Chris Hench is one of Center County’s newest farmers. He and his wife, Amber, own it Blackbranch Farm in Julian. However, Chris’s background is far from agriculture. After art school, he traveled the world as a freelance photographer – but farming was always his end game.
“My whole adult life, my end game goal was to find a suitable place to house and live off the grid,” he said. “That was my exit strategy from working in Hollywood, doing this freelance photography work and feeling burned out all the time. How can we make money at home… full-time? The answer was farming.”
Blackbranch Farm is in its third year of production. The launch in 2021 came with its challenges, as the world navigated the first summer after the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only, Chris said, were they building a farm — infrastructure-wise — from scratch, but they were also trying to build relationships with chefs and enter farmers’ markets for the first time. Now, however, you can find Blackbranch Farm at the Pine Grove Mills Farmers Market, and online through Center Markets and State College Market. The farm also works with farm-forward restaurants around the area, such as Allen Street Grill, Pine Grove Hall, Creekside at the Gamble Mill, Grace at Carnegie House and Four Ways Pub & Eatery.
Blackbranch Farm is thought to be one of the only intensive no-till garden-style farms in Center County. It’s a rare farm model because of the labor intensity, Chris said, but it’s healthier for the land.
“One of my guiding principles in agriculture is that I wanted to grow as naturally as possible and beneficial to the earth as much as possible. I didn’t want to take and not give,” he said. “I follow very regenerative agricultural practices. … We don’t till, so we don’t get into the fields and tear the biology of the soil and destroy soil layers. We establish the fields and then just let them be, with the cover crops in the off season to feed the soil. … It’s a whole philosophy of agriculture as natural as possible.”
The farm is Certified Naturally Grown, a certification that comes from a non-governmental organization, and with slightly stricter standards than organic certification. The farm also does not use tractors in the fields, and all three hectares are tended by hand. Because of this approach, the farm, according to Chris, can produce the same amount as a traditional 12-acre farm could – leading to the “intensive market garden style” of farming.
“We sell at the farmers market, then we have standing orders with local restaurants, then we put a hundred bags of lettuce for the CSA, and we can do that week by week and never run out because of the intensive planting,” , he said. “We are mainly transplants, so when a crop is done, there is already another crop in the nursery that has been grown for 30 days, and we can exchange it for that crop.”
Both originally from the Lancaster area, Chris said one of the aspects of farming that he and Amber love the most is just the food. “We like to eat healthy. We like to cook … We like to cook and high-end cuisine … “This, and the desire to work with chefs in the area and high-end restaurants, informed the choices of farm crops.
“We grow, in one season, 80 or 90 different varieties of produce,” Chris said. “This is also partly because we run a fairly large CSA and the CSA is a free choice. Every Sunday, members log into their online account and build their farm share box. They are customized every week, so I want to have a great variety.”
“We grow a lot of different leaves and specialty blends, like spicy blends, frilly blends… We make candy-striped beets and rainbow carrots and rainbow-colored radishes—a lot of the things the chefs we work with want. We don’t make melons or corn, but we buy corn from a local organic farm for the CSA, just because everyone has to have their corn in the summer,” he added. The farm also has a large microgreens operation.
The farm’s summer CSA program, which offers both harvest and delivery, has grown rapidly since the farm’s founding and runs from May through September. CSA seats for next season are still open and available, at blackbranchfarm.com.
Holly Riddle is a freelance food, travel and lifestyle writer. She can be reached at holly.ridd@gmail.com.
