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What we grow

Leafy greens, September through April, in water instead of dirt. Two of us do all of it on 34 acres at about 2,000 feet, five miles outside Abingdon.

No synthetic fertilizers. Fish waste feeds the plants.
Cut to order. Nothing sits in a warehouse between us and you.
Winter is our season. Most local supply stops in October. Ours doesn't.

Join the Winter Farm Box Wholesale

The crops

Living butter lettuce

Salanova green butter, our flagship. Harvested with the roots still attached so it holds a good week in a fridge instead of wilting in three days. Bristol schools have taken it every week since 2022.

Winter greens

Collards, Winterbor kale, chard, bok choy and other Asian greens. Cold weather converts their starch to sugar, which is why the best eating around here happens in January.

Blue Nile tilapia

About 300 adults living under the grow beds. They're the engine of the whole system, and they're the reason we've never bought a bag of fertilizer.

How aquaponics works

People ask about this every Saturday, so here it is in plain terms.

1. The fish eat

Tilapia are fed and, like anything else, they produce waste. That waste is ammonia.

2. Bacteria convert it

Bacteria in the system turn the ammonia into nitrate, which is exactly what a lettuce plant wants to eat.

3. The plants feed

Water runs through the grow beds. The roots pull out the nitrate and clean the water in the process.

4. It goes back around

Clean water returns to the fish and it starts over. We top off what evaporates. Nothing gets dumped.

Why it matters for what you eat. There's no soil, so there's no soil-borne disease and no need for a pesticide program. There's no synthetic fertilizer because the fish handle it. And it uses a small fraction of the water a field crop does, because the same water keeps doing the job.

The growing year

Lettuce runs all twelve months. Everything else has a season.

Living butter lettuce	September through April	Farm box, market, wholesale
Collards	October through March	Farm box, market
Kale and chard	October through March	Farm box, market
Bok choy and Asian greens	October through March	Farm box, market
Greenhouse extras	Shoulder seasons	Cherry tomatoes, romas, peppers, cucumbers

Cycles stretch out in deep winter. Once daylength drops under ten hours in November, a crop that takes six weeks in September takes closer to ten. We plant heavy in August and September to bank a standing crop, which is why the farm box is capped and sold ahead.

Where to get it

The Winter Farm Box

Our greens plus Kelly Ridge pork, every other Saturday October through March. Twelve boxes, twenty five spots.

See the box

Abingdon Farmers Market

Saturday mornings. 8 to 12 in season, 10 to 12 for the holiday and winter markets. Come say hello and see what we cut that week.

Wholesale

Schools, kitchens and institutions. Steady case counts of leafy greens through the months when local supply disappears.

Wholesale