About

Long before there was a local foods movement, when farm-to-table wasn't in style and TV dinners were all the rage, Sandra Kay Miller wanted to raise livestock. But it wasn't until she moved across the country to attend college in southern California she had the opportunity to live and work on cattle, horse, citrus and avocado ranches in the Ojai Valley.

During her twenty years in California, she was involved in the food industry--grocery stores, restaurants, delis, a catering business and even writing a food column for the Los Angeles Times. But the dream of having her own farm continued to smolder until in 2000 when she purchased a woefully run-down Civil War era farm in Cumberland County near where she had grown up and much of her family still lived.

Over the years the trash and abandoned vehicles have been hauled off, the property fenced in sections to support rotational grazing and browsing and the fertility restored to the soil with the natural rhythms of livestock, poultry and cover cropping.

Today, Painted Hand Farm provides naturally & humanely raised livestock, including goats, veal, beef, poultry, pork and lamb to farmers markets and restaurants in the mid-Atlantic region as well as directly from the farm for ethnic holidays and through a CSA.