Old Mountain Top Farm at Church Street Farmers Market

Guest Post by Leila Davis

My name is Leila Davis and I am the owner of Old Mountain Top Farm. I started this small business as a hobby with my Grandmother, many years ago. Her Pepper Jelly was (and still is!) so popular. Almost everyone who tries it loves it – seriously. It’s super good. I talked her into allowing me to sell it, and Old Mountain Top Farm was born.

Farmers market culture allowed me to meet so many people who are talented at growing food, making preserves, crafting useful items – being around all these resourceful folks was a big inspiration to me. I went from just making jelly to starting a small backyard farm with my husband. All of the money we make at markets selling our products goes back into more projects to help us grow more sustainable homegrown products.

Food Preservation

Food preservation is the anchor of Old Mountain Top Farm, and has really been an essential tool for creating a lot of food in a small space. In addition to making jams and jellies, we dry herbs and mushrooms. Our herbal tea and mushroom herb blends are handcrafted using the very best locally grown or foraged ingredients possible.

I quickly realized that I am a terrible farmer and crop manager. I still grow as much as I can, but I have really adopted a policy of letting nature help me out. We forage for herbs and mushrooms, and try to naturalize as many edible species on our property as we can. I really believe that this style of farming, working with nature instead of against it, is the way forward with gardening and farming.

I have learned so much in the past decade working on this labor of love, and I can’t wait to see what the next decade brings for us. It is my dream to acquire our family land and be able to steward it with food production and conservation in mind for future generations of our family. If that doesn’t happen, I will continue to be a responsible steward of any land placed in my care.

Visit Our Farmers Market Booth

I hope everyone will come out to the farmers markets this season and meet and support all of the family businesses you’ll find there! We are going to be in Villa Rica at the Mill Amphitheater on Mondays. On Tuesdays you can find us at Douglasville’s Church Street Farmers Market. Both markets have fantastic selections and friendly vendors – stop by and say hi and fall in love with local food culture for yourself!

Follow Old Mountain Top Farm on Facebook and Instagram.

Read More on A Cook and Her Books

Learn about the Church Street Farmers Market in this guest post from Keep Douglasville Beautiful Executive Director Chan Weeks.

https://acookandherbooks.com/church-street-farmers-market-opens-may-30/

Lucky Seventh Baker’s Anna Thornton writes about her sourdough goodies in this guest post:

Lucky Seventh Baker at Church Street Farmer’s Market

Join the Conversation

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