Our mission is to raise the highest quality, most nutrient-dense pasture-raised food possible—food that nourishes and heals our local community while improving the land and surrounding ecosystem. 

As Mennonites, the three core values of our Anabaptist faith guide how we live, how we treat others, and how we care for the animals and land entrusted to us.

• Jesus is the center of our faith. Following Jesus shapes how we care for every part of God’s creation. We seek to treat our animals with compassion and respect by raising them as they were created to live—outdoors, free to express their natural instincts, eating a species-appropriate diet, and growing at their natural pace. Nothing is rushed simply to make production faster or cheaper.
• Community is the center of our life. For more than 30 years, our family’s regenerative farming practices have built healthier soil, protected clean water, preserved open land, and created habitat for wildlife. These practices produce healthier animals and more nourishing food while strengthening the local community that depends upon this land.
• Reconciliation is the center of our spiritual and farm work. We strive to approach our relationships—with people, animals, and the land—with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and love. We believe good farming should restore what has been damaged and leave the land, our community, and future generations better than we found them.

Tussock Sedge Farm lies within the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people. We recognize that we are only the current caretakers of this land, which has now been farmed by Mennonite families for more than 250 years. The farm as it exists today began nearly 30 years ago, when Henry and Charlotte Rosenberger set out to create a sustainable family farm that would restore the land, protect the surrounding ecology, and preserve open space for future generations.

Over the years, Henry and Charlotte preserved land that might otherwise have been lost to development, planted thousands of trees and shrubs, restored permanent wetlands, and created valuable habitat for wildlife. They introduced 100% grass-fed and grass-finished Red Angus cattle and made rotational grazing, careful animal husbandry, and ecological restoration the foundation of the farm. What began with approximately 80 acres of pasture and hayfields in the 1990s has gradually expanded to nearly 1,000 acres today.

Preserving this much farmland in the suburbs of Philadelphia is an important part of our mission. We also believe that a healthy local food system depends upon farmers supporting one another. That is why we provide a long-term lease on part of our land to Blooming Glen Farm, a neighboring organic CSA vegetable farm. Together, these efforts help protect farmland from development and ensure that our community continues to have access to high-quality, nutrient-dense local food.

Today, Henry and Charlotte’s youngest daughter, Tonya, and her husband, Sean, manage the farm’s day-to-day operations. Together with our dedicated team, we divide our time among animal care, pasture management, hay production, mechanical repairs, order fulfillment, customer service, and the many administrative responsibilities required to keep a working farm running 365 days a year.

Before working full-time on the farm, Tonya spent 15 years as a registered nurse in emergency-room and hospice care, while Sean worked in information technology, project management, and website design. Those experiences continue to shape how we approach animal care, business planning, customer service, and the daily challenges of running the farm. Ranching is more than our livelihood—it is our passion and the work we believe God has called us to do. In everything, we seek to honor and glorify Him.

Farming runs deeply through both sides of our family. Tonya’s ancestors were among the early Mennonite settlers of this area and farmed here for generations, while Sean’s family worked the red clay of rural Georgia throughout much of the twentieth century. We are grateful to continue that heritage, and we hope the farming legacy we are building today will be carried forward by our children in the years ahead.

Our approach is simple: care for the animals, restore the land, and treat both with the utmost respect. Animals flourish when they live outdoors, breathe fresh air, move freely, and express the instincts with which they were created. Because every species has different needs, we do not believe in forcing animals into a standardized production system. Instead, we provide each one with the environment, diet, time, and attentive care it needs to thrive.

Cattle are at the heart of our farm and have shaped the way we care for all our animals and land. As ruminants, cattle and sheep are designed to eat grass—not grain—and ours spend the growing season rotationally grazing fresh pasture. We have raised 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef for nearly three decades, continually refining our grazing and finishing practices to produce exceptional marbling, tenderness, and deep beef flavor. Our heritage-breed pigs live outdoors, where they can graze, root, explore, and wallow, while our chickens and turkeys forage through pasture for grass, clover, seeds, insects, and worms. Their supplemental feed is made from organic ingredients without corn or soy. Across the farm, we do not use antibiotics, added hormones, or vaccines, and our pastures and hayfields remain free from herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, and other chemical sprays.

When processing time comes, we work with trusted, small-scale local artisan butchers who share our commitment to careful handling and quality over speed or volume. Our beef is dry-aged to develop greater tenderness and flavor, and all of our regularly stocked meat is carefully cut, vacuum sealed, and flash frozen to preserve it at peak freshness. The only exception is our seasonal Thanksgiving turkeys, which are offered fresh and never frozen.

We believe labels and certifications alone can never tell the whole story. Standards can contain loopholes, and the same words can mean very different things from one farm to another. Instead, we choose transparency. We want our customers to understand where their food comes from, how the animals were raised, what they were fed, and why we make the choices we do. Our farming practices reflect our beliefs about how animals, land, and people should be treated.

We work with nature rather than againstit, allowing the seasons, soil, weather, and needs of the animals to guide our daily decisions. Our animals grow much more slowly than animals raised in conventional confinement systems, and we consider that time essential. Our beef cattle are raised on grass for more than 36 months, often up to 42 months, allowing them to develop the fine-grained marbling, tenderness, and deep beef flavor that cannot be rushed. Once you taste the difference, you understand why we believe that all great things take time.