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History
Harvest
Valley Farms (HVF) is a fourth generation family farm. Great Grandpa
and Grandpa sold eggs, pork, and vegetables door to door to customers
in the Pittsburgh area, mostly Aspinwall. Grandma and Grandpa King raised
eight children solely off of the farm's profits. The farm was then slowly
turned entirely to vegetable production in 1982 by the youngest son Larry
King. When Grandpa King passed away in 1992 Larry's brother, Art King,
decided to join him in partnership on the farm. Since then, the
farm has developed into a direct marketing network of farmer to consumer,
farmer to chef, and farmer to community. Building relationships
by going to the extreme to meet its customer's needs has been HVF's greatest
asset to its community! In May 2005, Art's son, David King, graduated
from College and joined the two in partnership. The farm is now operated
by Larry King, Arthur King, and David King.
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Philosophy
Harvest
Valley Farms believes in growing the highest quality product using the
least amount of chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers necessary. These
applications are greatly reduced by the long-term process of building
the soil structure. Art,
Larry, and David have found that building the soil structure by the use
of green manure, organic material amendments, wet lime, crop rotation,
heavy mulching, and less tillage, can reduce pesticide and fertilizer
use by about 60 percent. In addition to proper soil maintenance,
HVF believes that overall diversity and local sales are extremely important
in order to sustain a good community economy.
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organization about our operation?
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