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Centre County Sustainable Agriculture

No, no…it’s more interesting than it sounds.

On Saturday PASA hosted a farm tour of Centre County — the county that is home to Happy Valley and a number of Amish folk. On top of the fascinating process of environmental stewardship, farm profitability, and prosperous farming communities, meeting and interacting with people of a culture that separates itself from society was an experience everyone should have.

I would have pictures of the people we met — like Raymond Fisher who makes kombucha and is an amazing horse rider, or Elmer and Martha King who make ghee and wonderful chocolate/coconut pops; both of whom had adorable bright attentive children — but the Amish don’t like to be photographed so you’ll have to be satisfied with photographs of their farms (and a couple of distance photographs of Amish driving horse teams).

Pictures with a * are from my Vito II, the others are from my digital Elph©. I offer some seemingly duplicate photos to show the difference.

Spring Bank Farms

When we were searching the sprawling farm country under the shadow of Bear Mountain for our first farm on the tour we passed a guy making time on horse through the fields. At a full trot he came alongside the electric fence that bordered the road and without a pause lifted the fence with his free hand and slipped underneath it. That was Raymond, the owner of Spring Bank Acres, who was the first Amish farmer who was surprised when we already knew all about his stand-out product, kombucha. (Becky’s been drinking it for almost a year now.) Raymond had an 8 year old son with rimless glasses and a scooter. They offered raw milk, yogurt, specialty cheeses, eggs and the kombucha. Raymond also offered instruction on using big pigs to help with your composting.

    

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Shady Locust Produce

Our next farm was a bit larger and featured a large classic barn with chicks and livestock, a horse-drawn hayride, goats and Becky even scored a shoefly pie.

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Note how happily Becky presents the veal calf. Some vegetarian, huh?

Patchwork Farm

The next farm we hit was a goldmine of education. Patchwork is one of my mother-in-law’s favorite plant providers and the owners gave us a thorough tour of their seed workshop, greenhouse and produce fields. We’re excited to find them at the Tuesday Boalsburg Farmer’s Market tomorrow and see if their produce is as good as their plants.

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The third-to-last picture shows the fertilizer production facilities for Patchwork. The second-to-last is the automatic seeding machine. The last picture is a binder where they keep detailed instructions on every variety of plant they produce and it’s cycle in the Patchwork process — it reminded me of the binders in a certain sci-fi novel I love.

Fiedler Farm

The next place looked more like a commune. Several hand-built homes tucked down a country road sharing farm land and gorgeous views.

          

Triangle Organics

I was out of film and tired of taking pictures by the time we reached the last farm so there is only one picture. The Kings were the second people to be surprised when we knew about their cornerstone product, ghee. They were also the second people to reccomend grass-fed dairy for my lactose intolerant gi. While they were distracted selling raw milk, grass-fed beef and chocolate candy made with coconut milk their pigs were sneaking under the fence to drink the cow’s water. Pigs is smart.

Bonus Pictures

  
Here are the distant Amish pics I promised.

 
Evelyn, my mother-in-law, has a new birdbath and foilage feature in the front yard, and she planted daisys that share the same name as Becky.

The local pet food store, Wiscoy, hosts an ice cream social for dogs on Saturdays in August.

 
Maybe I’ll figure this depth-of-field thing out after all.

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