H'town Plein Air Artists Prep for Hootenanny at Lundale Farm 9/24

So thankful land like this is in conservancy,” said H’town Plein Air artist, Jeanne Kirby Bruneau, posting a picture of her painting with her backdrop – a pasture spanning the countryside of Lundale Farm, a farming community in Pottstown. She and other artists from the group are painting and preparing for an art show at the farm.

On September 24, Lundale Farm and its community of supporters will celebrate another year of local food production and farmland preservation at the Hootenanny at Lundale Farm. The event features an art show by the H’town Plein Air artists, farm to table pig roast with sides featuring food grown right at the farm, children’s games, and the highlight – a good, ol’ fashioned square dance! Tickets are available for purchase at lundalehootenanny.eventbrite.com or through the link on the Lundale Farm website, www.lundalefarm.org/events.

When Sam & Eleanor Morris purchased Lundale Farm in 1946, over 6 million family farms covered the American landscape. The Morris family moved to Lundale at a pivotal moment in land use---farms were in gradual postwar decline, rapid suburban development had not begun in earnest, and the “open space” movement did not yet exist. Tremendous land development destroyed rich farmland in the last half of the 20th century at a rate of “one acre per minute every minute of every day” (American Farmland Trust). By 2011, when the Morris heirs fulfilled their parents’ wishes by forming the non-profit Lundale Farm, Inc. the USDA census showed a greatly diminished number of US farms, shrunk to 2.1 million family farms.

In Pennsylvania, State Representative Sam Morris was the visionary behind the Commonwealth's farmland preservation legislation and with his wife Eleanor helped to establish the French and Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust in northern Chester County.

Today Lundale’s beautiful rolling landscape welcomes pastured livestock, organic feed and forage crops, bee-keeping, organic vegetable production, forestry management, and recreational opportunities on its 520 preserved acres. The land is stewarded by 9 farm families committed to sustaining the land for the next generation, and features two trails for the public to enjoy – the Horseshoe and French Creek Trails.

Lundale Farm offers unique long-term land leases to a new generation of sustainable farmers. Not a farm incubator, Lundale hopes to create an enduring and dynamic community of farmers living and working on this land. Lundale hopes their community of farmers will offer working demonstrations to landowners and land trusts by providing fresh, nutritious, locally grown foods to their communities while enhancing the biodiversity and health of the land.

Lundale Farm is a sustainable farming community in Pottstown, PA – a place of inspiration, innovation, and opportunity for farmers, landowners, and others committed to locally grown food. Learn more about our mission, work, and upcoming events at www.lundalefarm.org.