Abbe Hills Farm

Welcome to Abbe Hills Farm

Abbe Hills Farm CSA serves families in the Mount Vernon, Lisbon, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, area with fresh, tasty, healthy vegetables for 20 weeks every summer and fall.

In 2011, about 13 acres of the 72-acre farm will be garden crops, and the harvest of those crops will be divided into shares for about 200 area families. Laura and her team of college and high school students will grow over 100 varieties of crops, and have vegetables for shareholder families for 20 weeks from early June until the end of October.

Lucky, the Abbe Hills CSA farm dog.Growing for the CSA is Laura's primary responsibility. The CSA always gets first harvest of everything grown, and nearly everything that the gardens produce. To supplement her income, Laura plants  a little extra of a few things for sale for home preservation or for farmers markets late in the fall, or for a couple of restaurant accounts. But mostly, if the farm produces it, you'll see the best of it on pickup nights. Not every CSA has this philosophy. You help Laura by committing to a share and absorbing the financial risk of farming, and she helps you by providing the very best food she can – food that keeps you healthy, produced in a manner that is environmentally sustainable, by workers who are fairly paid, and at an affordable price to you. 

Abbe Hills Farm is also the home of Abbe Hill Open Pollinated Seed Corn.  The heirloom yellow dent corn has been grown on this eastern Iowa farm since 1903.  Open pollination (OP) is an ancient technique for making improvements in our food crops.  The wind is responsible for moving pollen around the field each July, while Laura is responsible for selecting the best ears to save for seed for the following year.  Seed for Abbe Hills OP is sold all over the upper Midwest to farmers who want the best quality feed for their livestock.