of growing food organically and offering a space for neighbors and visitors to connect around that whether it be through a transplant for your garden, a CSA share, a jar of tomato sauce, a pizza, a glass of Amara or a 5 course dinner - this can be our way to create unity in a chaotic time. We hope you will join us in any way you can.
Love, your farmers and chefs from Roots to River
