Farm History
Liz and Skip
Wishing Stone Farm has been under the stewardship of Liz Peckham and Skip Paul since 1981. Just married, they started out on their new farm venture with a rototiller and a quarter acre of Bok Choi. In the early years, they were a major force in the organic movement helping found to form NOFA-RI and serving on many multi-state committees and boards as the understanding of what organic meant began to coalesce. As the farm grew they got into the farm stand business and ran that for a decade before switching to marketing their vegetables through CSA, Farmers Markets and Wholesale.
Wishing Stone Farm now manages over forty acres. Since they are organic growers it is not unusual for ten acres or more of their land to be in a fallow or green manure stage for rest and rejuvenation. In the last four year Wishing Stone Farm has been extremely fortunate to be able to rent land from the Little Compton Agricultural Land Trust. With this partnership the farm has had the privilege of working some of the best farmland Little Compton has to offer. It is partnerships like this that hold out great hope for municipalities to actively preserve and sustain the viability and fertility of our protected farmlands and open space in Rhode Island.
The farm is also privileged working the Hathaway Farm another piece held in long-term farm preservation by the Rhode Island branch or The Nature Conservancy.
Liz
Liz Peckham grew up in Little Compton and is the daughter of Albert and Mary Jane Peckham. Her families association with the land goes back five generations! Her family is now mostly involved in their famous ‘Peckhams Greenhouse’ operation although they were still growing vegetables when she was young. Liz’s educational background was at RIT where she specialized in graphic arts. She is the major domo of the CSA room at the home farm and is instrumental in the day-to-day operations of the farm. Her design and placement sensibilities make the members share room a site to behold. Her off time joys are walking the beach with her dog Baxter (a Wheaten Terrier! Of course) and watching her son grow up and her husband (skip) grow old.
Skip
Skip Paul grew up in Washington, D.C.. His late teenage years were spent getting into meditation and starting health food stores in the Denver/Boulder corridor. In his college years he studied music and art but was always involved with the organic movement and help run a number of health food stores in the D.C. area. When Liz and Skip were married, they bought the farm from Marion Walker. The five acres around the house were typically run down from years of silage corn and chemical fertilizers and pesticides. After the initial shock, Skip could see it was the opportunity of a lifetime to develop his knowledge of real organic agriculture. After throwing his first crop of Bok Choi to the neighbors pigs, Skip set about to rebuild the farms soils with green manures and local manures. Within five years, Skip was one of the first designated Rhode Island growers given permission to sell to the old Bread & Circus chain stores. It is a relationship that still exists today, as Wishing Stone Farm is one of the larger Rhode Island vendors still selling to the Whole Foods chain. Be that as it may, Skip’s greatest joy is growing for his CSA members. Nothing gives him more pleasure than seeing members diving into tubs of fresh Arrugala or eating one of his famous greenhouse tomatoes. Skip’s hobbies are playing his mandolin, jamming with his son Silas and playing with Baxter.
Silas
Silas is their eighteen year old son, whose easy going style helps ground his parents. He enjoys helping out on the farm in any way needed from cultivating to driving tractors. He is especially interested in beekeeping and wore his first bee suit at the age of seven. Silas loves music and plays bass guitar and drums. He and his friends are often heard playing into the night from the barn…