After Years of Planning, Alby and Heather Brandon
Build a Farm Market, Bakery and Community-Centered Vision
Alby Brandon first got interested in organic farming in high school, when he learned about and started creating his own compost. Before earning an environmental science degree at the University of Rhode Island he did several stints of WWOOF-ing in Australia, Hawaii, Connecticut and Florida. (That’s working as a volunteer through a global network known variously as Willing Workers on Organic Farms or World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). And before he completed his degree, he had founded Brandon Family Farm.
He leased a 12-acre field in West Kingston, began raising organic strawberries and wowed shoppers with their size and sweetness at the South Kingstown Farmers Market in 2016. And Alby Brandon has never looked back: Through the pandemic, when he helped establish a pre-order collaborative for produce, milk, eggs and chicken, as well as a very popular CSA (there are still 180 customers).
Through the management of the South Kingstown market, from 2019 to January 2026.
Through many successful summers of pick-your-own organic strawberries (again this year in June).
Through experiments with dozens of varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini and so much more.
Through marriage to Heather, a former speech therapist turned organic farmer, in 2022 … and now a daughter, Mabel, born in February.
“Over the years, Alby had developed a plan, if he found the right spot,” Heather says. “He had envisioned a farm store next to the fields, with its own bakery, pick-your-own blueberries, maybe an orchard.”
In 2021, Alby came across such a property, a 10-acre former turf farm, just a mile from the strawberry fields. He made an application through the farmland access program at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management to repurpose the land and was able to purchase it. Since then, he and Heather have built a family home, a large farm store (complete with bakery) and eight greenhouses.
One greenhouse near the store is a shop-in nursery for flowers and herbs; another is used to grow blackberries. One of the greenhouses beyond the fields was used for spring greens. Four of them contain tomatoes and one is devoted to cucumbers; growing indoors makes it much easier to grow the veggies organically, with fewer pests and more control over weather and soil.
The store itself is stocked with two main focuses: to offer organic and local products. If both conditions pertain, even better, but they will always have “options for people,” in Alby’s words. The cooler holds Narragansett Creamery cheeses and yogurt, Baffoni eggs and Wright’s Farm milk. Non-cooler shelves display artisan pasta next to Brandon’s own tomato sauce, Kristen Kreations granola (North Kingstown), Seneca Grain and Bean (New York State), Full Bloom honey (Rhode Island–harvested for a Connecticut apiary).
There are also locally crafted beeswax candles; Brandon Family Farm merch (T’s, sweatshirts, ball caps), turned out by Alby’s parents Neil and Lisa; and house-baked pastries and bread—and ah, the bread!
Alby fulfilled another part of his vision when he found baker Nicole DiBella. Nicole had begun her career in pharmaceutical advertising in New York City, but she’d long had a hankering to bake. She and her husband, a Westerly native, moved to Stonington in the summer of 2021 so that she could go to Johnson & Wales for a degree in baking and pastry.
While there, she worked at Seven Stars Bakery in Providence, did an internship in France and spent a year working at South County Bread. But she yearned to open her own place, and she found it at Brandon Family Farm, where The Bread Box has a prominent space, as the aroma of sourdough breads, from “ancient grains” to lemon blueberry, wafts through the store.
“My commitment to sourdough keeps me challenged,” Nicole admits, “since it’s something else to be thinking about, including seasonal changes to the microbes on the farm.”
Sourdough also fits into Brandon Family Farm’s larger philosophy. “The health benefits of sourdough, such as breaking down carbs, making it easier to digest,” she says, “it feels so aligned with the organic systems that Alby and Heather already have.”
As for the produce coming out of the Liberty Lane fields, Alby says: “We’re not cutting back—we’re planting 40 different things. The produce will sprawl out onto the porch. We’re doing seven plantings of corn, ready late July through the fall.”
And, although he’s learning about such differences as the slope of the land and the water-retention in the soil at the new site, he maintains his irrepressible enthusiasm for trying new things.
“There’s always more to learn, more to experiment with,” Alby says. “That keeps it fun. Having the store, we’re able to be more efficient, when we move the produce less,” he explains, “and we’re able to keep the produce fresher. We also like being able to serve people more than one day a week.”
In addition, the store allows them to be, in Heather’s words, “a local hub for other farms’ products, if they have an overabundance. We want to be a community asset.”
For 10 years, Brandon Family Farm has proven to be just that: from strawberry fields to the farmers market and now to their expansive destination farm and market.
Johnette Rodriguez is a food, travel and arts writer published in Yankee, Saveur, The Boston Globe, SO Rhode Island and The Westerly Sun.
Brandon Family Farm
262 Liberty Lane
Open W–Su. 401.649.1083;
BrandonFamilyFarm.com
Check ahead for seasonal strawberry and blueberry P-Y-O.
Photography credit SueChesterPhotography.com
