Fawnsdale Farm Owner Sarina Pang said she welcomes people to learn more about farming and gardening when they visit.
Sara Winick, Patch Staff
|Updated Fri, Oct 25, 2024 at 1:46 pm ET
COLTS NECK, NJ — Hidden in a cul-de-sac of Colts Neck lies Fawnsdale Farm, a local hobby farm owned and founded by Sarina Pang and her partner.
First established in 2019, Fawnsdale Farm offers visitors a variety of vegetables, flowers, animals, produce and more to shop from. Though the farm isn’t the largest in the Colts Neck area or the most well-known, Pang said Fawnsdale's “small-farm feel” keeps people coming back for more.
“It’s a quaint place,” Pang said. “It’s very peaceful. When customers come here, they say ‘Oh, it’s just a little piece of heaven.’”
Though customers may describe Fawnsdale as a “little piece of heaven” now, it wasn’t easy to construct the farm when Pang and her partner first purchased the land in 2018.
According to Pang, the hardest part of establishing Fawnsdale was setting up the farm’s infrastructure — something that’s not easy to do in a two-person team.
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“We painstakingly put in all the fences ourselves,” Pang said. “That was the hardest part. We fenced in the garden as well to prevent deer coming in and eating the produce, rats coming in — things like that.”
Alongside setting up the farm's infrastructure, Pang said another dilemma Fawnsdale has faced is what tools they have access to.
According to Pang, Fawnsdale doesn't use a cutting machine, tiller, or heavy machinery. Without these extra tools, she and her partner rely on themselves to tend to the farm as needed.
“We don’t have the benefits of huge machines,” Pang said. “And it’s not a small backyard garden that you can just tend to for a couple of hours a day either — it’s somewhere in-between. Pretty much everything is done by hand or light equipment.”
To help manage some of the farm’s day-to-day operations, Pang said planning is essential.
According to Pang, April through June is the busiest time of year for Fawnsdale. During that period, Pang makes it a goal to have everything planted for customers, and once June arrives, she starts to think about succession planning, and what she’ll offer shoppers on a weekly basis.
“Last year, I grew 65 different types of vegetables for my customers,” Pang said. “So out of the 65, for example, I had 12 different varieties of tomatoes, but I only count that as one [kind of vegetable].”
Alongside what Pang plants at the farm, she also runs a farm-shares CSA (community-supported agriculture) program in the summer.
According to the National Agricultural Library, CSA farming looks to form a group of individuals that pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes “either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm.”
At Fawnsdale, Pang said their CSA program lasts for 18 weeks and typically begins in June. Throughout the program, Pang sells farm produce to participating customers and gives them a glimpse into what farm operations are like.
“The program is very vigorous,” Pang said. “There’s a lot of planning involved before the actual program starts, and because I don’t buy seedlings or plugs from other places, I pretty much start my own seeds and plant everything myself.”
Though running Fawnsdale keeps Pang and her partner busy, she said it’s been rewarding working with the Colts Neck community and seeing the farm develop over the years.
“I have people come to me to look at some of my plants or get eggs and they say ‘I’m so glad I found you. How come I didn’t know about you?’” Pang said. “We’re small, but I’m happy with the fact that we’re not growing leaps and bounds. Anything beyond that and I’d have to get a lot more help.”
Though Pang isn’t looking to expand Fawnsdale in terms of property, she said she always welcomes new customers and encourages people to try gardening themselves. As Fawnsdale develops, Pang said she wants the farm to grow alongside the Colts Neck community.
“It’s [Fawnsdale Farm] a good place to spend the weekend, a good place to educate kids on livestock, or vegetables and how they grow,” Pang said. “I honestly and thoroughly believe that if everyone wanted to start their own garden, or raise chickens, or things like that, they can. And I'm happy to help them start."
Fawnsdale Farm is located at 12 Nan Tone Ct., Colts Neck.
To learn more about Fawnsdale Farm, you can visit their Facebook page.