MALG Members: Glenn and Lisa Kenny
Farm Name: Kenny Farm North
Farm Location: Cochranton, PA
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The 200-acre Kenny Farm North, near Cochranton, PA is the home of Farm House Cookies. Lisa and Glenn Kenny run the Farm with help from their boys Joshua, 18, Nathan, 15, and Tyler, 10. Spencer, only a year-and-a-half old, is too little to be of significant help.

Glenn and Lisa moved to the farm eight years ago. They had previously worked on a farm that was shared with Glenn's family. "We just wanted to try something on our own, and leave the partnership," Lisa said. "We find that it's very fun."
Lisa, who had previously lived in both a city and rural environment in the past, did not mind moving to another farm.
"My husband grew up on a farm," Lisa said. "He will always live on a farm. He would never survive in a city," she said with a laugh. "We enjoy our privacy."

Walking into the Kenny home, the smell of fresh-baked chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies fills the air and tantalizes visitors. By the time one enters the kitchen and sees bowls of cookie dough and rows of perfectly baked cookies it is hard not to eat one. They are the kind of cookies that melt in your mouth, and it's difficult to believe Lisa doesn't snack on them all day long.

"I'm around cookies too much," Lisa said with her youngest boy Spencer clinging to her leg. "The boys eat them, but I just try a little from each batch to make sure they taste good." Recently Lisa has been considering buying an industrial oven to help speed up her baking process. "I'm up at 5:30 am, and I'll be baking until 7 o'clock at night," she said. "With an industrial oven everything will go much faster."

In addition to selling her cookies at the Market House, she sells them at Miller's store located on Route 27. The variety of cookies Lisa sells at both places include Chocolate Chip Cookies, with or without nuts, Oatmeal Raisin, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, Monster Cookies, Chewy Molasses Cookies, Peanut Butter Cookies, and filled cookies including Apricot, Peach, Black Raspberry, Red Raspberry, and Blueberry.

The Kennys also have over 100 heifers, mainly Jerseys and a few Holsteins. Nathan has four show calves that he takes care of and Tyler works with his Jersey, Tess. He walks her, combs her, and even polishes her hooves with black shoe polish. He is currently preparing to show her at the Cochranton Fair.

"She'll be cleaner than the kids at the fair!" said Lisa, very proud of her sons. However, cookies and cows are not all the Kenny Farm North produces. They have four acres of sweet corn, 60-acres of field corn for their cattle, and two rows of three varieties of pumpkins; pie pumpkins, jack'o lantern pumpkins, and giant pumpkins. The pumpkins were all planted by hand, and when the harvest is ready, the Kenny's will set up a stand by the road and sell them. "Last year we had a lot of pumpkins, and everything was sold because no one else had them," Lisa said. "This year, with all the rain I'm not sure if we'll find a day for that."

Portions of the farm that are not used by the Kenny's for the cows or their own crops are rented to Calvin Ernst Conservation Seeds. They grow field corn, soybeans, and buckwheat. Part of the cowshed is also used to house other farmers' cows. "We have room for 400 cows in the shed," Lisa said. "But we only have 100."

"Until recently we were milking, but now we just want to grow them," she said. "We get them when they're young, grow them until they're ready to be bred, and then we sell them." With all the baking, planting, feeding, and parenting, it sounds like milking is an appreciated absence at the Kenny Farm, even though milk does go best with homemade cookies.

By Amanda Kralj and Shira Leon, Local Foods Network Intern