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Fifth-generation growers blending lavender and heritage on our farm in Madison County, New York.
Our farming roots run five generations deep. They started when Kendal Cody first broke ground on the family farm in Fenner, New York. In 1870, he hung a sign that read Cody Farms, and that sign is still there today, on the barn where the family still works the land.
Kendal's era was a different one for American agriculture: work animals, hand tools, milk hauled in cans to the creamery, and rows of hops shipped in wooden boxes to breweries all across New York State. His name is still on those old shipping tags. Cazenovia and its neighbors were the hops capital of the country back then, and the Cody family was part of that story from the start.
Kendal's farm became his son's farm. His son's farm became his grandson's. Names passed down the tree, and so did the land, and so did a set of standards you don't put on paper: you don't overwork the soil, you don't rush the animals, you don't take shortcuts that show up two seasons later. The crops shifted with the times. Hops came and went with Prohibition. Dairy stayed. The Cody family stayed rooted in Central New York, working the same corner of Madison County that Kendal first cleared.
Same family. Same soil.
Same standards. Different crop.
Fast forward more than 150 years. Bill Cody is the fifth generation to farm this soil, and Monica married into the family. When they took over their part of the family operation, they saw an opportunity to bring something new to the land while honoring everything that came before. Cody Farms, our sibling brand, still tends the family dairy heritage in Fenner. And here at Farmstead 1868, on our fields just up the road in Cazenovia, we grow lavender.
The name Farmstead 1868 carries a number that predates the barn sign by two years, a marker to a beginning we still honor. Every product we make carries that number as a promise to keep going. We are not a lavender startup dropped into the countryside for aesthetics. We are farmers whose great-great-grandparents worked this land, choosing to grow something that reflects both where we come from and where we're going.
The lavender you smell in a Farmstead 1868 candle was grown in soil Kendal would recognize. The care in every batch reflects a work ethic that got passed down before either of us knew what to call it. The reason we're still here in year 158 is the same reason we plan to be here in year 200: this is not a business we built on top of a farm. It's a farm that built us.
There is a deep-down human need to grow something, to breathe fresh air, to taste food made from real ingredients. That need doesn't disappear when life gets busy. It just goes quiet. It waits until Sunday morning, or until the first breath of a garden in July, or until you open a jar of something made by hand and remember what real smells like.
Farmstead 1868 exists to keep that need loud.
Every product we make, every candle poured, every jar of cream filled, every bunch of dried lavender we tie with twine, is meant to bring a piece of the farm into your daily life. Not as luxury. Not as aspiration. As permission to slow down for the ninety seconds it takes to light a candle, or the two minutes it takes to work body cream into your hands, or the moment of quiet you steal by making yourself a cup of lavender tea after everyone else has gone to bed.
We believe in quality over quantity because that's what our land teaches us. A lavender plant grows on its own schedule. You cannot rush it. You cannot fake it. You can respect it, tend it, harvest it at the right window, and process it with care, and if you do those things right, the finished product carries every bit of that attention into someone else's home.
We are not scaling to be everywhere. We are not chasing a trend. We are choosing to make small batches of things that work, that smell right, that ground you in something older than convenience. Farm-to-shelf, hand-to-hand, one honest product at a time.
If that's the pace you want in your daily life, we made this for you.
Every product we sell traces back to a field we can walk to. That's not marketing language. That's the operating standard we've held ourselves to since the first row of lavender went in the ground. Here's what "made with care" means in practice, in six ways we can prove.
Farmed using sustainable, soil-friendly practices. No synthetic shortcuts. We grow lavender the way our great-grandparents grew everything: with attention, patience, and the assumption that what goes into the soil goes into everything the soil produces.
Every candle is poured by hand at the White House Shoppe. Every jar of body cream is filled and labeled one at a time. Small batches mean we catch things a machine would miss, and it means the person who made your product cared whether it turned out right.
No fillers. No synthetic fragrances. No preservatives that only exist to extend shelf life. Whole plant ingredients, real oils, and formulations that smell like the field they came from, not a perfume counter approximation of it.
We hold NY State Grown & Certified status for lavender, verified by New York's rigorous farm standards program. It's a signal to you that our claims about where and how we grow are backed by third-party review, not just a farm's word.
Bill runs the fields with the same standards that earned Cody Farms Madison County's Conservation Farm of the Year in 2020. In 2025, Madison County named Farmstead 1868 Small Business of the Year. Two recognitions, one operating principle: take care of the land and it takes care of you.
We touch every part of what we sell. From the first seedling to the label on the finished jar, our hands are on it. No white-label products. No outsourced formulation. If it has Farmstead 1868 on it, we made it here.
See the fields, meet the team, and pick your own flowers during peak bloom.
Plan a visit →Farm life, harvest days, and behind-the-scenes moments from the fields.
Follow on Instagram →Bath, body, home, and pantry, made on our land in Cazenovia.
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