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August 23, 2026
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To Our Supporters,
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After 20 seasons, Restoration Farm is closing down. Our final CSA pickup and farm stand is scheduled for December 19, 2026. After that, we—founders Caroline Fanning and Daniel Holmes—will vacate the property with our equipment. Dan will continue his current employment at the Queen of the Rosary Motherhouse in Amityville. Caroline will pursue a masters degree in teaching. Nevertheless, we hope to build a bridge back to farming in the not-too-distant future, exact location and form TBD.
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Operating Restoration Farm has been the adventure of a lifetime. If we could do it again, we absolutely would. Though we will be walking away with very little of material value, the food that we grew, the community we built, and the memories we made are priceless. We thank you all for that.
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With gratitude,
Caroline & Dan
P.S.
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Winter shares are available. Click here to join​
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To receive our remaining newsletters and updates, join our mailing list (scroll to bottom of page)​
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For an overview of why we are stepping down, click here for our May letter to our CSA members​
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Questions about the future of the farm should be directed to the Nassau County Department of Parks, Recreation, & Museums
For the Love of Outside
I’m falling in love with teff. Yes, we’re still in the honeymoon phase, but I have a feeling that years from now, wherever I wind up, I’ll still be devoted. Teff is an Ethiopian grass that came onto my radar in 2021, when I learned that farmers were using it as a drought-tolerant cover for the pathways between cash crops. I finally bought a bag last winter, intending to seed it between the fall broccoli. Then, in June, Dan got ahead of himself and started cultivating the peppers, forgetting I’d seeded ryegrass in the pathways just days earlier, (i.e. he was killing my grass). He aborted the mission, I quelled the urge to kill him, and we prayed the ryegrass would pull through. As Dan’s luck would have it, there was zero rain in the weeks that followed, and no ryegrass germinated anywhere. Just bindweed. So I waved the white flag, Dan cultivated the pathways again (this time with permission), and I seeded a second time. Only instead of ryegrass, I decided try teff. Whoa baby! Read more...
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