Our Story
We started from scratch. No inherited farmland, no generational operation to hand down. Just a piece of Pennsylvania forest, a clear sense of what we wanted to build, and the conviction that if something is worth doing it's worth doing without shortcuts.
Ivy Farm & Forest is a working farm and foresty operation on 70 acres in Bedford County, Pennsylvania — in the Appalachian Ridge-and-Valley region, about 90 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. We grow conservation-grade native plants from locally collected seed. Every plant we sell starts on this land. We track where it came from, how it was grown, and what went into it — because that's how we'd want to buy it, and it's the only way we know how to sell it.
The Team
Meet the Family
Natascha
Natascha holds a PhD in Wildlife Science from Auburn University (2019), a Master's in Wildlife, Aquatic, and Wildlands Science and Management from Texas Tech (2013), and a Bachelors of Science in Biology from The College of New Jersey (2011). Her doctoral research focused on white-tailed deer population genetics — work that gave her a deep grounding in species ecology, habitat dynamics, and the kind of careful field documentation that serious conservation work demands. It also helps guide her recommendations for deer resistant strains.
Before Ivy Farm & Forest, she spent years as a machine learning engineer and consultant, building the data infrastructure and analytical instincts that now drive how we run this operation — from tracking propagation success by species and provenance to iterating on production yields the way an engineer would debug a system.
She manages the nursery, leads species selection and propagation, and is the reason every plant that leaves this property comes with a documented lineage. She also homeschools our two children, which means the farm is very much a classroom as well as a business.
Trey
Trey grew up working cattle ranches and horse operations across Texas, spent time managing small agricultural operations in several states, and trained horses for many years before a career in software engineering
He served in the U.S. Army, has worked in autonomous vehicle software for the past several years, and brings the same systems-thinking and build-it-yourself approach to the farm that he applies to the codebase. The infrastructure you're interacting with right now — the website, the order system, the production tracking — he built it. The hoop houses, the barns, the fencing — he built those too.
At Ivy Farm & Forest, we don't just solve problems, we engineer solutions.
Want to work with us? Get in touch →