The Farm

Kitchen Garden Farm is located in the heart of the Pioneer Valley, the prime agricultural region of Western Massachusetts. The farm consists of 50 acres of rich river bottom soil with fields on both sides of the Connecticut River, in Sunderland and Whately. The farm's home base is located on S. Silver Lane in the center of Sunderland, about five miles from UMASS Amherst.

Caroline and Tim started the farm in 2006 on 1 acre of rented land, and have expanded the farm greatly in recent years. All of the new land they have brought into cultivation had previously been farmed by conventional growers in the area. Kitchen Garden Farm is doing the important work of converting prime agricultural land in their community to Organic production. Caroline and Tim are committed to growing healthy soils by cultivating a wide range of biodiverse crops, improving crop rotation and cover cropping.   

Our Growing Practices

Our growing practices reflect our deep commitment to the quality of our products, the health of our land and the safety of our workers. We only use natural products and sustainable techniques to grow our vegetables. Our farm is USDA certified organic by Baystate Organic Certifiers and Real Organic certified by the Real Organic Project. Healthy soils grow better tasting, more nutritious food.

Tim Wilcox

Tim is originally from Oneonta, NY and came to the Pioneer Valley in 2001 to attend Hampshire College. He spent time working at the Hampshire Farm and went to Italy to do research with radicchio farmers in Treviso for his thesis project. Tim is a passionate self-taught cook with a 24-7 food obsession. He has put his culinary skill to work for the farm developing a homemade sriracha sauce and cooking scratch-made all local tacos for our farm festivals. 

The couple have 2 children, Zero and Oliver, age 16 and 14. 

Lilly Israel

Lilly grew up in New York City and moved to Western Mass to study Agriculture and Natural Resource Economics at UMass Amherst. During college she worked on the UMass Student Farm and with the UMass Permaculture Initiative. After graduation she managed the permaculture gardens at UMass for two years before coming to work at Kitchen Garden Farm in 2016. When she’s not farming Lilly loves foraging, taxidermy, and musical theater.

Caroline Pam

Caroline grew up in New York City and earned a degree in English Literature from the University of Chicago. She worked as a journalist before discovering her passion for food and farming. She studied French cuisine at the French Culinary Institute and has also worked as a market manager at the Union Square Greenmarket in NYC, where she shared her enthusiasm for cooking with seasonal ingredients in cooking demonstrations. She spent a summer working on an organic farm in Italy before moving to the Valley to apprentice at Food Bank Farm. She was the Valley Advocate’s restaurant critic from 2005-2006 and wrote a monthly column for the Daily Hampshire Gazette and occasionally for Edible Pioneer Valley. 

Max Traunstein

Max grew up in Granby MA. He began working as a farmhand at Brookfield Farm in Amherst, MA as his first job in 2007. This experience ignited a passion for working in vegetable production, which led him to study agriculture as an undergrad at Hampshire College (Amherst) and UMass Amherst. He worked at both the Hampshire College Farm (CSA), and UMass Student Farm while in school. 

Max received a B.A. in Sustainable Food and Farming at UMass in 2014, and started working at Kitchen Garden Farm that same year.