Sage Hen Farm in Lodi, NY, is in heart
of the Finger Lakes, between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. We moved to Lodi in 2001, but the land has been farmed since
the early 19th century. We
raise chickens for eggs, tend an orchard, grow garlic, and maintain a diverse market garden. Our focus is on heirloom and uncommon varieties. That applies to chickens,
garlic, fruits and berries, herbs, greens, potatoes and
other vegetables. It is our goal to practice sustainable growing
methods and offer cultivars and crop varieties that you won't find in the grocery store.
We raise free-ranging chickens for eggs in a rainbow
assortment of colors and sizes. Each dozen we sell will include a mix
of green/blue, white or cream, and light to dark brown eggs. The size
and diversity of the flock varies, but it has ranged from 60 to more than
100 birds. We've had as many as twenty different breeds and
varieties at the same time. They also have a much smaller flock of ducks and a few turkeys.
In our orchard and elsewhere on our property
there are more than 100 trees, but many few varieties. They include 60 apple varieties, but also 10 peaches, 10
pear varieties, 5 tart cherry varieties, and 3 plums. We have concentrated on varieties that are cold hardy, have been venerated in past generations, and have regional significance.
We host a cider pressing party every October, so for our
apples, we have looked for varieties that blend well into a sweet, but
complex, fresh cider. We live in an area that has had a recent boom in hard cider Rather than sell cider, which in New York State has to be pasteurized before it can be sold, we sell a non-pasteurized, non-alcoholic orchard
elixir that is predominantly apple cider with some pear or other fruit
juices mixed in.
Margaret's
specialty is garlic. We offer more than 70 varieties of garlic. The most frequent comment we here at farmers market is "I didn't know there so many kinds of garlic. There are:
softnecks
including many varieties each of silverskin and artichoke garlics;
hardnecks including many varieties each of rocambole, porcelain and
purple stripe.
Some garlics have only a few large cloves; others have many layers of smaller cloves. Whether you are looking for a mild long-keeping garlic
or a full bodied (either hot or just strong), white or brown or purply,
we have a garlic for you.
We also keep honeybees. We do it mostly so that our fruit trees and other crops will have plenty of pollenizers, but having our own honey is a treat. What is fascinating about honey, when you extract it from your own hives, is the different tastes, shades, and colors it has depending what flowering plants were in bloom when the bees collected nectar and pollen.
We mostly sell our farm's produce to friends, colleagues, and neighbors, but nothing long distance. From third week
of May to the end of October, you can find us Wednesday
afternoons at the Trumansburg
Farmers Market. We've now been doing this for a decade.
Members of NOFA-NY
(Northeast Organic Farmers Association -- New York), we grow certified
organic seeds, sets, and tubers using ecologically sound methods: no
chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or GMOs (genetically
modified organisms). To us, it seems the right thing to do. Sage Hen
Farm has taken NOFA-NY's Farmers
Pledge each year since 2007. For
seeds, bulbs, and tubers to supplement what we save ourselves, we use sources that
specialize in cold-hardy varieties, practice sustainable growing
methods, and offer certified organic cultivars and regional heirloom
varieties. In addition, when we rented out 30 acres of
our land for haying to a local farmer in 2012, he had our fields
certified organic.
We are Margaret Shepard and John Henderson. Our address in
Lodi is 2343 Parmenter Road. It is about three miles south of the
village of Lodi and about nine miles northwest of Trumansburg, NY. You
can contact Margaret at [margaretbshepard @ gmail.com] John can be
reached at [jrhenderson9@ gmail.com].
You can find pictures, news, and other information about the farm on Facebook. 
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