Know Your Food: Tierra Farms

Tierra Farms, one of the vendors you'll see on Saturdays at Pelham's Farmer's Market, started out as an organic farm in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York in the late 1990s. For those who have not persevered through an upstate New York winter, let’s just say it’s not ideal for growing organic produce. So what started in 2001 as a winter side project to supplement the income of the organic farm, has quickly grown into a full-time organic nut and coffee roasting operation. Currently located in the small town of Valatie, NY, is the farm's wholly solar powered nut and coffee roasting operation.  

Tierra Farms produces a wide variety of roasted nuts such as agave ginger cashews, which are sweet, gingery and according to Dan Laiosa of Tierra Farms, “have no added oils, so they are healthy.” Tierra also makes its own range of nut butters from maple almond butter to chocolate hazelnut butter, which can certainly give Nutella a run for it’s money. Recently, Tierra Farms has started to roast organic fair trade coffee too. 

 “We tend to make products that we like ourselves,” Laiosa said. “We like coffee and now were going to make coffee”

Tierra Farms also carries raw nuts and dried fruits.

Staying in tune with its roots, Tierra strives to know its customers, and to make sure a fresh product reaches them. 

“We’re not trying to be a company that’s in every gas station,” remarked Laiosa.

Patch Pick: Cajun cashews. 

 Tierra Farms comes to Pelham in collaboration with Community Markets.