Bridget.
I am a southern California native who found my way across the country through a winding journey of seasonal work and adventure. After graduating from San Jose State University with an anthropology degree, I planed to take a hiatus from academia before applying to grad schools and volunteered for a season on a small organic farm in Arizona. I discovered my love for hard, dirty work and heirloom tomatoes and never looked back. After a number of years spent farming across the country, I discovered northern New Hampshire through a job with Mount Cabot Maple, where Ben and I have been sugaring since 2011. Despite the decidedly un-Californian winters, I’ve come to love the intensity and beauty of New England seasons and the community we’ve found in the north country. I’ve spent years working on organic vegetable farms, both large and small, gathering the skills and inspiration to launch Bent Fork Farm. Things I love include: building fairy houses, inappropriately shaped carrots, a nice organized mess, a good beer and a mailbox full of seed catalogs.
Ben.
I grew up in Red Lodge, Montana helping on my family’s dairy and grass hay farm, shooting hoops and playing ninja. I’ve studied English and poetry at University of Maryland, brewed beer Red Lodge Ales, learned the art of a New England stone wall and mastered the alchemy of turning sap to syrup. During the summer, I work off the farm as a stone mason specializing in dry laid walls. At Bent Fork Farm, I’m the project guy. If there’s a greenhouse that needs building, a trench that needs digging, a fence that needs posting, or a cold one that needs drinking, I’m your man. Things I love include: playing daddy beast, taking backroads, the poem of the day, a nice topper stone, and homegrown BLTs every day of August.
Wendelle, Harlow, and Emil
The kids are at the heart of the farm, and also literally right in the middle of almost everything we do. Wendelle loves carrots, picking food for dinner, legos, making bouquets, mashing potato beetles and hiding in plants to scare people. Harlow loves beets (mainly for lipstick), sunflower forts, picking snapdragons, a good spread of snacks, and being in charge. Emil loves trying out his two sharp teeth, cabbage leaf hats (or does he?), and watching his sisters get silly.