🏫 Community

Running a small farm teaches you pretty quickly that nature gets the final say. You can make a production schedule, plan a farmers market, organize harvests, coordinate deliveries, and map out the entire weekend. Then, the forecast changes. This weekend was one of those reminders. With a nor'easter and significant weather in the forecast, farmers markets and outdoor events across the area began canceling. For small farms and other local vendors, a canceled market isn't simply

The Crop Stop Farm recently packed up a little piece of the farm and headed to Belleville High School for the Belleville Green Team's Green Fair. Along with some of our seasonal produce and freshly harvested microgreens, we brought something that sparked plenty of curiosity: one of the hydroponic growing systems we use at Crop Stop. Throughout the afternoon, community members stopped by to see the tower up close and ask questions about how hydroponic growing works. Could you

This week, Crop Stop went to the farmers market, but not as a vendor. We went as a customer. You can check out our video footage of this visit on our Instagram page. After spending part of the day preparing microgreens for our latest CSA deliveries, we headed over to the Parsippany Farmers Market to visit some of the fellow vendors we have gotten to know this season. This time, there was no tent to set up, no table to arrange, and no Crop Stop products to sell. We brought a s

What if strengthening our food system started in our own backyards? When you hear the words food security, you may think about national agriculture, supply chains, grocery stores, government programs, or large-scale food production. Those things matter. But at Crop Stop Farm, we believe food security can also start much closer to home. It can start with a backyard. A community garden. A small urban farm. A neighbor growing more tomatoes than they can eat. A local farmer selli

The journey of your food matters, too. When we think about fresh produce, we usually think about where it was grown. But there’s another question worth asking: What happened to your food after it was harvested? For much of the produce sold through conventional grocery supply chains, the harvest isn't the end of the journey. It may be only the beginning. Produce can move through packing facilities, distributors, warehouses, trucks, distribution centers and retail stores before

Not long ago, most people knew where their food came from. Maybe it was a family garden. Maybe it was a roadside stand. Maybe it was the farmer down the road whose name everyone knew. Today, that's rarely the case. Our produce often travels hundreds or even thousands of miles before reaching the closest grocery store. Along the way it may pass through multiple farms, processors, distributors, warehouses, and trucks before finally ending up in a shopping cart. Most of us have