The Delaware Farm Bureau recently teamed up with the Kenny Family ShopRite of Brandywine Commons to treat ShopRite customers and associate members to an educational tour of five farms in northern Delaware and southern Pennsylvania.
Guests visited Filasky’s Produce, where they learned about CSA programs (Community Supported Agriculture, in which customers share the expense and reap the benefit of a farm’s labor).
At Emerson Farms in New Castle, Del., a 2,000-acre grain and dairy farm, guests learned about dairy farm operations from a family that’s now in its fifth generation of farming. Although the family started Cowgirl’s Creamery at Emerson Farms a few years ago, serving 22 flavors of ice cream made at nearby Woodside Creamery, it was lunchtime, and the bus was off to a lunch served at the Historic Penn Farm, a 300-year-old farm that was part of the original William Penn land grant.
The 112-acre farm is now managed by Delaware Greenways. Attendees were then ushered to Phillip’s Mushroom Farm in Kennett Square. The Phillips family began cultivating mushrooms 89 years ago, and the farm is now the largest marketer of specialty mushrooms in the United States, distributing over 35 million pounds of specialty mushrooms annually.
SIW Vegetables in Chadds Ford, Pa., whose slogan is “We Simply Grow Food,” was the last stop on the tour. While the big barn on the farm was built in the 1600s, vegetable production didn’t begin until 1986. The farm had been a working dairy farm until 1972, when the tillable fields were leased to grain farmers. The first day of sales from a picnic table on July 6, 1986 grossed $11. Today, 30 kinds of fruits and vegetables are grown on 60 acres and sold wholesale, retail from farm markets in the area, and as part of a CSA.
One participant said, “When I was growing up, (I thought) my food came out of the refrigerator. Of course, I learned more as I grew older and have even tried to grow a couple of vegetables in our backyard. However, the world of producing food and being able to maintain a profitable business while doing it was still quite foreign to me. Thanks to you, after today, it’s not quite as foreign. It was a great tour.”
Established in 1944, the Delaware Farm Bureau has become one of the strongest grassroots farm organizations in the First State. DFB is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that serves as a unified voice for Delaware farmers. DFB’s more than 8,000 farm families and associate members are united for the purpose of preserving agriculture as an industry and a way of life.
