Canter Hill
Farm
WHY WE GROW
We grow because we care what we eat. We care even more what our children eat. And we think you care, too. We founded Canter Hill Farm in 2008 with the goal of growing our own food so that we knew exactly what was (and what wasn't) in it. We didn't set out to start a business - we had two full-time careers of our own. But then we started talking to people who read the books that we did and cared as much as we did - and we decided to try to grow for them, too. That's how it all began....
WHERE WE ARE
2138 Valley Hill Road
Malvern, PA 19355
We are open on
Fridays from 12 - 4.
Email: canterhillfarm@yahoo.com
Phone: 610.827.1594
(For a quick response, email is best!)
HOW TO BUY
SCHEDULE
Bryn Mawr:
1st and 3rd (and 5th!) Saturdays of the month from 10 - noon
Location: Parking lot of the Bryn Mawr Train Station (Lancaster Avenue & Bryn Mawr Avenue)
Chestnut Hill:
1st and 3rd (and 5th!) Saturdays of the month from 10 - noon
Location: in front of the Mermaid Inn.
Kennett Square:
Get on our "Kennett Dropoff List" by sending us an email
Media:
Email to get on the "Media dropoff" email list. I'll alert you when I'm coming to Media and we can meet up for a pickup.
Meetup on January 2nd, 16th and 30th.
Farm:
Friday from 12 - 4 pm
(or request an appt.)
Step up your Sausage
In February, I turn to cooking shows for a little inspiration to try something new. And a cozy kitchen is much better than the melting snow or polar blasts outside!
Sausage is so much more than package to pan to plate, and we want to encourage you to think beyond just cooking the coil in a pan by putting a SALE ON CHICKEN SAUSAGE this week, and offering a NEW FLAVOR (we may keep it long term or we may not – you be the judge!)
FLAVORS:
NEW: Chicken with Asiago Cheese & Mushrooms
OLD FAVORITES: Chicken Spinach & Feta
Chicken Garlic & Wine
Chicken Italian
All four are on sale this week if you buy 2 or more packs of any mix of the flavors: $10 / lb instead of the regular $12 / lb
STEP IT UP:
Sure, you can cook the sausage and throw it on a roll or cut it over pasta, but this week’s new sausage makes a fabulous chicken cheesesteak alternative. Just squeeze the sausage out of the casing (you can easily do that with all flavors, just use scissors to cut down the rope casing and it rolls right out into the pan) and fry it up in a pan, breaking it up as it cooks. Top a roll with the cooked sausage and optionally top it all with a little provolone cheese and throw it under the broiler for 2 minutes for a more flavorful and delicious take on a chicken cheesesteak.
My other favorites are to use these sausages to make mini meatballs. We use them as an appetizer, add them to soup and the kids tend to eat them straight out of the pan. All these sausage flavors can be squeezed out of the casing, rolled and baked at 375 – 400 for about 10 min, or to make a firmer meatball, you can add breadcrumbs and/or a little parmesan cheese (not needed for the Asiago flavor, but tastes great in all the others!)
FARMING IS TOUGH
People often sympathize with us that farming is hard. Most of the time, we think about the hard work during the farming season – the hours outside, the inevitable problems (burst pipes, broken freezer, coyotes taking lambs or volatile weather wrecking a crop or stopping the pasture’s growth). Usually the winter is a little bit of a respite for us. Keeping laying hens and breeding flocks, we sell the meats and poultry we raised through the warm season, keep everyone alive and plan for spring. This winter has been more work and less reward than any we’ve ever seen. So we are so tremendously grateful for those of you who braved sub-zero temps to come to markets, stocked up your freezers and continued to support local farming when it wasn’t easy – at all. We can’t say thank you enough.
Want to show us how much you care? Come to the markets tomorrow and fill those freezers!
(And don’t forget to try those delicious boneless beef short-ribs!)
To Buy:
At the Farm (Friday, 2/20 from 12 – 4)
Media: Drop off or meet up available Friday, 2/20 (evening) or Monday, 2/23 (also evening)
Kennett Square: Meet up available Friday, 2/20 (evening)
Bryn Mawr: Saturday, 2/21 from 10 – noon
Chestnut Hill: Saturday, 2/21 from 10 – noon
As always, email us with pre-orders or large orders if you can!
KITTENS:
We’ve had a big kitten year. We have two PRECIOUS kittens (one boy and one girl) that are ready for new homes! Unbelievably friendly and loving (used to dogs, chaos and general torture), they are the PERFECT Valentine's Day gift!
Our Mission:
We founded the farm on a simple premise:
Before chemicals, labs and factory farms got involved, God had created a perfect, workable system. We will learn about it, respect it, and we will naturally and successfully be able to be "beyond-organic" in our food supply.
New to farming, we had no pre-conceived ideas about raising animals or vegetables, and sought out farmers across the globe to learn what we did and didn't want to do. We quickly saw that most food systems raising just one type of offering needed external inputs - fertilizers, corn and sadly - sometimes chemicals and antibiotics. That's why we raise a variety of animals. Each has been chosen to serve a function for the others.
Over the last 10 years, we have grown and in addition to our home-base farm in Malvern, we lease 180 acres of grazing land from old family friends in Lancaster County. During the summer, we rotate half of our sheep flock through this land, and most of our steers call this land home. All of the land we graze is 100% free of any chemicals or sprays and we re-plant every other year to manage soil compression, erosion and to preserve a diversity of forage.
Canter Hill's beef and lamb is 100% grass (or hay) feed, and supplemented only with salt licks. We de-worm our sheep flock once annually, after lambing season (at the same time as sheering - typically the first week of June) and do not introduce any other chemicals or antibiotics. We have not experienced the same need to de-worm our steers. We have been migrating our sheep flock from Dorset to Katahdin, and therefore most of our sheep are now 50% or more Katahdin (a hair sheep), because we believe the meat tastes nicer! Our beef is both Black and Lowline Angus. We are shifting towards Lowline Angus which is more tolerant of 100% grass feeding and generally very hardy.
Canter Hill's poultry and pork is either pasture (for poultry) or forage fed (our pigs dig in the forest, and our turkeys also tend to roam!). They are supplemented with organic, soy-free feed. How much feed vs. forage do they consume? It depends on the weather. If it's raining or cold, more feed than forage. On warm days that aren't drenching, almost entirely forage. This is why we raise from March - November.
We STRONGLY encourage you to open your minds to frozen meat. If you're committed to pasture raising, recognize that you can't have fresh meat in the dead of winter, and purchase a great freezer!
We are committed to pasture-raised, antibiotic-free and chemical-free poultry, lamb and produce.