Hi there.

Allow us to introduce ourselves.

Kitchen Girl Farm is owned and operated by co-founders Christy and Connor. We named our farm after an old-time fiddle and banjo tune with its roots in Virginia. We grew up in different areas of Virginia and started playing old-time music together while we were college students. We also have a deep love of growing, cooking, and sharing food with each other and our community.

Our farming journey has been interwoven since the beginning. We met in college in 2009 while studying Environmental Science and Policy and running a small local foods buying club and our College's Campus Garden. The summer after college, we embarked on a cross-country trip to learn more about farming. We signed up for WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), which connected us to five very different small, family-run farms. We worked daily alongside the farmers and got our first real hands-on experience. By 2011, we landed apprenticeships at the Small Farm Unit at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in eastern North Carolina. CEFS is a research farm run by NC State University and the NC Department of Agriculture. We learned under a highly skilled mentor for one season, and had our first real immersion in growing organic fruits, vegetables, and livestock. After that, our farming journey brought us up to Baltimore City, where we managed a nonprofit urban farm for two years. By 2013, we found ourselves with the opportunity to establish a new farm program for the same nonprofit. This farm became our entire lives for the next five years, during which we got married (on the farm!), honed our skills, and had the opportunity to introduce over 15 apprentices to sustainable farming.

Finally, we felt ready to start our own farm business as we transitioned out of the nonprofit world at the end of 2018. We broke ground and established our poultry flocks at the beginning of 2019. For two years, we operated on two separate leased parcels. It was a great opportunity to start our business, but driving between farm plots quickly got old. When we got notice that the owners of our vegetable farm plot had alternate plans for the property, we found ourselves at a crossroads. Should we continue farming or move on to another career? After lots of discussion, we decided there was nothing else in the world we could envision ourselves doing. We got serious about searching for land. It was time for us to grow deeper roots and find our forever farm.

We had been casually looking for the perfect piece of farmland in our area for close to seven years. We were close to giving up when Connor found our dream property in June 2020. After mounds of paperwork and number crunching, we closed on our land in Parkton in January 2021. We have been on cloud nine since then as we build our dream farm from the ground up.

When we're not farming, we enjoy cooking and eating with friends, lifting weights, painting, hiking, traveling, and snuggling with our puppy, Nomi.