ABOUT POPLAR RIDGE FARM

How are we different from other farms? Our owner has been a career health and fitness expert for almost thirty years and an organic farmer, with her farm manager Tony Phillips since 1995.  This combination brings to farming lifelong educational specialties in nutrition, culinary arts, healthy lifestyle and environmental advocacy.

Our farm is a small, family-owned and managed farm. The development of Poplar Ridge Farm as a Community Supported Agriculture farm is a unique extension of the owners’ personal adult lifestyles.  The owners have been athletes involved in the organic food movement and advanced nutrition concepts since their teenage years!  One of the owners, Marianne Battistone, is currently a health and fitness contributing editor to SELF Magazine.  She has been a health and fitness contributor to Conde Nast publications since 1980.  Marianne has been in private practice in NYC since 1979 . She is a dance educator and specialist in injury prevention, treatment and care of dance and athletic injuries.  She and her husband, Philip Norwood, always wanted to own a farm.  In 1994, when Philip began working in Charlotte, NC, they chose to build their farm in Sandy Ridge Township, Union County, NC, just south of Charlotte.

Under their ownership, the land has been farmed in a sustainable, environmentally conscious manner. USDA standards of organic farming are practiced for all crops.