About Us

Tony Stirling is the founder of Valley Fresh Harvest. He grew up on a corn and soybean operation in central IL. After graduating from Illinois State University he moved to Princeton, IL and started working in corn research with Pioneer. There he met his wife, Leah, and they bought a farmstead outside of Ladd in 2013. Wanting to diversify their work schedules, Tony took a new job with Illinois FBFM where he gained a lot of business and tax experience. They then started their aquaponics lettuce farm in 2017. In late 2017, Tony met Marty Travis who runs Down at the Farms (DAF) in Fairbury IL. DAF works with 50 plus farmers and sells a lot of farm products to restuarants in mostly Chicagoland but also in Peoria, Bloomington, and Champaign areas.

Working with DAF, Tony was able to start Valley Fresh Harvest in 2022. He has since started to build up a local farmer group in the Illinois Valley area and hopes to continue to build up relations with local farmers so that we can help as many farm families as possible. DAF allows us to fill in holes that we can't get from our local farmers but we hope to continue to get more local farmers in our group so that we can rely less on DAF and more on our local supply!