The Treichler Family

We are Randy, Chris, Jack, Anna & Sam, plus Randy’s mother Mary. We moved to Star Hollow Farm in 1992 and turned what had been a summer getaway farm for the previous owners into a family vegetable farm. The house we live in was built in 1840 on land granted to the first settlers from William Penn’s sons before the Revolution.

The Treichler family.

Neither of us grew up on a farm, but Randy has been interested in agriculture and farming since he was a kid. He was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, but couldn’t wait to get out on his own. He studied agriculture at Iowa State, UC Davis, and Cornell. He also majored in International Relations at San Francisco State where he met Chris, a peripatetic Pennsylvania girl. Between us, and mixed in with all that studying, we’ve traveled to 30-plus countries on four continents. After Randy finished his masters degree in International Agricultural Development at UC Davis and us having 2 kids, we moved to Colombia, SA where Randy worked for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). There we traveled extensively in Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil.

Coming back to the states after two years abroad, we decided to try out our life’s dream of becoming farmers. We found our niche here in the mountains of southern Pennysylvania. 2012 marks our 21st year farming and our 12th year serving Adams Morgan. It’s not an easy life and the pay isn’t great, but Randy’s home six days a week, we work together as a family, eat well, and really like our jobs!

Our oldest two children have grown up and moved on, Jack to Harrisburg and Anna to DC (where you’ll see her most Saturday mornings working at our farm stand), while our youngest, Sam, has stayed at home and is planning to eventually take over the farm.