Episode 127: Sarah Edmonds of Good Work Farm

Sarah Edmonds and Anton Shannon completed The Seed Farm Apprenticeship program in 2010 and in 2011 launched Good Work Farm, a 60-member CSA on Lehigh County-owned land. Good Work Farm also hosts events, workshops, volunteer days, and group gleaning harvests out at the farm in Emmaus, PA, open to all members in the effort to help us reconnect to where their food comes from. Good Work Farm is dedicated to food justice, making sure that people of varying financial resources have access to quality food grown in their community. To this end we will donate a portion of our surplus to local food pantries. The CSA also offers a limited number of reduced-price shares in exchange for a work commitment during the season. If a work-share is not possible low-income families may qualify for a reduced price share. A percentage of our profits go into our Good Food Fund, which makes these programs possible. Sarah comes to Good Work Farm after working for several years on other organic CSAs, vegetable, animal and orchard farms in Berks and Lehigh Counties. She is also a past intern at The Seed Farm where she received training from this agriculture and business incubator program run though Lehigh County and Penn State Extension. In addition to being a partner at Good Work Farm, Sarah is an artist, and works as a clerk at Kutztown’s Louisa Gonser Community Library and bakes sweet things for Betty’s, also in Kutztown. Sarah holds some pretty big degrees, but she tries not to let her Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees in Printmaking hold her back as she hoes the fields. Prior to this major farm venture, Ms. Edmonds was a professor in visual arts at Lehigh University, Reading Area Community College and at Kutztown University. This episode has been sponsored by Hearst Ranch. “The Seed Farm opportunity was there, and it’s such a good program and an interesting thing that’s happening in this area that hasn’t happened before.” [26:40] — Sarah Edmonds on Greenhorn Radio See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.