Strong Roots Organic Farm
Short description of your place and practices
Our farm is strongly committed to sustainability and uses a locally focused strategy to combat global climate change, enhance biodiversity, and protect our watershed. We use regenerative organic techniques to manage our farm. At its heart, regenerative organic farming is essentially restoration ecology that feeds people.
Our Sustainability Goals:
1. Grow carbon negative food.
2. Minimize the use of fossil fuel energy, and track greenhouse gas emissions.
3. Protect IUCN red-listed wood turtles by enhancing habitat. Conserve or create habitat for
Pennsylvania endangered or extirpated species like pine martens, rusty-patch
bumblebees, northern flying squirrels, bats, blackpoll warblers and others.
4. Remove invasive species and restore native plants.
5. Protect the watershed through improved riparian buffer management, use organic inputs,
and eliminate—as much as possible—erodible, bare soil.
6. Remove trash and maintain coarse woody debris along Pine Creek, a Class A trout stream
running through our farm.
7. Brook trout are much more abundant under hemlock than hardwood draining streams.
Subsequently we will:
A. Establish an insectary using North American natives to control hemlock woolly adelgid—an
invasive insect that devastates hemlocks.
B. Plant a hemlock understory to ensure the next generation of trees and trout can
continue to thrive.
8. Install an integrated pest management system which includes a beneficial insect
insectary, conservation strips, insect netting, pheromone disruptors, and other PAMS
techniques to reduce or eliminate the use of biocides.
9. Manage belowground and aboveground microbial diversity to reduce plant diseases and
use of biocides.
10. Compare our regenerative organic yields to other Pennsylvania farms that use toxic
biocides to ensure we are developing scalable, agroecological solutions that avoid
triggering habitat destruction and land use change.
To achieve these goals, we use a three-pronged approach based on: I) farming practices, II) restoration ecology, and III) supporting local conservation organizations.