We are young, second-generation farmers preserving family farmland in a part of Rockingham County that's under heavy development pressure, growing beyond-organic vegetables and highest-quality meat from animals born and raised on pasture and forest land.

Our Mission

Our mission is to grow healthy, delicious food with ecologically-centered practices.

Our goal is to make a living farming, while creating and sustaining a biologically diverse and resilient farm.

We see our soils as the heart of what we do, and all of our farming practices relate to conserving, growing, and enhancing our soils in order to grow better food.

our farm

The total acreage of the farm is 118 acres, with 28.5 in fenced pasture, 80 in woodland, and 5 acres maintained in early succession habitat for wildlife. There are spring-fed streams on both sides of the property that mark the boundary lines, with two ponds as well. The name of one of those streams was the inspiration for our farm name, Pine Trough Branch, a little tributary feeds that into the headwaters of the Haw River.

Pine Trough Branch, or PTB Farm is a multi-generational farm in southern Rockingham County, near Reidsville NC. Since 1953, when grandfather Owen Lindley bought the property, the family has enjoyed bountiful gardens, as well as delicious rewards from foraging, hunting, and fishing on the property. The farm passed to daughter Joan Lindley when her father Owen died in 1976.  Loving the land where she grew up, she chose to remain there, care for the farm, and raise her kids on the farm. In 2009, sister and brother Jenny and Worth Kimmel returned to the farm after college, to start farming professionally. In the following years, we have worked tirelessly to economically, environmentally, and efficiently turn the property into a food-producing resource for the community, emphasizing soil-building, permaculture design, and environmental stewardship. The farm has been passed through three generations, from loving hands, to loving hands, to loving hands.

Here are some of the highlights from the early years:

Worth fenced in the 30+ acres of pasture with a design for management intensive grazing  and started a flock of Katahdin sheep with 4 ewes and a ram;

Jenny built a permaculture garden incorporating annuals and perennials into biointensive beds designed to maximize soil health and wealth;

Worth designed and built a  solar-powered and gravity-fed frost-free water system for potable livestock water throughout the farm and was awarded a grant through the RAFI innovations grants to implement it;

Jenny began working with the Greensboro Montessori School and has become a full-time teacher of middle school edible education;

Worth and Jenny collaborated on growing and marketing heritage breed, pasture-raised pork through annual on-farm meat sales.

now

But that's not all we've been up to! Worth, through mutual friends, met a fellow farmer and alumnus of Warren Wilson College, Hillary Wilson. Hillary and Worth quickly fell in love and began dreaming about how to farm together. In January of 2014, the two moved to PTB to grow delicious and happy pork, lamb, vegetables, cut flowers, and mushrooms. Hillary and Worth are learning from and adding to the many years of soil-building and permaculture work that Jenny put into the vegetable and flower gardens around the farm. Jenny teaches edible education at the Greensboro Montessori School and she also teaches the Permaculture Design Course annually.

Where you can find us:

Every Saturday from 7am to noon at the Greensboro Curb Farmers Market you can find us on aisle C, inside the curb market at 501 Yancyville Street, Greensboro.

Every Saturday 9am to noon at the Old Salem Cobblestone Farmers Market in Winston-Salem (April- November).

Or consider joining our COOP!