Early Days

From the time she was a child, Teresa had the greenest thumb in the Brockman family. The plants in her bedroom would thrive while the same plants in the rest of the house would wither and die. And she was the fondest of our elderly neighbor Miss Kraft, who had a fabulous formal garden, including a lily pond, as well as a huge vegetable garden and fruit orchard. When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Teresa always answered, “a Miss Kraft.”

Teresa lived abroad for many years, starting with a year in the Philippines when she was in high school, and ending up in Yokohama, Japan a decade later. When she was in the Philippines, she learned Ilongo, including the word for the dark crud that you scrape off of your sweaty skin after you’ve been working in the dirt. At that point, no one knew just how intimate Teresa would become with sweat and dirt!

Farming Days

When Teresa started her farm in the spring of 2001, her goal was to sustainably grow a little bit of every type of fruit that our Zone 5 climate could support. That led to her very diverse farm with many varieties of fruit, then to herbs, and eventually spring plant starts.

In 2006, Teresa met Michael and they have been farming together ever since.

Life Beyond

”One reason I always wanted an orchard,” Teresa muses, “is for it to be here after I die. Somehow it will let me live for at least another generation when my grandchildren tell their children that Great Grandma Teresa planted the tree that the apple they are eating came from. It is a comfort.”