About Us
The Kitchen Garden, LLC is a 20-acre farm owned and operated by Tim Wilcox, Caroline Pam and Jarrett Man.
Our Story
The Kitchen Garden was started by Tim and Caroline in 2006, farming a tiny piece of overgrown land in Hadley, along the bike path. In 2007 they purchased 7 acres and a farmhouse on South Silver Lane and moved the farm to Sunderland. In 2012 The Kitchen Garden merged with Stone Soup Farm of Hadley to become a bigger, better, more collaborative farm.
We bring a love of good food to our passion for growing it. Tim and Caroline spent considerable time in their formative years living in Europe and their culinary experiences in France and Italy inform and inspire their products and philosophy. They met at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City but settled in the Valley because of its great community of young farmers and the local enthusiasm for local food.
Caroline Pam
Caroline grew up in New York and earned a degree in English Literature from the University of Chicago. She worked as a journalist before discovering her passion for food and farming. She studied French cuisine at the French Culinary Institute and has also worked as a market manager at the Union Square Greenmarket in NYC, where she shared her enthusiasm for cooking with seasonal ingredients in cooking demonstrations. She spent a summer working on an organic farm in Italy before moving to the Valley to apprentice at Food Bank Farm. She was the Valley Advocate’s restaurant critic for almost two years and has written a farm journal for Edible Pioneer Valley. She is currently hard at work in the kitchen developing a line of prepared foods to sell at markets.
Tim Wilcox
Tim is originally from Oneonta, NY and came to the Pioneer Valley in 2001 to attend Hampshire College. He spent time working at the Hampshire Farm and went to Italy to do research with radicchio farmers in Treviso for his thesis project. Tim is passionate self-taught cook; much of the food writing and recipes on this site stem from his 24-7 food obsession. Tim can usually be found in the farm's washroom, directing the harvests and making sure that the vegetables leave the farm looking their best.
Jarrett Man
Jarrett started Stone Soup Farm at the New England Small Farm Institute in Belchertown in 2008. In 2011 he and his wife Katie bought their farm on Rocky Hill Rd in Hadley and merged Stone Soup with The Kitchen Garden in 2012.
The Farm
The Kitchen Garden is located on Silver Lane, a quiet side street about a mile from the center of Sunderland and five miles from UMASS Amherst. The farm consists of 7 prime tillable acres of Sunderland’s rich river bottom soil. The land is a long, narrow strip sliced out of a large open meadow, surrounded by pieces of land farmed by other growers. The land has been divided into small, half-acre sections to allow many different types of crops to be planted, in contrast to the vast fields of sweet corn, parsnips, and potatoes that surround. The field offers many shifting vantage points from which to enjoy the sweeping views of nearby mountains.
The Kitchen Garden's additional land is comprised of the adjacent Kulessa Farm at 132 Russell St. in Sunderland as well as Jarrett's farm at 81 Rocky Hill Rd. in Hadley, where the CSA pickup is.
Our Growing Practices
Are we organic? We only use products and techniques that have been approved for organic agriculture. But technically, we cannot call ourselves organic because we have chosen not to certify with the USDA. We think this is an unnecessary step because we have such a close relationship with our customers. They know us and what we care about, and our vegetables speak for themselves.
