Fresh, Local, Organic Produce
Offering Shares in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

Lindencroft Farm is a small, family run, organic farm located in Ben Lomond, California. We lovingly grow the highest quality vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowers. When you buy a share in our CSA program, you get a weekly box of the finest seasonal produce picked at the peak of ripeness.

Find out more about our CSA and our schedule of crops, or to find out about the latest things happening on the farm, including pictures, check out our blog.

How We Operate the Farm

We currently have about two acres in production, growing entirely in special raised beds. Why are they special? We excavate a full 3 feet of our native very sandy soil for each bed, line the bed with steel hardware cloth, and refill with a mix of organic compost, aged and composted horse manure, and native soil. Then we surround the bed with a traditional redwood frame. From that point on, these beds will never be tilled, compacted, or otherwise disturbed by machines or feet. They are refreshed between crops with natural organic compost. We use drip irrigation exclusively, and have extensive native flowering hedgerows to provide healthy habitat for beneficial insects and birds. The entire farm site is surrounded by redwood forest and oak meadowland, teaming with wildlife. Our philosophy of farming is to gently coax the best produce from our beds by creating as natural an environment as we can. Each year, the farm is healthier, more robust, and more beautiful than the last.

We start nearly everything from seed. Since our goal is to serve only our local community, we wait to harvest until the food is fully ripe and ready to eat. We grow year-round, striving to make available a full range of delicious and healthy food, rather than specializing in a just a few crops at a time.

We believe modern agriculture in this county has moved its focus from flavor and nutrition to yields, transportability, and profits. But, in fact, yields in a well-run sustainable organic farm are excellent, resulting in a potential for a reasonable, if small, profit. Transportability is a non-issue by selling locally. Thus we feel we are doing our part to cut down on wasted energy and greenhouse gases.

Speaking of greenhouse gases, in January 2007 we have installed a large photovotaic (PV) system to generate all the electricity we need on the farm. This system will produce some 18 million watts of electricity per year. This will eliminate some 3,000 pounds of greenhouse gas polution each year.

Another way we try to be gentle to the earth and energy wise is to use recaptured rainwater for irrigation rather than pumping everthing from our deep well. In 2006, we installed a rainwater collector to capture some 236,000 gallons of water. This should meet our annual irrigation needs.

For us, being an organic, sustainable farm is something that we deeply believe in. Although we voluntarily are no longer certified by CCOF, we, as farmers, are committed to follow the highest standards and practices of organic farming, and follow the same standards and practices that we did when we were CCOF certified. We simply found the paperwork requirements of CCOF were beyond economic realites for a farm of our size and large crop complexity.

Contacts

We always welcome your input and suggestions. You may visit the farm at any time provided you call first to ensure that we will be available. Our phone and e-mail contacts are listed at the bottom of every page on the Lindencroft Farm website.

Last Updated: February 6, 2012

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