Community Owned Natural Foods Grocery
Cathy Jones began gardening in 1975 when she moved to this area. Her husband, Mike Perry, was a Chapel Hill native—he used to watch his dad play softball on the field that’s now the site of the Carrboro Farmers’ Market. With Mike’s support, Cathy began selling produce in 1991. She didn’t think she could get in to the…
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Alex and Betsy began Peregrine Farm west of Chapel Hill in 1981 and grew cut flowers, small fruit, and vegetables for local markets. They had degrees in Soils (Alex) and Forestry (Betsy) and wanted to live in the country and farm. There were few local markets; Weaver Street Market didn’t exist, the Carrboro Farmers’ Market…
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Lee and Larry Newlin are farming a beautiful piece of land on the Haw River west of Chapel Hill. The farm has eight market gardens on which Larry rotates crops and a unique “high tunnel” for year-round growing. There’s a hopyard and a densely planted “demonstration garden” that shows gardeners what is possible with a…
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Jillian and Ross Mickens have done what many only dream of: turned an interest in “where food comes from” into a full-fledged farm. Working with a former tobacco farm, they’re growing produce, flowers, and nutrient-dense microgreens. Influenced by popular press about food, the pair began growing their own vegetables. Their backyard garden “got out of…
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Debbie Donnald and Audrey Lin never take a break. The founders of Two Chicks Farm in Hillsborough spend their summers growing produce in the fields and in shade houses, and their winters growing in hoophouses and ramping up production of their preserves: fermented krauts and kimchis, pickled vegetables, and their infamous pepper jelly. They attend…
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Daniel and Allison Cooper have returned to the farm. Cooper-Lasley Farm has been in Daniel’s family for seven generations, transforming from the original 1797 homestead into a dairy farm and then, when the dairy prices dropped in the 1980s, into row crops. But the farm had fallen into disuse. Daniel met Allison on the school…
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Want a bigger garden in your life? Think you’re limited by the size of your yard, or your full-time job? Then check out the MacAllers’ Four Leaf Farm in Rougemont, ten miles northeast of Hillsborough. “It’s a mixed ‘farmlet,’” jokes Helga MacAller of their farm, a relatively small property with so much going on, you…
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In the ten-plus years that they’ve been farming on Dimmocks Mill Road in Hillsborough, Richard Holcomb and Jamie DeMent have built quite an establishment. Their fifty-five acres contain impressive rows of every vegetable imaginable, woodlands filled with hogs, mobile chicken coops, a barn, and a sawmill that turns trees from the farm into lumber for…
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Farm Boy Farms started as a homebrewing venture, but it’s grown into much more. Dan Gridley still brews beer, but he also grows hops and works with neighboring farmers to grow barley, which he malts and sells. The side business is more than a hobby. Dan wants to further the craft beer industry in our…
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