Welcome to Windermere Farms & Apiaries
Windermere Farms and Apiaries began in the valley below Lake Windermere. Ken and Freida own and operate this small, organic farm in Memphis, TN. For years before becoming certified organic farmers, we read Rodale and tried to eat healthy and be wise with our food choices. Through the years, we learned how much more nutrition organic food had and knew we had to be certified organic!
Windermere Farms & Apiaries has been serving the greater Memphis area since 2003 with Certified Organic grown vegetables. Windermere Farms grows tomatoes, garlic, green beans, potatoes, swiss chard, squash, cucumbers, cantaloupe, artichokes, purple hull peas, sugar snap peas, watermelon, and much, much more. We know that your time is limited, so we would love to be your personal farmers and grow healthy, medicinal food for you and your family. We are at the Agricenter Farmers Market on Germantown Road in Memphis and can provide you with a range of fruits and vegetables that are fresh, delicious, nutritious, and certified organic. Your support keeps us farming and we in turn will keep your table stocked! We hope that you will check us out. Thanks for stopping by!
Ken and Freida Lansing
2000-2004
In 2000 and 2001, I got serious about gardening and took a piece of the yard and put in a garden. In 2003, I started moving my activities to the field and did an initial planting of 100 American Bittersweet plants. In the fall of 2004, I erected a trellis system on which to manage them. I also purchased a used Kubota and planted my first strawberry patch of 500 plants next to the Bittersweet. I planted an orchard and I put in some vegetables on the north end of the field in front of our horse stable.
2006-2007
By the summer of 2006, I had some nice fields of Purple Hull Peas and was putting in irrigation main lines. For six years, I had been keeping bees on the south end of the field which produced a nice supply of honey and comb honey. In 2006, I moved what was left to the to the north end. The Bittersweet came in for the first real crop in the fall of 2006. We went to the Memphis Farmers Market for the entirety of the 2007 growing season with vegetables from our Certified Organic fields.
2007-2008
During January and February 2007, I was able to set up a 12 x 24 hoop house to use for growing my own plants. Winter covered blueberry hill with a blanket of snow in February or March 2008. We began a little shed to house a 8 x 8 walk-in cooler and a pea sheller from timber cut off the land and milled at a friend’s sawmill. Both then and now, it sure is nice when spring finally comes. We see the martins making their nests and the bees working the blueberries.