Farms Do No Harm: Volume VII – Misty Knoll Farm

In June of 2010, long-laboring efforts to bring healthily raised meats to dinner tables in and around Royersford began at the hands of Sue Pengelly when she and her husband Keith relocated from Boyertown to one of the few stretches of farmland along Benner Road.

Pengelly, a trained nurse, decided to dive into raising livestock, knowing that with limited agricultural plots left in the town, local residents deserved to be able to buy meat from a farm where they could rest assured that the animals it all came from led good, respected lives first.

“Philosophically, I’ve always been an environmentalist,” Pengelly said.

She has geothermal heating and cooling hooked up to the farmhouse, which was recently renovated on her husband’s mother’s land. That land has been preserved since around 1999.

The farm’s name stems from what Pengelly wakes up to many mornings: a mist rises from the knoll behind her house, off in the distance.

“We’ll be having solar hot water, eventually,” Pengelly said. “And then we’ll do solar paneling for the rest of the farm.”

In her eyes, using the land well and resourcefully with eco-friendly approaches is an important part of tying together a place to raise meats for neighboring families.

But the diversified livestock efforts Pengelly is pushing are still very new, so she won’t have any meats to sell or send to the butcher till next spring, aside from eggs, which should be ready any day now. Some pork could possibly be for sale by this winter.

“Over the past year, we've gotten a small number of sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, guinea hens and pigs so that we can learn how to care for each kind of animal without getting overwhelmed with large numbers of them,” Pengelly explained.

And when Pengelly speaks in plurals, she means herself and not only Keith, who still works full-time for Met-Ed aside from his regular farming contribution, but also their children and her sisters.

“All of our animals are on pasture; none live in crowded, confined conditions,” Pengelly said. “We strive for transparency so that our customers know their meat and eggs come from animals who lived happy, low-stress lives.”

The variety of animals making their homes at 103 Benner Rd. are from farms throughout the region, largely from Berks County.

“I imagine our customers will buy our products because they, too, value humane treatment of the animals who feed them,” Pengelly said.

Her goats and sheep are grass-fed, rotating into different pastures, and she is considering raising grass-fed beef in the future.

Most of her 70 acres are in hay production, with some of that staying in reserves for winter feed for the animals. Pengelly is also brainstorming a list of vegetables, fruits and herbs to possibly grow and sell at the farm next year and may build a hoop house to extend the growing season for eventual produce.

Asparagus, raspberries, blackberries, kale, escarole, sugar peas, tomatoes, string beans, cauliflower, broccoli and onions are a few crops Pengelly is weighing in her options for growing.

Her sister Karen Fedor is looking into the possibility of raising honey bees on the land, too.

“It is expensive to raise food on a small scale,” Pengelly said about what she’s learned in her first entrepreneurial farming experience, since a lot of meat producers operate in much higher volume than her, often with less fair conditions for animals. “But I love that my chickens are running around in the sunshine and clear air.”

Pengelly said she is also exploring options to help others interested in letting her land serve as an incubator to start farming of their own, and she might invite 4-H members, who don’t live on farms already, to raise their animals at Misty Knoll Farm.

Being on the farm, amidst her animals every day, is something Pengelly said she feels lucky for in changing her entire lifestyle and occupation now that she’s in her 50s. She admitted that she notices being around the animals perks her moods even on harder days.

Young children are ecstatic to be close to the animals, too, when they visit.

“We want the farm to be a place of learning, caring and individual growth,” Pengelly said, with field trips for children as another idea she is contemplating.

“Our focus is on sustainable practices that return more to the environment than we extract from it, leaving it better than we found it.”