Kretschmann Farm | The Story Continues | Tiny Seed Farm

Tiny Seed Farm grows on the Kretschmann Family Organic Farm — 257 Zeigler Road, Rochester, Pennsylvania. Same fields, same commitment, next generation.

Fifty years of organic farming on this land

In 1979, after renting two farms in Westmoreland County, Don and Becky Kretschmann bought an 80-acre farm on Zeigler Road, built in 1871, and raised their three daughters there. From the very first season they farmed it organically — decades before most people knew the word.

They sold at farmers markets and wholesale to schools, hospitals, and restaurants (Becky likes to say the Steelers' success in those years owed something to the tomatoes the players ate at St. Vincent's training camp). Then, in 1993, they tried something almost nobody in Western Pennsylvania had done: they started a Community Supported Agriculture program — neighbors buying a share of the harvest in advance, boxes delivered to their doors. It grew by word of mouth until the CSA was the farm, hundreds of families strong.

When fire destroyed the original farmhouse in 1989, their neighbors showed up — to salvage, to tear down, to rebuild, for ten years. Becky said it best: "When terrible things happen, it brings out the good in people."

The handoff

In 2020, Don and Becky began their retirement and went looking — in their words, as told in the New Sewickley Township newsletter — for "someone as passionate about organic farming as they were."

That someone was Todd Wilson — a former Kretschmann Farm employee who had gone from researching our broken food system at the University of Pittsburgh to working these very fields. Todd founded Tiny Seed Farm, and in 2026 brought it home to Zeigler Road.

The land itself is protected forever: the Kretschmanns enrolled all 80 acres in Pennsylvania's Farmland Preservation Program, so this ground will never be anything but a farm.

What continues

• Certified-organic vegetables — OEFFA certified, grown in the same soil Don and Becky built for fifty years
• A CSA — the model they pioneered here in 1993, with weekly boxes, neighborhood stops across Pittsburgh, and home delivery
• Cut flowers, seedlings, and farmers markets — plus a few things that are new

Were you a Kretschmann Farm member?

Your tradition has a home here. Many of your fellow members are already with us — some pick up their boxes right at the farm, same as always.

See this season's CSA shares →

Source: "Kretschmann Farm," New Sewickley Township Newsletter, Fall 2026, p. 7.