“Business is booming behind David and Ty Zemelsky’s peach house on Fowler Avenue.
Here at Star Light Gardens, cream-colored butterflies flutter between pink and purple zinnias growing in long rows. Tall sunflowers, vibrantly yellow against a backdrop of green, stretch nearby. Insects hum and a variety of vegetables – long shoots of garlic, heirloom tomatoes sweet enough to eat straight from the vine, spicy greens exploding with flavor – are cultivated organically in a cluster of five enormous greenhouses and surrounding land.
The Zemelskys didn’t have plans to farm when they bought their house and the adjacent land in the town’s historic district. But eight years ago, when David and his wife, Ty, who is an artist, were looking to start a business out of their home, the two decided to return the land to its roots.
Their story, one of a quiet and hard-working life in the outdoors, is not unique. Instead, their small farm – with its devoted customer base and budding success – represents a growing movement.
Star Light Gardens is part of a new wave of farming. The Zemelskys have prospered in a struggling industry by carving for themselves a place in a mounting market for natural and specialized foods.”
— Read more in The Hartford Courant, August 19, 2007