The Team
Our Story
A Family Farm Just Outside Louisa, Virginia
From a first-generation start in 2017 to pasture-raised lamb, grass-fed beef, and raw honey today — here's the story behind Bibb Forest Farm and the people who run it.
Jesse Roberts
Horticulturalist/ Farm manager
Jesse has a background in Dutch horticulture and business management and fell in love with farm life working on a fruit and nut tree nursery in the Netherlands. Farming at BFF is his passion and he loves the connection between health and the care of the soil! Jesse does web design work in the winter!
Cassidy Roberts
Horticulturalist/ Farm manager
Cassidy is Jesse’s wife and the farm’s master flower picker. She manages our home gardens and has a deep love for eating organically grown food, which keeps our family rooted in why we farm the way we do.
Cass also runs her own healing center in Charlottesville – OverSoul Healing Center
Tom Roberts
Farmer/Project Manager
Tom grew up around farm life, is a hard worker and loves a good challenge. He spearheads our construction projects and loves mushroom hunting.
Shari Roberts
Marketing/Logistics
Shari, originally a northerner from Pittsburgh, is a big reason Jesse found farming thanks to her drive to eat real food! Shari loves to help at the farm and handles marketing and order logistics.
Regenerative Grazing – Grass Fed Beef & Grass-fed Lamb
At BFF we also raise beef and lamb for proteins for now separately from vegetable production. As we grow we hope to incorporate the two and reduce our need to buy in organic amendments. For now, we can make a decent amount of compost from their winter bedding and manures.
Why Grassfed and finished?
While it may still be debated as to if grass-fed is better for you than grain-finished beef or lamb, we think it’s the most natural way to raise animals.
As nature intended, our animals graze grasses and legumes during the growing season and we cut hay (rolled up, dry grasses) to feed in the winter. Our animals get plenty of exercises and are healthy animals. I did not eat much meat before I started farming, just thinking about the welfare of the animals offered in the stores. Now, I try to incorporate a decent amount of meat in my diet because they taste delicious and I know these animals lived happily and healthily in our fields.
Tell me more about BFF!
BFF is a first-generation farm started in 2017. Jesse Roberts, (that’s me) is the resident horticulturist and farm manager. My parents started down the rabbit hole of what is wrong with our food when my mom was battling colon cancer. She is now in remission.
After leaving home, Jesse first studied biology in Virginia. As a student-athlete, trying to eat organic became a challenge due to the added expense and Jesse started to research the differences between conventional and organic farming. This became a 4-year study into understanding the balance of chemistry, biology, and physical science involved in producing healthy crops. For three of those years, he studied horticulture and business management in the Netherlands.
