Meet Ben and Heather
Ben and Heather first met in 2012 at a music festival and quickly bonded over their mutual passion for producing healthy, clean food.
Heather earned a Ph.D. in plant ecology and, as a diversion in grad school, she started baking bread and delivering it by bicycle around Toronto, where she was living.
Ben started his career in education after graduating from college, but got hooked on farming after doing several internships through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF). Eventually he spent two seasons at Waterpenny Farm, a well-know vegetable farm in Sperryville, Virginia.
Together they have built a successful farm business. Community is a big focus of their efforts. They prefer the inconsistency of selling at farmers markets, versus the predictability of wholesale, because they love personal interactions with a community committed to local, fresh food.
A brief history
For its first eleven years, Little Hat Creek Farm was a small diversified ecological vegetable farm and wood-fired bakery. The first year Heather baked sourdough breads in the home oven, destroying it by repeatedly throwing ice on the element to produce steam. The second year, Ben and Heather built a clay oven in a barn, which worked great. Until it cooled down enough to fall apart. In 2015 they hired masons to build a new oven, ran out of money, and spent the year shuttling bread from the house to the oven in all weather. That got old, so the next year they built a 1000 sq ft bakery, which powered the growth of the business through 2024.
Then, starting in 2025, Little Hat Creek Farm grew smaller. Ben and Heather closed the bakery to focus on growing vegetables and garden starts for their community. Nestled in the rural Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, they serve markets in Charlottesville, Lexington, and Nelson County. Their goal is to drive change in their regional food system by forging one-on-one relationships with their community. They love empowering gardeners and hearing how you've prepared the vegetables you brought home last week. They now have three children, four cats, and one dog.