A serious hobby
Christine Yankel’s heirloom pea seeds
Herbs – medicinal and culinary – have been added to the gardens at the farm.
A Shiitake mushroom growing at Melody Acres Farms.
Christine Yankel loves getting her hands dirty. The Eighty Four resident has turned her love of gardening into more than a hobby – it’s become a farm affectionately named “Melody Acres Hobby Farm.”
“Our farm is truly a ‘hobby farm,’ meaning this is more my hobby than my income,” Yankel says. “In fact, I spend more on supplies than I make in profit right now. Once my kids are all off to college, my dream is to turn this hobby into a small business.”
Yankel’s focus has always been on organics and heirloom varieties of plants and vegetables. The idea for her own farm was borne out of her difficulty finding them. “I was one of the people searching for locally and naturally grown heirloom seedlings for my garden, and I just couldn’t find any,” she remembers. “Once I started growing them myself, family and friends wanted to buy them, and word spread from there. We now have a solid customer base of about 30 to 40 local families that rely on Melody Acres for most of their vegetable seedlings.”
The so-called “hobby farm” began as a garden when Yankel moved to Eighty Four in 2011. Her family was looking to buy around five acres in a rural area so they could enjoy nature – and so that she could expand her gardening. “I had gardened with my mother as a child, and those are some of my best childhood memories,” she says. “The smell of the rich earth as we planted, the laughter as we made a game of weeding and the joy of harvesting and eating what we grew are forever etched into my soul. My mom could make any plant grow and flourish, so I guess the green thumb was inherited.”
She still enlists her mom’s help with the plants, and involves her husband and three teenage sons – she hopes she is passing down the gift and joy of growing food to her boys. While the original focus of Melody Acres was getting naturally grown heirloom vegetable seedlings into the hands of local gardeners who were searching for them, last year, the hobby farm expanded to include companion flowers and culinary and medicinal herbs.
”As we grow, education is becoming an important part of Melody Acres,” Yankel says. “We offer classes on sustainable gardening, growing mushrooms, canning and growing organic seedlings.”
She’s also teaming up with local herbalist Jen Dalke from Blue Heron Nature Skills this year to offer classes on medicinal herbs and identifying edible and medicinal plants in your yard. “The goal of all of our classes is to educate the public about sustainability and to empower people to take care of nature,” Yankel said.
Growing organically is one of Yankel’s passions, and she said that term can mean many different things, because there are ways to work around regulations. “At Melody Acres Hobby Farm, we truly grow naturally. No chemicals or pesticides ever,” she explains. “Yes, it is more difficult to grow plants this way, but it is the way we want to feed ourselves and our family.”
She has found that it is possible to grow high-quality vegetables with the use of permaculture practices and companion planting, along with removing pests by hand and encouraging beneficial insects. She even uses culinary spices as additional pest deterrent. “We’ve never used chemicals in our gardens or on our lawn,” she said, “and our yard is full of beautiful dandelions and other essential weeds that are crucial to feed the bees and keep them on our farm to pollinate and ensure great crops. I believe this is the key to gardening organically.”
Yankel is finding there is a growing interest in people gardening organically at home and believes anyone can do it if they’re armed with knowledge and dedication. Her farm offers many organic heirloom seedlings to get started – some that are exclusive to Melody Acres. “My passion is preserving heirloom seeds for future generations, and I’ve been lucky enough to have been entrusted with priceless seeds that have been brought by immigrants to this country and passed down for generations.”
Yankel applauds a growing focus on organic and sustainable living and eating nationwide and said it’s easier to achieve than ever because we have so much information so readily available. To her, it’s just what she grew up doing, and what she believes her grandparents and great-grandparents’ generations would have called just living and eating. “As we become more informed as a society, we are growing more concerned about our families’ health and are looking closely at what we are feeding ourselves and those we love,” she adds. “We are beginning to look for local farmers who share our values for growing sustainably, and we are looking to our own backyards to grow our own food. I believe the push for sustainable living is grown out of love for our family, friends, communities and our Earth. This is how Melody Acres Hobby Farm began, and we are so grateful to be a part of the sustainable living community.”