Powder Keg Farms was created in 2018, after Virginia “Gini” LaMaster dug into her gardening roots to expand her operation. She’d already been providing area restaurants with custom grown herbs and produce, along with eggs from her flock of chickens, but knew she wanted to do more for her community. That’s when she tested the idea of offering a CSA. The support confirmed she could fill a need, and the farm found great success in a long-running four-season CSA.
While the farm began in the small gardens surrounding the LaMaster’s 1700s homestead, it steadily expanded to include three greenhouses, a state-of-the-art wash station, a propagation house, and making use of the farm’s vast, open fields. Husband Brian jumped in to help with the facilities and employees were hired to support the labor-intensive tasks of heritage-based farming and in the kitchen fulfilling the prepared foods part of the equation.
Over the years, the farm has provided produce for schools, brought nutritious fare to area populations with low access, helped educate kids on healthy food choices, served restaurants, and delivered weekly baskets full of healthy edibles to a whole lot of doorsteps through the CSA.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, Powder Keg Farms became essential workers, partnering with other area producers so the farm could deliver not just fresh food to customers, but a wide array of other items from meat and poultry to apothecary items.
Gini is known for her giving heart, and it’s the underlying thread in how she farms (using responsible, earth-loving, time-tested techniques she learned from her grandmother) and why it’s important to provide nutrient-dense, respectfully grown food to the people.
In March 2022, after two years of sharing her farming methods with Tyler Garrett, Gini handed him the operational reins, leasing him the farm through December 2023.
As of January 2024, Gini is back at the helm of Powder Keg Farms and supporting new types of community agriculture, including being the first and only model demonstration farm in the country for Farming God’s Way, which perfectly supports her values and lifelong love of farming.
“We grow plants the way I learned to farm, with respect to the land and the people it feeds. I spent summers growing up with my grandma and grandpa. My grandma taught me, and it wasn’t a strict teaching, but I followed her digging potatoes or moving onions, just listening to her talk and watching her. She raised a family during the Depression. Things were scarce, but she had a nice, big garden. Nobody went hungry. She shared with me some of the old ways of doing things like burying your eggshells and coffee grounds, propagating instead of buying plants. They were swapped and traded. They didn’t go to the store and buy plants. She had beautiful gardens, meticulously maintained vegetables and flowers. I got to follow behind her and learn.” —Gini LaMaster, from an article in the Hampshire Review