“It’s a hard life, but it’s a good life,” says Stephanie Castle of Tenderfoot Farm. She and her husband, Jeff, bought a neglected house, barn, and seven-acre property in Churchville in 2017. They’ve transformed it into a beautiful sanctuary where they can live out their dreams with their two young sons, using a unique combination of knowledge, creativity, and environmental awareness.
Farming is now a treasured way of life for the family, but it wasn’t necessarily always a long-term ambition for the Castles. Stephanie grew up on a beef farm in the Happy Valley region of Pennsylvania, and, as a young adult, she never intended to go into farming because she felt it was too much work. But “farming is in your blood,” she says, and she eventually gravitated back to it. Jeff grew up in Brighton and explains that having a small farm “became a dream when we had kids.” He loves having “a daily and seasonal routine” and a connection to the land. Stephanie agrees—she loves being “tied to the cycles of death and life and rebirth.” They value having their kids involved with the farm chores. “They learn harder lessons,” Stephanie notes; the family raises their own poultry for meat, and they’ve occasionally lost chickens to predators. The couple also feels that the boys are learning valuable lessons about the business end of farming: When you put the work in, you can have products to sell.
The couple met in graduate school at Boston College; both were earning master’s degrees in geology. Jeff now works as an environmental scientist at LaBella Associates architecture firm in Rochester, and Stephanie works for the American Farmland Trust as the Women for the Land New York program manager, where she focuses on women and gender equity. (The American Farmland Trust’s popular bumper sticker reads “No Farms, No Food.”) Farm work takes up a lot of the rest of the family’s time, and they find that winter comes quickly every year, so time is of the essence when finishing the season’s tasks. Life is very busy, Stephanie admits, but she loves it: “I don’t know what else I’d be doing.” The couple enjoys the Rochester area, finding it a good place to raise children.
The property needed a good deal of repair and updates when the Castles bought it. The land hadn’t been farmed in a long time, so it was overgrown and there were piles of junk. The house needed work too. It had been on the market for years and was like a 1970s time capsule. But the couple enjoys a challenge and saw the fixer-upper as a blank slate. With their advanced knowledge of geology, they both know how to read a landscape, and they enjoyed working with the soil. One soil enhancement happened organically, through the sheep that came to live at the farm.
The Dorset Horn sheep that now call the farm home came about as a happy accident. Some friends had sheep to sell, and the Castles had an overgrown field and a barn. It has worked out very well. The couple enjoys the sheep, saying that they are more content and calmer than goats, and the sheep manure has enriched the soil naturally. “And we survived a lambing season,” Stephanie says, “in the middle of winter.” The wool the sheep produce has led to a whole other avenue for the farm’s products. Stephanie makes natural dyes out of flowers, and she has decided to use only the flowers she can grow on the farm or forage in the nearby woods. She has experimented with using indigo, buckthorn, blackthorn scabiosa, black walnut, and coreopsis, noting that the indigo dye is tough to perfect. When using fresh flowers to make dye, she notes, “if you mess up, you have to wait another year” for another chance to use that crop, and to follow through with a project like this, “you have to enjoy and be invested in the process.” The dyed yarn is sold to a very specific market. Stephanie has discovered a whole world of fiber enthusiasts after offering it for sale. The yarn has been purchased by carpet makers and sock makers. The farm also sells flower-dyed linens.
In 2020, the Castles opened a short term rental unit at the farm. Called the Carriage House, the unit stays open most of the year, and guests appreciate the animals and the peaceful farm environment. The pair notes that they’ve had visitors from all over the world and that the location—almost equidistant between Letchworth Park and Niagara Falls—is convenient for tourists.
The couple has a strong commitment to environmental stewardship. The chickens and sheep enjoy fresh grass and plenty of room to move around, and the chickens are fed locally produced non-GMO feed. All the plants the farm sells are started from seed, and the Castles are selective about where the seeds come from, wary of sellers that might use unnecessary chemical treatments or low-quality seeds.
Every May, Tenderfoot Farm sells vegetable seedlings to a loyal following of customers. Some they see only during this time of year, but they’ve come to know them and enjoy the sense of community among local vegetable growers. The couple sells only varieties they have grown themselves and found to perform well. “We stand behind the varieties,” says Jeff, and the plants are grown without herbicides or pesticides. They take pride in offering more interesting selections than garden stores typically carry, and they enjoy a special connection with their customers. One year, after a very late frost, the couple replaced customers’ plants for free. That small gesture earned a lot of gratitude and customer loyalty. This year, they plan to start selling seedlings on May 9 and will continue until they are sold out.
Growing their own vegetables benefits their children too. Stephanie and Jeff strongly believe that planting vegetables kids love to eat—and involving them in the growing process—helps gets them excited about healthy eating.
This year, Tenderfoot Farm plans to offer U-pick flowers from July to September, “if the weather gods allow,” says Stephanie. They are breaking ground on a new location for the flowerbeds, a move they hope will contribute to natural pest control. “The flower field is pretty magical in the summer,” she says, partly because they don’t use pesticides. “It’s alive with bugs and butterflies.” They plan to offer sunflowers, dahlias, snapdragons, cosmos, zinnias, and pos- sibly other U-pick varieties in 2026.
Stephanie’s other venture in recent years has been dried flower artistry. The other demands of the farm and life are currently more pressing, so she is taking a break from hand drying flowers and using them to create décor and wedding arrangements. However, she may revisit this enterprise in the future. She has no formal artistic training but found that she has a knack for making innovative creations without dye or preservatives, often gathering flowers in the woods and fields. She prefers a “wild” look in her creations, she says. “It became like a game: What can I dry?”
Tenderfoot Farms welcomes garden tours, especially from garden clubs and school groups. They ask visitors to schedule in advance.
To find out more, visit the website.
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2026 issue of (585).
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