Loving Farms
About us
Debbie and Craig Branker-Livermore are owners of Loving Farms LLC. We specialize in growing chemical-free greens providing protein, fiber, nitrogen, and many other nutrients necessary for optimal health. We grow various varieties of kale, lettuce, chard, callaloo, cabbage, and spinach, as well as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. We are located on a pristine (as in no electricity, no well, no dwellings) 118-acre Agro-Forest of fields, wetland, and woodland, in Candor, New York, and we sell to Upstate NY, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York City. We have a weekly subscription greens box (www.lovingfarms.org) available for home delivery or pick up at our farm or the Ithaca East Hill Farmers Market (lower price for pick up than home delivery).
What we believe
We believe in growing healthy food in a way that restores and respects the land and the environment. We believe in making this healthy food available at costs that all people can afford, and in providing this food for free to those that cannot afford to pay. We are called Loving Farms for two reasons. First, we strive to show love and kindness to land, nature, and animals, and to all people, regardless of their race, religion, identity, or political beliefs. Second, as an interracial farm, we give homage to Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial married couple that successfully challenged laws making it illegal for those of different races to marry. We love that the Lovings were not only an interracial family, but that they also were a simple, country family connected to the earth that they worked with their hands.
How we began
We began Loving Farms in 2022, and we are in our second year of operation, although we had been homestead farming for several years before that. We began farming out of a sense of need for greater self-reliance, a love of the land, and feeling a need to more deeply connect with our ancestral roots. Debbie is the descendent of sharecroppers and sustenance farmers, and she has studied greatly the growing and eating practices of her Southern, Caribbean, and African ancestors. She is a whole-foods plant-based cooking enthusiast and is convinced that a return to her ancestor's mostly plant-based eating practices will produce better health outcomes than our modern diet affords. Craig grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and his family has been farming for hundreds of years (his grandfather was born on a farm in Cortland, NY). Craig's father was an avid conservationist and thus, for Craig, farming is as much an act of conservation as it is a source of food supply.
In addition to growing at Loving Farms, we are fortunate to be part of the incubator farm program at the Tioga County Cornell Cooperative Extension, and thus we also grow at their Hilltop Farm in Candor. We have greatly benefited from the support and advice of Tioga CCE.
In addition
In addition to our weekly greens boxes, we sell on Wednesday evenings at the Ithaca East Hill Plaza farmers market and, in some weeks, at the Candor farmers market late Thursday afternoons
Our goal for the next several years is to slowly grow our farm business (we are much more into the tortoise than the hare), and expand our growing season with the help of heated hoop houses. It is also a multi-decade goal to develop a forest conservation management plan and allow Loving Farms' forest to heal from the irresponsible logging practices of the past. We think a lot about how to minimally interfere with the land, in order to let its natural resiliency issue forth.