Tasting What Was Grown in Farm-Made Hot Sauces With Alyssa Adkins
Release Date: 05/15/2025
For the Love of Farming: A 70th Anniversary Special
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re honoring the voices of farmers as we celebrate our 70th anniversary. This special podcast episode will feature a variety of voices from farmers and ag industry members who stopped by our pop-up recording studio at this year’s . You’ll hear voices of all ages — from a recent college graduate working her first job in the ag industry to a 92-year-old retired farmer who recalls exactly how his farm community came to his aid when he lost a leg in a farm accident. You’ll even hear from Pennsylvania Ag Secretary Russell...
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Dare to Return to the Haunted FarmHouse
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re returning to the haunted farmhouse for some seasonal fun and spine-tingling tales from the farm. In this episode, we’ll be sharing four spooky stories that take place on farms or in rural communities because, let’s face it, scary stories from the city just don’t have quite the same chilling effect as those set out in the country. For our first tale, we’ll travel to Robertson County, Tennessee, where the Bell family came to farm in the early 1800s. Unfortunately for the Bells, a spirit that would become known as the...
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Blending Herbs and Making Tea With Katelyn Melvin
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Katelyn Melvin, owner of . Melvin grows herbs and makes her own herbal tea blends in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania. Her journey into herb farming started by growing herbs in high school. She later worked on a few vegetable farms and decided to take on farming full time. The farm grows multiple acres of herbs including chamomile, peppermint, lemon balm, anise hyssop and more. The teas are made only with herbs grown on the farm. “All the tea blends come from my love of the fresh herbs,” Melvin said. She has three...
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Empowering People, Empowering Ag With Tonya Van Slyke
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking with Tonya Van Slyke, the longtime executive director of the . Van Slyke grew up on her family’s 250-cow dairy farm in New York. “I think my quest to be a leader in the industry came from my involvement in both 4-H and FFA,” she said. “That’s really where my desire to utilize my voice and be an advocate for the industry came from.” After working at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine as a project manager, Van Slyke joined the Northeast Dairy Producers Association as its first...
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The Many Uses of Native Plants With Cathryn Pugh
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, we’re talking to Cathryn Pugh, a forestry educator with Penn State Extension. Pugh specializes in agroforestry, nontimber forest products and native plants. She is also the president of the Pennsylvania Native Plant Society. There are five main aspects of agroforestry: silvopasture, alley cropping, windbreaks, riparian buffers and forest farming. “Agroforestry can fit into a lot of different places,” Pugh said. “It’s essentially thinking about how to incorporate trees into agricultural spaces.” While Pugh works with farmers to help them learn how to best...
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Turning Food Waste Into Compost With 'Fly Lady' Aubrey Fornwalt
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking with Aubrey Fornwalt, the founder and owner of in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Full Circle uses black soldier flies to convert food waste from the surrounding community into manure and compost. Fornwalt also sells the black soldier fly larvae as feed to poultry operations. It’s the first bioconversion operation of its kind in the state. Fornwalt didn’t always want to be in the decomposition business. She began her career as a graphic designer, and although she was composting her own food waste, she felt...
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Merging Science and People With Heidi Reed
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Heidi Reed, an agronomy educator with Penn State Extension. Reed was recently part of a crop conditions tour across the state, and this year’s corn and soybean yields are looking average to below average, mainly due the dry conditions. “Unless somebody has an irrigated field, I don’t think any yield records are going to be broken this year,” Reed said. The dry summer came on the heels of a very wet spring, making it a tough weather year for Pennsylvania farmers. Prolonged stretches of weather are becoming...
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Woodlands Don't Manage Themselves: Foresty Planning With Kathy Smith
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking with Kathy Smith, the program director for the Ohio Woodland Stewards Program at Ohio State University. Smith knew early on that she wanted to work outside and was interested in natural resource management. Forestry felt like a natural fit. “I appreciate being able to understand the trees and how we can utilize trees to solve problems, make things better, and also help landowners to deal with the issues that they have,” Smith said. Smith spent the first 11 years of her career working as a watershed forester with...
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Helping Students Find Their Ag Paths With Wendy Powers
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking with Wendy Powers, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland. Powers is the first woman to serve in the role, effective July 1. She didn’t grow up in agriculture, but her undergrad experience at Cornell University made her interested in the field. Since then, Powers has studied and worked in agriculture at land grant universities, coming to Maryland from Washington State University. “I am tremendously loyal to the land grant mission,” Powers said. “When I look at the...
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Aquaponics and Giving Back to the Community With Yemi Amu
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking with Yemi Amu, the founder and director of , an outdoor aquaponics farm and education center in Brooklyn, New York. Amu is originally from Nigeria and belongs to the Yoruba ethnic group. Her Yoruba roots have influenced much of her work in the U.S., from the name of her operation to the style of farming. Oko is a Yoruba word that loosely translates to farm, but in fact has a deeper tie to agriculture. “The true meaning is a place where agriculture is the center of life and activity,” Amu said. “And that’s...
info_outlineThis week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Alyssa Adkins, a produce farmer in Freeport, Maine.
Adkins and her partner Nathan Broaddus own Farthest Field Farm where they grow produce and make their own jarred products.
The farm specializes in peppers and hot sauces.
“My partner and I decided to start with value-added products,” Adkins said. “There’s so many CSAs to choose from, there’s so many farmers selling vegetables at farmers markets. So it kind of made sense for us.”
The farm sells five varieties of hot sauces as well as salsas and other products.
Adkins does have a bit of a culinary background. She used to be a registered dietitian and worked in restaurants.
This background — plus her own personal canning experience — led her to recipe development. For all of the jarred products, taste and flavor are the most important elements; the spice is secondary.
“We don’t have any sauces where we’re melting your face off because we want you to taste things,” Adkins said. “We want you to taste what we grow. We put so much work into these hot sauces.”
Adkins are Broaddus bought the property for Farthest Field Farm in 2022, and their goal is to work the land in a way that’s best for their business and for the environment.
Adkins wants to rebuild the soil and pollinator habitat. To accomplish this, the farm is no-till and uses organic methods.
While the farm is not currently certified organic, Adkins said it can sometimes work in their favor.
“We have found that when you’re not organic certified people ask you more questions,” she said. “We like that. We really like that people are engaging with us in that way.”
Adkins also engages people by hosting events on the farm
“We see how interconnected farms are to everything that is around them,” she said. “We call it a community farm and we want it to be that in the fullest sense from the tiniest little microbes in the soil to the humans who might come here for events.”
The Spicy Scoop: Can the Lancaster Farming Team Handle These Farm-Made Hot Sauces?
The Lancaster Farming Team sat down to try five hot sauces from Farthest Field Farm and answer some questions about agriculture, journalism and what makes for a good hot wing.