LOWER MACUNGIE TWP., Pa. — The Rodale Institute has launched a five-year partnership to supply freshly grown organic food to Phoebe Ministries' senior residents.
The partnership also will have an educational component, with the Rodale farming property at 2056 Minesite Road, Lower Macungie Township, open for hands-on learning.
"Through this unique partnership, Phoebe Ministries and Rodale, we'll actually be producing the healthiest, freshest, most nutrient-dense food for the residents of Phoebe."Rodale Institute Chief Executive Officer Jeff Tkach
That property was the original location of the Rodale Institute in the 1940s. It's no longer an active farm, but the plan is to get it up and running again.
To illustrate that, the organizations held a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday in which a giant plow turned over the pale, patchy grass to reveal fresh, dark brown soil.
Rodale Institute Chief Executive Officer Jeff Tkach said at the event that he's excited to bring Rodale's international philosophy to the Lehigh Valley.
"Through this unique partnership, Phoebe Ministries and Rodale, we'll actually be producing the healthiest, freshest, most nutrient-dense food for the residents of Phoebe," Tkach said.
"Starting with their Chestnut Ridge campus, which is just a few miles to the south of us, as well as the residents in Allentown, just a few miles to the north of us."
Birthplace of organic farming
According to Rodale Institute, organic food farming as we know it was pioneered on the Lower Macungie farm.
The Rodale Institute is named after J.I. Rodale, an early advocate for food purity, as well as a big name in publishing.
Under his company Rodale Inc., he printed magazines such as Prevention and Men's Health, and books including "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore.
Rodale's publishing company was sold to Hearst in 2017.
"I had difficulty getting a farm hand to help me, but I eventually found one... The result for a couple of amateurs, was pretty remarkable."J.I. Rodale, in his autobiography, describing his first experiments with what would now be called organic farming -- occuring on this very farm in Lower Macungie.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Tkach read a passage from Rodale's autobiography that explained the significance of the farm in Lower Macungie.
"The farm that we bought was a most miserable piece of land," Tkach read. "We chose it on account of its location, which little did he know that this would become an incredible location decades later.
"It was a greatly run-down farm due to the poverty of the tenant farmer who ran it before me. There were many dead chickens that had been thrown under the corn cribs."
But Rodale's early experiments in the 1940s with what would now be called organic farming apparently proved successful in turning things around for the farm.
"I had difficulty getting a farm hand to help me," Rodale wrote in his autobiography. "But I eventually found one. Together we used no so-called chemicals such as fertilizers, fertilizers or insecticidal sprays of any kind.
"The result for a couple of amateurs, was pretty remarkable. At harvest time, we brought in wagon load upon wagon load of golden, healthy corn into our cribs."
'Food equity and food justice'
According to the next passage in the autobiography, it was the early, unscientific experiments with organic farming that lead Rodale to start the magazine Organic Gardening and Farming — which remained in publication until 2014.
J.I. Rodale's philosophy, and the history occurring on this farm, Tkach said, are part of the inspiration for launching the new partnership.
Tkach said and Phoebe Ministries President Scott Stevenson, who also was at Wednesday's event, and his team "and our team at Rodale got together here in late winter."
"And we began to conceptualize an idea for how we could take this historic farm and begin thinking about the next chapter for this campus and how we could bring health and food equity and food justice to the Lehigh Valley," Tkach said.
More information is available on the Rodale Institute's website, as well as from Phoebe Ministries.
