Peter R. Crooke

Director of Farming

Bucks County farms shaped Peter’s character from a young age – he and his five brothers raised hogs and Holsteins at the Buckingham dairy their dad’s parents began in the early-1960s and slung hay bales on Plumsteadville acreage their mother’s ancestors have stewarded since 1809. Trained as an elementary educator, Peter taught for two years in Pennsylvania public schools before leading youth and urban ministry at his Doylestown home church and in Philadelphia and Atlanta. He later caught the farming bug further afield, helping coordinate a large vegetables CSA near Portland, Oregon and apprenticing in orchards, berries, flowers, compost, and veggies in Santa Cruz, California. He even spent part of a winter turning tropical tricks at a nonprofit farm on the leeward side of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i. Returning east in 2016, he hopped the Delaware to manage The Lawrenceville School’s Big Red Farm for two years, then worked in the Trenton gardens of Isles, Inc. He lives in Ewing, NJ, growing produce, compost, and flowers with his wife and 2 sons. A seasoned farmer, teacher, and community leader, Peter connects with youth, congregations, neighbors, and strangers around our deepest roots of social change: land, farming, & food! He earned a BS in Education at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Theological Studies at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, and a Certificate in Ecological Horticulture at the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology. Peter has shepherded Snipes Farm’s Seed-To-Fork summer youth program since 2018 and now leads varied production, projects, and people as Director of Farming. He enjoys coffee, many cuisines, bread baking, singing, songwriting, picture books, bicycling, and his sweet tooth.