Our farm, Copper Penny Farm, is now located in Adamstown, Maryland, in southern Frederick County. We are a small family farm and believe in raising animals humanely and allowing them to live as naturally as possible.
The idea for Copper Penny Farm began in 2005, when we, Chuck and Nancy Gardetto, first met. We quickly discovered two things: first, we each owned a dog, one named Copper and the other named Penny, and the second, we had mutual interest in raising animals and playing in the dirt. We were both working "real" office-type jobs at the time, and we surprised many of our friends when we purchased a hidden gem of land in Hanover, Maryland, and declared ourselves farmers. First came the chickens, then a couple of pigs. And as fencing went up, so did the variety of animals increase. (Although if we are to stick to the absolute truth, usually the animals arrived first, followed by a mad rush to put up fencing to contain them!) After reading every farming book and magazine we could find, and after talking with every farmer who would answer our endless questions, we found that we liked the idea of sustainable farming and heritage animals. And so Copper Penny Farm began to take shape with heritage pigs, Katahdin sheep, Galloway steer, plus flocks of ducks and chickens. And we have even managed to add a couple of Farm Hands along the way. Our two kids can drive tractors and wrangle pigs as well as we can!
In 2019, we expanded! We moved to a much larger and much more open piece of property in Adamstown, Maryland. Copper Penny Farm 2.0 has allowed us to expand our pasture-based farming into new directions. We have even recently added draft horses to help us work our land. We look forward to sharing our new adventures with you!
In July of 2014, we had the pleasure of being filmed for the Maryland Public Television series "Maryland Farm & Harvest". The producers were filming a segment about the Frederick Farmers' Co-op to show how animal feed is made, and they wanted to show the feed actually being fed to cows. We have been loyal customers of the Co-op for years, so they asked us to be a part.
After thunderstorms rolled in on the original date scheduled for filming, we re-scheduled for what turned out to be the hottest day of the summer. Armed with ice-packs and popsicles to keep cool, we spent several hours with the filming team, and thoroughly enjoyed their company. It wasn't until December that we saw the final product when it finally aired. Click here (or watch below) if you'd like to see us having our fifteen minutes (fifteen seconds?) of fame! (Our portion is in the second half.)
Fun fact about the filming: Farm Hand #1, our older son who was about four at the time, decided to cut his own hair the morning of the day we were to be filmed. We had no time to get him to a barber to fix the disaster at the top of his head, and so we put a hat on him. It was such a hot day, though, that he kept taking the hat off. In some of the shots, you can see his handywork!
Farmer Chuck and Jake and Jim were also featured in a our regional farming newsletter, the Delmarva Farmer, in April of 2024. Reporter Jonathan Cribbs came out to our farm on a beautiful spring day to meet Jake and Jim. This beautiful spring day also coincidentally happened to be a very loud one, as we had new fencing being installed. So Johnathan and Chuck had to pause their conversations frequently to while fence posts were being pounded in or gravel was being poured, but in the end, we had this wonderful article written about our farm!