Frog Song Organics
With its location in the center of Florida, Frog Song Organics is able to provide nutritious certified-organic foods to a range of clients around the Sunshine State. Fortunately, that includes the Bradenton and Sarasota area.
Frog Song was launched in 2012 by husband-and-wife team John Bitter and Amy Van Scoik, who both studied at the University of Florida. They spent some time doing farm-related work in California and wanted to open a farm there, but that would have been a pricey venture. That led them to return home to their native state. They also saw that Florida had an under-met need for sustainable agriculture, Van Scoik says.
Their farm is in Hawthorne, a rural area about 30 minutes from the University of Florida. The two of them started on six acres and gradually expanded; they now produce food on more than 40 acres.
Just what can you get from Frog Song Organics? Glad you asked, as it’s a pretty long list. Season dependent, you can enjoy carrots (“People try our carrots and say they’re really special,” Van Scoik says), fresh herbs, kale, strawberries, peaches, persimmons, turnips, watermelon radishes, and lots more. In fact, they produce about 80 different crops. “We say it’s from arugula to zucchini,” Van Scoik says.
They also raise more than 40 pastured Red Wattle and Old Spot pigs on site and more than 200 hens. Their pasture-raised pork receives soy-free feed, and are never kept indoors. “It produces a different quality pork that’s almost red. It’s really delicious,” says Van Scoik.
One major feature of Frog Song is its community-supported agriculture (CSA) harvest subscription program. Members get a weekly order full of in-season goodies. There’s also an online ordering site if you want additional items or if you’re not part of the CSA. Van Scoik, Bitter, and their staff visit farmers’ markets in Gainesville, the Orlando area, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine to deliver their CSA products and sell produce and other products.
They also have CSA members in St. Petersburg, Tampa, Bradenton, and Sarasota, and they distribute CSA shares every Wednesday at Beagle Bay Organics (a fermented foods producer) and at the home residence of a member in Sarasota. They would like to find additional pickup sites in Bradenton or Sarasota to expand the local market.
Frog Song now has about 140 CSA members around the state.
Frog Song also supplies its items to several restaurants throughout Florida, including Indigenous in Sarasota, Highball & Harvest at The Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes in Orlando, and Rue Saint Marc in Jacksonville.
You can also visit Frog Song a couple of days out of the year during its strawberry U-pick dates in late March, April, and May. Farm tours are also available on those dates.
When people visit Frog Song, they are usually shocked to find out just how much work goes into farming, Van Scoik says. “This isn’t unskilled labor at all. You can learn how to farm, but it takes a lot of dedication,” she explains. She mentions hand labor, crop rotation, and data management as just some of the work involved with farming that isn’t immediately visible to the consumer. To keep the farm humming along, there’s a team of more than 30 people.
There is extra work involved with running a certified organic farm, but Bitter and Van Scoik are committed to running a business that respects human, ecological, and economic resources.
