About Us
For 30 years Wendy Carpenter has been tending to the land handed down to her by her grandfather, devoting herself to a love for growing food and enriching the soil. Over the course of this time Christopher Farm has been transformed from a hobby market garden into a flourishing Organic vegetable operation that supplies the local community with a much loved coalition of nutrition and education. In 2020, Wendy’s son Adrian Hess moved home to join his mother in stewarding the land and feeding the community, and to begin carrying out his own dreams of revitalizing this piece of the earth in East-Central Indiana.
Christopher Farm became USDA Organic certified through OEFFA in 2017 and joined the Real Organic Project in 2019. But we have always grown our vegetables and flowers without the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers.
In more recent years, with the growing movement for soil health and the profusion of research around soil biology, we have transitioned our farm into a no-till operation. These methodologies, which extend far beyond the absence of tillage, help us to grow a higher quality, more nutritious product. It also makes our soils (and therefore our whole operation) much more resilient to the impacts and unpredictability of our changing climate, while additionally working to sequester carbon in the earth, making it a system that not only withstands, but also stabilizes and reverses climate change.
We like to think of soil as a community - a diverse group of organisms living together, all with different needs, all fulfilling different roles that collectively form a structure - the one from which we source our food. In a healthy soil there is plenty of food to go around, so resources are shared and traded between organisms, which makes everyone stronger. And much like a human community, things go awry if everybody looks alike and acts alike. So our practices promote as diverse and holistic of a soil microbial community as possible.
Our mission is to shrink the distance between humans and the natural world, and to mitigate and even reverse the impacts of climate change through ecologically minded stewardship practices that promote healthy soil, which in turn feed the health of our community. We strive to educate both our food community, and our farm crew in ways that promote equality and connection to each other and the earth. This means working to be the best possible model of a food production system within an ecosystem as we work to develop and solidify the local and regional foodshed, as it fits into a global context.
Meet our 2026 Crew
Wendy
Wendy is the owner of Christopher Farm, which she operates with her son, Adrian. The farm has undergone much growth and many changes since she planted her first garlic crop here in 1996. What began as 1/4 acre hobby farm has grown to two acres of year round, intensive certified organic vegetable and flower production with an apprentice program. In spite of being an introvert, Wendy loves people. She enjoys both teaching and getting to know people at market and in their CSA. She loves nurturing the soil and the plants that grow in it, and never ceases to marvel at the interconnectedness of all things.
Adrian
After swearing up and down as a child that he would be spending his life in the arts and NOT farming, Adrian moved back to Indiana in 2020 to begin farming full time. He’s drawn to the intricacies of soil sciences, the multifaceted nature of the work, the seasonal rhythms of rural life, and the delight of cooking and eating real food. Increasingly, Adrian takes the lead on cut flower production, experiments in cultivating soil microbial activity, and infrastructure related projects. Outside of farming, Adrian still practices many art forms, including blacksmithing and writing poetry. He also enjoys wildflower walks, playing games, hunting, a mug of earl grey, and a good joke.
Elisabeth
Elisabeth first came to Christopher Farm as a WWOOFer in 2023. What was initially just an experimental foray into farming ended up being a major turning point in her life when she met Adrian, fell in love, and moved to the farm permanently. A native of New Hampshire, Elisabeth was homeschooled before getting a computer science degree from Dartmouth College. She still works remotely as a software engineer, while helping with the business side of Christopher Farm; doing bookkeeping and developing spreadsheets that track production and organic certification records. She also arranges a large portion of our bouquets. Elisabeth’s hobbies include many forms of fiber arts, biking, baking, and spending time with friends and family. Her favorite color is yellow.
Grace
Grace is a lifelong Hoosier with a passion for growing, cooking, and eating vegetables. She graduated from Purdue in 2022 with a degree in Sustainable Food and Farming Systems, and has been working at Christopher Farm ever since. It is the perfect job for her–an active job, outdoors, where she feels intimately connected to the natural world around her. Grace loves that the work she does not only helps feed her community, but that she's
stewarding the land well while she does it. Some of her favorite tasks around the farm include weeding (especially pulling quackgrass rhizomes), getting a workout in by shoveling and pulling cartloads of compost, and going to market at the end of the week.
When Grace isn't working, she spends her time knitting, playing ultimate frisbee, and trying to bake a decent loaf of sourdough (it’s only happened once so far).
Fallon
Fallon started working at the farm in August of 2025. Originally from Chicago, they moved to Indiana in 2023 and have since fallen deeply back in love with the Midwest and the people who live here. They have always had a passion for nature, food, and community, and love that working at Christopher Farm helps bring those things together so intricately. Fallon’s favorite parts of their job are harvesting (specifically root vegetables), talking to customers at markets, learning something new every day, and teaching the team how to do a heel click. Outside of work, Fallon enjoys spending time with friends, eating good food, and cuddling with their three orange cats.
Melanie
Melanie started working at the farm in April of 2026 and has loved every second so far!
Originally from Indianapolis, she’s been a customer of Christopher Farm for a while and is eager to learn how the other side works. She recently graduated from IU Indianapolis with a degree in biology, and is passionate about nature and the environment. She is looking forward to expanding her knowledge in the realms of plant and soil health, and to gaining new knowledge about all things farming. She loves that the job allows her to be outdoors, getting her hands dirty, and she loves the accomplished feeling after a hard day’s work. In her free time she loves to bike, run, read, cook and bake.
Bryan
Bryan was born in Chicago and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was drawn to farming through a desire to work with his hands, spend time outdoors, and be part of the process of growing things from the ground up. Bryan was especially excited to join Christopher Farm because of its regenerative, no-till approach, as well as the way it brings together two generations of farmers. The Quaker values also really resonated with him and made this feel like a place where he wanted to learn and contribute. In the long term, he hopes to homestead and grow most of his own food, so he came here to build the skills and understanding needed to move in that direction. Outside of farming, Bryan enjoys running, biking, swimming, and practicing yoga. He likes spending time in nature hiking, camping, or kayaking, and he values time with friends and family. He also enjoys traveling, trying new things, and finding plenty of reasons to laugh along the way.