Our Farm
Hundred Fruit Farm is located in Buckingham in Bucks County, PA. The farm is about 15 minutes from New Hope, Doylestown, and Newtown, one hour from Philadelphia, and two hours from New York City.
Buckingham has traditionally been a very picturesque agricultural area but in recent years has become increasingly suburban, with new housing developments being built all the time. This is true of much of Bucks County, which has some of the best farmland in the country but has also seen some of the worst sprawl. Thankfully there is also an effort to preserve many of the farms in the area, which has helped the area retain some of its agricultural character.
We hope that Hundred Fruit Farm can help keep the agricultural traditions and character of this area alive by embracing small-scale agriculture and the local food movement. Our small farm also serves as an ecological refuge for pollinators, birds, amphibians, and other flora and fauna — in an area that is increasingly being degraded by lawn chemicals, insecticides, herbicides, and ornamental landscaping. Over time, we are finding that the farm is also serving a very important role in acting as a permaculture hub for our local community; a place for permaculture education and social gatherings that help us build and expand our local permaculture community.
The farm itself is about ten acres, situated at the foot of Buckingham Mountain (which in truth is more like a hill). The land is gently sloping with a mesic habitat, silt loam soil with mostly good drainage, and a spring-fed pond towards the bottom of the property. Before we got the farm, it had previously been a horse pasture and hay field, and decades before that it use to be part of a large diversified family farm and dairy in the area that produced a large amount of eggs and milk for the local area. There is a large deer and turkey population here, which come down from the mountain to feed in the nearby fields and homes. Wild blackberries, autumnberries, elderberries, mulberries, and wineberries are abundant in the area.
We started the farm in May 2015. Before planting anything we put up a deer fence around the entire perimeter of the property to protect the fruit trees, berries, and other crops from the deer. Every year since then we have planted more fruit and nut trees, created more gardens, and continue to develop and diversify the farm in a multitude of different ways.
Our farm is in the Triassic Lowlands ecoregion, part of the Northern Piedmont. The Triassic Lowlands ecoregion stretches through much of central Bucks and Montgomery County in PA into much of Central NJ.
The region is unglaciated and consists of broad ridges and wide, relatively flat valleys. Soils here are quite fertile and underlain by sedimentary rock. Originally this area was mostly covered with Appalachian oak forests, with hickory being more abundant here than other bordering regions. Numerous streams and wetlands are found in the area.
In modern times, there is significant suburban development (sprawl) through much of this region. Agricultural fields that were common in this area have been increasingly replaced with housing developments and shopping centers.
The land on which Hundred Fruit Farm exists is part of the historic homelands of the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) people. This includes all of the Triassic Lowlands and Bucks County, and also all of New Jersey, the eastern half of Delaware, the eastern quarter of Pennsylvania, and the southern portion of New York State (as well as a tiny sliver of southeast CT).
The Lenape people and their ancestors have been the stewards of the ecosystems in this region for at least the past 10,000 years, if not longer. When European colonists arrived, this area was not “untouched nature”, but rather complex ecosystems managed by the Lenape for food, wild game, shelter, fiber, etc.
Many of the descendants of the Lenape were driven out of the region by a combination of disease, genocide, and the constant expansion of European (and later American) colonial settlements. Some of these descendants now live in Western Ontario, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. Some Lenape also remained in the area, intermarried with European settlers, and quietly passed down their stories and traditions through the generations. One of these groups of Lenape, The Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania, continues to fight for state and federal recognition. They continue to work to keep their culture alive by hosting and teaching free online classes in the Lenape language.
Every four years, they also organize the Rising Nation River Journey, in which they paddle their way from the headwaters of the Delaware River in Hancock, NY to the end of the Delaware Bay in Cape May, NJ. Along the way, they welcome anyone to join them in paddling for any or all parts of the journey. The also hold “treaty signing” ceremonies in communities along the Delaware River in which committed individuals can pledge to support Lenape culture and act as good stewards of their sacred River and homelands.
We joined the Rising Nation River Journey in 2022, and plan on joining in again for the next journey in summer 2026, and hopefully every four years after that. We support their mission to raise awareness of their tribe and fight for state recognition.
We also take the idea of stewardship very seriously here at Hundred Fruit Farm. Permaculture ethics, principles, and design philosophy is central to everything we do on our farm. An important aspect of permaculture that is often overlooked is the degree to which it draws inspiration and knowledge from indigenous peoples and the way in which they interact with and manage the ecosystems they live in. These practices serve as a primary foundation for many permaculture design principles. We hope that, by treating our farm as an agroecosystem and using only regenerative methods, we can provide the best stewardship for the land that we farm on the historic homelands of the Lenape people.
We first got the farm in May of 2015. At that time, the farm wasn’t really a farm at all. It was a ten acre parcel of land with a log house on it. The main agricultural field on the farm had been used for making hay some years back, but when we moved there, it hadn’t been used for hay for probably a decade and had become quite overgrown with many cedar trees popping up throughout the field.
We spent a lot of time that first year on the farm exploring every inch of the site’s ten acres and observing and interacting with the land – the first principle of permaculture design. These observations helped us better understand the unique characteristics and challenges of our land, and our assessment of the site began to take shape. We learned where the wet and dry spots were; which areas were open and sunny and which were deeply shaded; where skunk cabbage, sensitive ferns, and horsetails were growing, indicating the wetland areas of the site; where broomsedge had spread, and how that indicated the soil acidity was quite low. Slowly a narrative of the land began to take shape.
Our goals for the design of the farm were quite ambitious. We wanted to:
- be completely organic and regenerative
- grow as much of our own food as we could
- have a focus of the farm be a diversity of fruits and berries, but to grow a wide range of different (mostly perennial) crops including nuts, veggies, herbs, mushrooms, and more
- have the farm be a showcase of good permaculture design that we would feel proud of and be able to inspire others with its example
- serve as the main source of income for at least one of us
- integrate animals and livestock with perennial crop systems so that both would benefit
- be ecological in everything that we do, so that the farm would support and enhance local biodiversity and provide food and habitat to wildlife in the form of mammals, birds, insects, amphibians, and animals of all kinds
The design we came up with back looks quite different from what the farm looks like now. But even with all those differences, there were many elements in that early design that we still have on the farm to this day: a diversified orchard planted on contour; many berry rows; perennial edible landscape beds around the house; a large vegetable garden to the west of the house; our composting area; etc.
With a design in our hands, we began to slowly but methodically establish the systems throughout the farm. We took a slow and steady approach – using the Use Slow and Small Solutions permaculture principle, and we’re glad we did. This slower approach to installing everything allowed us to catch some of the mistakes in our design before we had finished implementing everything. It also allowed us to do everything on a shoestring budget without taking on any debt. We both worked outside jobs during our first full year on the farm to help bring in some money to fund our projects.
We spent a lot of time that first year on the farm exploring every inch of the site’s ten acres and observing and interacting with the land – the first principle of permaculture design. These observations helped us better understand the unique characteristics and challenges of our land, and our assessment of the site began to take shape. We learned where the wet and dry spots were; which areas were open and sunny and which were deeply shaded; where skunk cabbage, sensitive ferns, and horsetails were growing, indicating the wetland areas of the site; where broomsedge had spread, and how that indicated the soil acidity was quite low. Slowly a narrative of the land began to take shape.
Our goals for the design of the farm were quite ambitious. We wanted to:
- be completely organic and regenerative
- grow as much of our own food as we could
- have a focus of the farm be a diversity of fruits and berries, but to grow a wide range of different (mostly perennial) crops including nuts, veggies, herbs, mushrooms, and more
- have the farm be a showcase of good permaculture design that we would feel proud of and be able to inspire others with its example
- serve as the main source of income for at least one of us
- integrate animals and livestock with perennial crop systems so that both would benefit
- be ecological in everything that we do, so that the farm would support and enhance local biodiversity and provide food and habitat to wildlife in the form of mammals, birds, insects, amphibians, and animals of all kinds
Wood chips were hard to come by in those early years, and each load that was delivered was so exciting to receive! 
Wild blackberries growing in the woods were a welcome discovery. 
We found plenty of wild wineberries growing in the margins of the property. 
We soon discovered there was a healthy population of bass and sunfish in the pond. 
Our first chicken tractor, which we now use as a brooding pen. 
A walk-behind tractor was one of the first pieces of equipment that we bought. We still use it to this day, even though we now have a Kubota. 
Our first flock of chickens. 
We built our first eggmobile from scratch from a little utility trailer we got off craigslist. 
The eggmobile shortly after we built it. 
The farm before we planted anything on it. 
A misty morning looking across the main field of the farm. 
We realized there were plenty of wild mulberries growing on the farm already that we could forage. 
We took down a lot trees in those first few years. This white pine was growing far too close to the main house and shading key garden areas. 
We figured out quickly that while our small farm truck was an excellent purchase, it’s rear-wheel drive and light weight meant it was virtually useless in the snow if it had no load in the back. 
The first major snowstorm on the farm in Jan 2016 dropped 18″ across the farm. 
The first iteration of our website! 
Our first guinea hogs. The one on the left, Barry the Boar, still lives to this day at Tuckamony Christmas Tree Farm in Solebury. 
Pawpaw pulp from our first pawpaw foraging expedition. 
Tomatoes from our first gardening season 
We got free pumpkins from a garden center one year and were able to feed our pigs lots of pumpkins – a great natural dewormer. 
We expanded our chicken flock after building our eggmobile and started selling eggs. 
We grew so many habaneros and hot peppers in 2016 that we literally made gallons of hot sauce that took us many years to go through. We never did manage to go through. 
Radishes from the garden 
In our first full growing season, we grew a lot of veggies in our gardens and sold veggies and eggs at the Plumstead Farmers’ Market. 
We built an herb spiral outside the front door to the main house with rocks we found on the site. 
We got our first batch of geese, American Buffs. They were fun, but definitely troublemakers. 
Some of the very first fruit trees planted in the orchard
Today, the infrastructure at Hundred Fruit Farm is very well-developed. Our deer fence protects the entire farm from hungry four-legged intruders. The structures we’ve added include a shed, garage/shop, barn, and high tunnel. We installed a large ground mount solar system that produces 100% of the farm’s energy needs. We dug water lines and put in frost-free hydrants throughout the farm. We’ve dug a series of small ponds around the farm to help deal with excess runoff. We recently installed a native plant rain garden to collect excess runoff from the driveway. We terraced our vegetable garden and used rocks from our site to build the retaining walls. We built a shade structure over our nursery sale area.
Most of the systems on the farm are also quite established at this point. Our berry grove is pumping out berries of all kinds like crazy; more and more customers are coming for our U-pick blueberries, red currants, black currants, gooseberries, and other berry crops. Our nursery is well stocked with berries, fruit trees, and native plants and now has a nice sale area with proper tables and a shade structure overhead. Many of the fruit trees in our orchard are now fully established with many others producing fruits but not yet full crops. The black locust trees in our orchard have now gotten large enough for their first round of coppicing, which has already started for most of them. Our annual garden beds allow us to grow all the veggies we need with plenty to sell as surplus in our market.
Other systems on the farm have been installed but are still establishing and not yet mature. Within our mixed nut orchard, only the chestnuts are producing enough nuts to sell and many other nut trees are still waiting to produce their first crops. Some are still waiting to be field grafted. Our hazelnut orchard has just started producing a smattering of nuts, and is probably 1-2 years away from producing enough hazelnuts to start selling to customers. Our pawpaw alleycrop area would have produced its first sizeable crop this year, were it not for a late freeze that killed off most of the blossoms. Our new chestnut orchard by the high tunnel is only a year or two away from producing its first nuts. This spring we planted several new rows of berries, including more red/white currants, gooseberries, goumis, blueberries, honeyberries, and black currants, which should start producing berries as soon as next year.
Other systems on the farm are still waiting to be established, but should be coming soon. These are either new additions to our design, or long-awaited elements of the design which we have not yet had the time or money to install. We started tarping an area below our farm pond that we plan on seeding this fall (2026) with a native meadow mix. We will soon be expanding our pawpaw alleycrop to include the other half of our nut orchard. We have a new propagation area planned next to the berry grove that will allow us to better protect our young trees from squirrel damage. We have a kiwi trellis planned for the last empty berry row on the farm; we plan on making this trellis with our coppiced black locust posts harvested from our orchard.
The largest and most important addition to our farm which we are very excited to get started is our strawbale house, which will serve as the permanent home for us (Adam and Sunghee). We have been designing this strawbale house with architect Sigi Koko for the past 18 months or so; it has been designed with passive cooling and heating properties like roof overhangs that keep our the summer sun, extra insulation, and lots of south-facing windows to maximize solar gain in the winter.
As of Spring 2026, we are awaiting the final approval of the plans from our engineer, and hope to begin construction on it either in late 2026 or, more likely, in Spring 2027. Our strawbale house will be built with mostly natural materials including strawbale walls, wood framing, clay and lime plasters, and adobe floors. There will also be a living roof over part of the roof and the breezeway that connects our house to the main house.
