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| Mailing Address: | 1818 Wendmere Lane, Fort Wayne, IN 46825 |
| Email: | farm@yoderfarm.com |
Shirley Meighen and Larry Yoder, brother and sister, currently manage the farm. Shirley specializes in grounds care, maintains the records and handles much of the retail sales. Larry is trained as a botanist. (PhD Indiana University 1972) Early in his career he taught at Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne and then at The Ohio State University Marion where he established a prairie restoration on that campus. In 1981 he joined the faculty at Goshen College where he first served as executive director of Goshen College's Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center and later as assistant to the executive director of the Center until his retirement and appointment as associate professor emeritus in 2007.
Land Acknowledgement: The Yoder Farm is located on the traditional lands of the Potowatomi, Miami, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia, and Peoria peoples. We honor with gratitude this land and those who served it before us. We believe that the land is not ours to own, but is a community to live within and serve.
Located in northern Allen County, Indiana, our 200-acre farm lies on the margin of the Wabash moraine in the land of the Cedar Creek. Nearby is the Cedar Creek tunnel valley and the Eel River sluiceway. Glacial evidence on the farm includes gravel deposits, banks of glacial lakes, and kettle features that resulted from the melting of large ice blocks.
Much of the farm is maintained as tallgrass prairie, a dynamic ecosystem native to the Midwest. These prairies are composed of both native grasses and forbes (flowering plants), creating a diverse habitat. Prairie grasses are warm season grasses, meaning that they can withstand the heat and drought conditions of late summer due to deep root systems and the ability to retain water. Prairies provide several important ecological benefits, including habitat for pollinators and small mammals, water capture and filtration, and carbon sequestration. Prairies flourish under cyclic conditions of disturbance and regrowth, so our prairies are burned on a several year rotation in the fall or early spring.
| Friends of the Cedar Creek |
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| Indiana Maple Syrup Association |
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| Acres Land Trust |
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