SUSTAINABLE HARVEST FARM
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    • Meet Your Farmer & His Family
    • About Our Farm
    • Our Promise
    • Our History
    • Our Inspiration/Philosophy
    • Giving Back
  • Our Farm Share (CSA)
    • What is a Farm Share
    • Benefits of a Farm Share
    • Program Overview
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    • Seasonal Offering
    • Food Safety
    • USDA Organic Certified
    • Kentucky Proud
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    • Eggs
    • Cheese
    • Jarred Goods
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    • Program Support
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    • Lexington
    • Knoxville
    • Louisville
    • Richmond
    • Berea
    • London
    • Somerset
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About Us

 

We're the Waterstrats

 We invite you to get to know us as you enjoy our seasonal harvests — certified organic, from our family to yours.
​Sustainable Harvest Farm is the culmination of years of dreaming, planning and praying by Ford and Amanda.
This is our story of how it all began.
What is a Farm Share?

 

Our Farm

Since we started Sustainable Harvest Farm in 2009, we have continued to look for ways to innovate and expand our farm to provide high-quality, sustainable food to our Farm Share members, customers and friends. We currently grow produce on more than 75 acres, using environmentally sound production practices. Here are some of the notable events in our farm's history.
​

2023 - We are embarking upon a number of major capital expansion projects to position Sustainable Harvest Farm for future growth. These include a new greenhouse heated by a sustainable wood boiler, a new barn for produce washing and preparation as well as a maintenance shop, expansion to an existing barn with an addition of a new walk-in cooler, and a new on-property loading dock.

2022
- We began renovations of an on-property house for our team members to provide upscale lodging accommodations for them during the growing and harvesting season.
2021
- We installed a 13Kwh solar system to help offset our electrical use. The solar panel system should provide the majority of our farm's electrical needs.
2020 - In addition to providing our farm share customers with top quality produce, we began selling directly to Whole Foods Market. We also started powering our delivery vehicles with natural gas in 2020 as part of our ongoing efforts to be more sustainable.

2018 - We introduced the region's first customizable
 Farm Share (CSA) program. allowing customers to select what goes into their weekly produce shares, minimizing food waste.
2013 - We expanded our operation to include grass-fed beef and pastured pork.

2011 - We offered Sustainable Harvest Farm’s first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and became the first USDA-certified organic farm in the region.
December 2009 - We moved to our current home in London, Kentucky and began selling produce at the local Farmers’ Market the following summer. 
SHF team
SHF team
white barn

 

Our Promise

Sustainable Harvest Farm promises to produce a wide variety of certified organic, high-quality produce grown in an environmentally sensitive manner that ensures product safety through use of agricultural best practices that are annually certified by a 3rd party. We support and give back to our local communities and respect and value our employees.

Our offering supports individuals, families and businesses who desire to reduce food waste, eat healthier and improve their overall health and well-being. We strive to provide our customers with peace of mind knowing their food is grown locally in a manner that enhances our ecosystem yet ensures food safety.
Ford checking tomatoes

 

Our History

Early Influences
Ford was born in Seattle, Washington, and his family lived in more than 15 homes during his childhood, with locations ranging from Lasqueti Island, British Columbia, to Maine and Mississippi. Although his parents were not farmers, they have always been champions of the environment. Ford credits his fascination with farming to his parents’ passion for protecting the environment and his mom’s ability to create beautiful outdoor spaces as a talented landscape architect.

The Journey
Ford’s journey to Kentucky began in 1999. While competing as a professional cyclist in New England, Ford was recruited to the cycling program at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia, Kentucky. There he earned a bachelor's degree in education and met the love of his life — Amanda.

Amanda is a Kentucky native who was studying biology with plans to pursue a career in science. But the two would soon set out on an entirely new journey together as they began to dream of a life in rural Kentucky, farming and growing their own food. Sustainable Harvest Farm grew out of this dream and their mutual love of the outdoors, wholesome food, environmental stewardship, and rural community life.

Love of Family and Farming
In 2005, Ford and Amanda married and settled into their first home in Georgetown, Kentucky. Ford spent his days teaching and Amanda pursued a Ph.D. in Physiology at the University of Kentucky. On his break from teaching, Ford picked up a summer job, and Amanda says he fell in love for the second time — this time with farming.

The Waterstrats lived across the street from one of Kentucky’s premier organic farms — Elmwood Stock Farm, and Ford became a farm hand there in 2006. Ford continued to work for and learn from the Bell family until the dream of establishing his own farm materialized in London, Kentucky.
boys on planter
Amanda in truck
farm gate

 

Our Inspiration and Philosophy

Blessings, Family and Community
As the farm has expanded, so too has our family. We welcomed the arrival of our oldest son, Finley, in 2010, and were blessed again in 2013 with his twin brothers, Silas and Josiah. We enjoy teaching our children the joys of farming and rural living.
​
We are sustained by the loving support of our family and local church community. We credit God's abundant love,expressed through the support of family and His extraordinary creation for allowing us to survive the business of farm life, Amanda’s full-time educational career off the farm, and parenting three amazing boys.

 

Giving Back

We feel so fortunate and are extremely blessed with a wonderful family, a community of friends, loyal customers and rich, fertile soil for our family farm to grow farm-fresh produce. With these incredible gifts, our family always looks for ways to give back to the communities we serve and opportunities to help others learn more about and experience organic farming.

Helping Those Less Fortunate

  • Sustainable Harvest Farm donates excess produce from the farm to God’s Food Pantry. In 2022, we donated 63,705 pounds of fresh produce. This food is distributed throughout the state of Kentucky. Learn more about the Farms to Food Banks program.

  • The London, Kentucky Farm Shares that are not picked up are donated to local church members. ​

  • FoodChain purchases produce at a reduced price and turns it into meals for people through their Nourish Lexington initiative.

    Nourish Lexington, a call-to-action collaboration between FoodChain, VisitLex, Keeneland and the Murry Family Foundation, was formed to prepare and distribute fresh, nutritious meals to anyone in need. Since 2020, FoodChain has been providing hundreds of thousands of meals to families facing food insecurity each year.

    This incredible team has worked together in the FoodChain Kitchen and beyond to alleviate hardship by providing meals for food insecure children and families that need access to meals, including hospitality industry families and vulnerable seniors in affordable housing complexes. As a community of restaurants, caterers, farmers, nonprofit leaders, and invested neighbors we are working together to meet the immediate need for healthy food while investing in the dignity of our meal recipients and in our local food system, which has been in crisis since the pandemic.

    ​​Learn more about Food Chain at foodchainlex.org.
Picture

Offering Employment Opportunities

Sustainable Harvest Farm takes pride and in offering good, seasonal employment for 18 hardworking, young men, both local and from Mexico here legally in the United States.
SHF team

Educating Others on Organic Farming and Healthy Eating

Sustainable Harvest Farm periodically over the season, will offer farm tours and cooking demos for folks in the area to learn more about healthy cooking, eating and organic farming.
And, in support of organic farming and other farmers, Ford Waterstrat and Sustainable Harvest Farm have presented at conferences or served with these organizations:
  • Presenter at 2022 Organic Association of Kentucky Virtual Meeting - Ford presented a harvest tool he developed to help the Sustainable Harvest Farm team harvest several crops more efficiently.
  • Kentucky Farm Share Coalition - Advisory Member from 2018 to current
  • 2018 Organic High Tunnel Production in Kentucky
  • ​Organic Association of Kentucky - Board Member from 2016-2019
family cooking
Want to learn more? Join the Kentucky Horticulture Council on their virtual field trip to our farm, and read along with Finley, Josiah and Silas as they share the story Tops & Bottoms.
SHF logo
​Sustainable Harvest Farm
108 Pistol Creek Rd.
London, KY 40741
859-227-5101
ford.waterstrat@gmail.com
family picture
USDA organic logo
Kentucky Proud logo
Marketing consultation services by Tundra Fox Marketing, website design by Julie Fritsch Creative.
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Meet Your Farmer & His Family
    • About Our Farm
    • Our Promise
    • Our History
    • Our Inspiration/Philosophy
    • Giving Back
  • Our Farm Share (CSA)
    • What is a Farm Share
    • Benefits of a Farm Share
    • Program Overview
    • Pricing
    • Seasonal Offering
    • Food Safety
    • USDA Organic Certified
    • Kentucky Proud
    • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Products
    • Vegetables
    • Eggs
    • Cheese
    • Jarred Goods
    • 100% Satisfaction Guarantee
  • Corporate Well-Being
    • Rationale/Benefits
    • Program Support
    • Current Clients
  • Homeowners Associations
  • Our Pickup Locations
    • Lexington
    • Knoxville
    • Louisville
    • Richmond
    • Berea
    • London
    • Somerset
  • Resources
    • Links and Studies
    • Video and Photo Gallery
    • Past PR Releases
    • Standard Operating Procedures & COVID-19 Protocol
  • Contact Us