Vendetti
Farms & the
living soil
A third-generation regenerative family farm growing heirloom vegetables, stone fruit and open-pollinated seed with nothing but compost, patience and the long memory of the land.
Four generations of dirt under the fingernails and sun in the rows.
Vendetti Farms began with a single acre, a borrowed mule and a stubborn belief that good food begins long before the seed goes in the ground — it begins with the soil itself.
We are not building a business so much as we are rebuilding a small ecosystem — one hedge line, one cover crop, one hedgerow of native flowers at a time.
The original homestead was planted in 1927 by Nonno Aldo Vendetti, who arrived in the Hudson Valley with a trunk of Italian seed packets and an unreasonable affection for tomatoes. Today, almost a century later, that same dirt still grows the descendants of those very seeds — ribbed Costoluto Genovese, sweet San Marzano, fragile purple basil that refuses to travel anywhere but the farm stand.
Along the way we stopped tilling. We planted a hundred and eighty species of native perennials. We pulled out a rotation of rye, crimson clover, vetch and buckwheat that keeps the ground covered eleven months of the year. We let the hedgerows grow scraggly, because the owls and the bees and the ground beetles seemed to prefer it that way. The soil went from pale and tired to something you would honestly like to bury your hands in — dark, crumbly, faintly sweet, alive.
We are still a family farm in the ordinary sense: a family, a farm, a long list of things that must be done before the rain arrives. But we are also something a little bigger — a small argument that farming can be a gift to the land rather than a withdrawal from it.
First
Always
A catalogue that changes with the weather, the season and the mood of the bees.
Every crop below is grown from seed we mostly save ourselves — open-pollinated, un-patented, and quietly improving with each passing year.
Heirloom Tomatoes
Forty-one varieties, from the sweet, apricot-hued Jaune Flamme to the smoky, almost-black Black Krim. Picked at first blush, never gassed, never refrigerated.
Field Greens
Salad mix, spinach, chard, mustard, mizuna, tatsoi. Cut at dawn, cooled within the hour, on your table before the day is fully awake.
Roots & Alliums
Carrots of unreasonable sweetness, ruby and gold beets, parsnips, turnips, winter radishes and a garlic collection we have been refining for thirty years.
Stone Fruit
Old-variety peaches, green gages, Italian prunes and a small stand of quince that we grow purely because we love it.
Culinary Herbs
Genovese basil, purple basil, tarragon, thyme, lovage, shiso, sorrel. Cut fresh for the CSA, dried slowly for the winter pantry.
Seed & Grain
A small catalogue of open-pollinated seed — beans, corn, squash — offered to gardeners who want something that grows better by being saved.
The unglamorous, necessary work of giving back to the ground.
Regenerative agriculture is not a label we buy — it is a set of decisions that get made again and again, most of them invisible, all of them slow.
No-Till Since 2009
We have not turned a plow on these acres in over a decade. The fungal networks under our fields are older than the current farmhouse roof.
→Cover Cropping & Rotation
Rye, crimson clover, vetch, buckwheat and a five-year rotation keep the soil covered and the roots working all year long.
→Compost & Amendments
Everything the farm grows returns to the farm. All fertility is generated on-site from compost, leaf mould and animal bedding.
→Biodiversity & Habitat
Nine kilometres of hedgerow, four restored wetlands and a pollinator strip running the length of every field we farm.
→Seed Sovereignty
We save more than seventy percent of the seed we plant. Nothing we grow is patented, hybridized for shelf life, or owned by anyone but us.
→Carbon & Community
Independently audited soil carbon has risen 2.3% in the last decade. The farm absorbs more than it emits — and it feeds four hundred families per week.
→Join the harvest, one week at a time.
Our Community Supported Agriculture share is the simplest way to eat with the season. Every Friday we harvest for the week's members; every Saturday morning you pick up a crate of whatever the ground decided to give us — always more than you expect, sometimes things you have never cooked before.
A share is not a subscription box. It is a relationship: you share in the abundance of a good July and the austerity of a hard September. You get to know our names. We get to know yours. You eat things at the exact moment they taste like themselves.
We offer full shares, half shares, and a small add-on for eggs, honey and stone fruit. Pick-up is at the farm, or at one of three neighbourhood markets across the valley.
The 2025 Season Share
- 22 weekly harvests, June through October
- 8–12 items per week, always seasonal, always fresh
- Member pricing at the farm stand & on stone fruit
- A share of the harvest on surplus weeks
- Two members' dinners at the farm each season
- Bi-weekly newsletter from the fields
Field notes, harvest reports and the small disasters of the season.
We write from the barn, usually late, usually tired. Subscribe to receive these in your inbox — or simply dip in when something catches your eye.
No news yet — the fields are quiet. Check back soon.
Come see the farm, or send us a letter.
The farm stand is open Saturdays from 9am to 4pm. The gate is often open; the kettle is often on. You are welcome either way.
148 Old Mill Road, Rhinebeck, NY 12572
Sundays by appointment