“Everything my father touches grows,” says Chelsea Manoff as she walks alongside the flower patch of her family’s Bucks County farm, which includes a cidery and popular farm market. Her parents, Gary and Amy Manoff, started the farm in 1984 with the help of Heritage Conservancy, and they have grown it into a beloved staple in their Central Bucks community.
The Manoffs were vanguards of the Farm to Table movement. “When my parents started going to farmers markets, they were growing purple kohlrabi and funky lettuce like mache, and nobody knew what it was, but the chefs knew!” Local chefs shop here, but the culture has caught up.
“I see that as how cider is now, and I hope that in 10, 15 years, maybe everyone will know what an heirloom apple is. As ubiquitous as table wine? Maybe cider will be there.”
With the involvement of Heritage Conservancy on a long-term lease in the 1980s and the sale of the property to the Manoffs in 2020, the family has been able to make long-term investments in the farm property and, more recently, in their craft hard cider business.
Origin Story: Community Connections with Heritage Conservancy
“My dad always wanted to be a farmer,” says Chelsea. Gary and Amy met in high school and married in 1984, the same year they broke ground at Manoff Farms and brought the overgrown peach orchard back to life.
Heritage Conservancy founder Bob Pierson (who served until 1987 as president of what was then called Bucks County Conservancy) played a critical role in connecting the young couple with the property. He helped facilitate a 25-year lease with low interest rates and an option to renegotiate at the 15-year point.
His mentorship and connections to resources and programs helped them invest in the property and bring it back to life as an apple orchard, growing vegetables as the orchard established itself, an almost 10-year process. In the meantime, the couple met other helpful farmers and neighbors at farmers market and found support and mentorship in the community.
Heritage Conservancy placed the land under a conservation easement with Solebury Township to permanently protect it. In fall of 2020, the Conservancy assisted the Manoff family with the purchase of the land.
“There is so much instability in farming to begin with,” says Chelsea. “Moving from stewardship to ownership allowed them to build infrastructure to grow the business.”
The Manoffs’ property is 35 acres, with about 25 planted acres. It is all protected under a conservation easement, protected for generations to come.
The Next Generation of the Farm
“My dad is the horticultural expert,” says Chelsea. “You can tell all his attention goes into that – to make something beautiful and well cared for.” His commitment is about the beauty and care for the land, not a race to productivity.
“This has always been a long-term goal, rather than short-term profitability. It was always the idea to build something sustainable that would be here for generations.”
Chelsea and her brother help run the farm. “Both of us have circled back to this area. There’s a draw here.”
Chelsea did her undergraduate degree in California and fell in love with the Bay Area, though for all of California’s farming, she could not find the fruits she loved from home. She completed a masters at Temple and went abroad, where she met her husband.
They moved back to Bucks County to work on the family farm. “It was a turning point for me where I realized that no matter where you are, sometimes your roots are where you are able to make the most difference.”
“Local is really the driving force for me and my work here at the farm. And the more people that I meet in the area who have a similar mindset, the more it feels like we are at a turning point where something sustainable could come of it.”
Working With What Grows in Bucks County: The Cidery
The Manoffs’ focus now is on fruit: peaches, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, and – of course – a wide variety of apples.
Gary and Amy were inspired by a 2016 trip to England that focused on cidery tours and tastings. They met hard cider makers from around the US. Artisan cider seemed like a perfect next step for the farm, a natural extension of what they were already doing.
Two years later they got their winery license and began bottling and selling their cider. As with farming in their earlier days, the Manoffs have found support from a “community of people who are working to support this industry and are curious to see where it can go.”
Manoff artisanal ciders are complex and nuanced. “Very much like wine,” says Chelsea, “there are heirloom varieties that give so much tannin, acidity, complexity that people can’t get in the grocery store.”
Reimagine is the name of one of Chelsea’s favorite ciders that the Manoff family produces.
“I think that’s one thing we are doing in this country, we are re-imagining the potential. Because apples are one of the biggest crops we grow in Pennsylvania. So all these people are pushing for local – local economy and industry as well as local crops, but apples are the big local crop.”
Visiting Manoff Market Cidery
The Manoff Market and Cidery is open Monday through Saturday (Wednesday through Saturday in winter). In season, the cidery hosts weekly “locals night” happy hours for the community and events that include authors and food trucks. They offer limited U-pick opportunities as well. Learn more here.