I started working at Village Acres in April of 2008.  I started here not knowing what to expect.  Since then I've learned more than I ever thought I could about growing vegetables.  One day, I'm hoping to start my own farm and provide organic food to more people.  I'm excited and looking forward to this summer and all the new things it will bring, including my second child.

Steve and Marsha Freed moved onto the farm in January 2011 and are rapidly making themselves at home.  Steve has experience with farming and carpentry, and Marsha will be working as the farm's bookkeeper for the coming year.  I'll let them tell you about themselves in their own time later, but keep an eye out for these two helpful folks around the farm!

I grew up in Guys Mills, PA, a tiny town about 40 miles south of Erie.  My parents were not farmers, but they gardened extensively, and my dad worked in a variety of sales jobs in the food industry – so I’ve spent a lot of time eating homegrown produce, mass-produced frozen food, and everything in between.  I went to college at Penn State where I got a degree in environmental resource management and then went on to study plant ecology at Stony Brook University on Long Island.  I learned a lot in graduate school but I was never sure if I really wanted to work in a university for the rest of my life.  What really made me happiest was not writing papers or planning experiments but just working with plants, both outside and in the greenhouses on campus.   I have always been an environmentalist, concerned with how society was going to manage to live on the land without destroying it, and I was simultaneously becoming more and more excited about cooking and eating good fresh food and reading more and more worrying news about the problems with conventional agriculture.  Now this was a problem to get passionate about!  I decided the best way to figure out what was going on with sustainable agriculture was to jump right in and get a job on a farm and because I had loved the landscape of central Pennsylvania while at Penn State, I decided to look for something nearby.  I arrived here May 4, 2008 and have been learning the ropes and growing your vegetables ever since.

Village Acre Farm has been my home since I was 8 months old. I'm the youngest child of Roy and Hope Brubaker and spent many summers of my childhood picking strawberries, weeding beans, tossing watermelons, and splashing in the creek.  I worked on the farm during summers of my high school and college years and then moved to New Mexico where I managed a non-profit urban farm for 7 years.  The summer of 2011 marked my return to Village Acres, and the coming 2012 year starts a new chapter for me as I step into a co-manager role alongside my father.  I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to make my career doing what I love on the land that I love.