Our Farm Needs a Bigger Home.Join the Support Team.

One small berry. One big idea.

Aspen Grove Farm sits in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana, about forty-five minutes south of Missoula. It is one of the only farms in America growing honeyberries — a sweet-tart, deep-purple cousin of the blueberry (you may know it as haskap) that loves mountain winters and tastes like nothing else you've had on toast.

Melissa Allred started the farm in 2018 with a love of growing she picked up as a kid, eating breakfast straight out of her mother's gardens — and from the huge strawberry patch her grandmother grew. Today the farm grows four honeyberry varieties plus strawberries, raspberries, currants, elderberries, and gooseberries, and turns them into small-batch jams, syrups, and sauces in the farm kitchen. In summer, families come out to pick their own. The rest of the year, the self-serve farm stand is open around the clock.

Good Morning America came to visit. NBC Montana called it the largest berry farm in the state. The Missoulian and the Ravalli Republic have told Melissa's story. And now the farm has simply run out of room.

Why now — and why 30 days

Every row on the old property was planted. Every summer, more people showed up to pick than the fields could comfortably hold, and every fall we ran out of fruit before we ran out of customers — with folks asking for strawberries and blackberries we didn't have room to grow. That's a wonderful problem, and it has an obvious answer: a bigger farm.

So we're moving Aspen Grove to a larger piece of ground here in the Bitterroot, at the Johnston-Boshae Farm. The established honeyberry bushes, currants, and other perennials have already made the trip. What the new ground needs now is everything around them: irrigation and infrastructure, new strawberry and blackberry plantings, seed for the vegetable and flower rows, and the farm stand and kitchen to serve it all.

Here's the honest part. Plantings and infrastructure have to go in before the ground freezes for the 2027 season to open on time, and the money has to be in hand by the end of October to make that happen. That's why this campaign runs for exactly 30 days — October 1 through October 30 — and not a day longer.

Our goal is $50,000. This is the rough split. Every reward is priced so that it pays for itself and still leaves most of what you spend in the ground. If we raise more than the goal, the extra goes straight into the farmyard and pavilion.

Crowdfunding platforms take a cut of every dollar and hold the money until the campaign ends. We can't afford either. So we built the campaign right here on the farm's own store: same idea, same reward tiers, same progress bar — but every dollar arrives immediately, nothing is skimmed, and your purchase is protected by the same secure checkout you'd use to buy a jar of jam.

The other difference is a good one for you. On a crowdfunding site, a pledge is a promise. Here, a reward is a real purchase of real goods with a delivery date. Nothing is contingent on hitting the goal; if you back the farm, you get what you backed.

Weather and timing. A Montana winter decides when ground can be worked. If infrastructure slips, planting slips with it — but U-Pick passes are for the 2027 season as a whole, not a specific opening date, and we'll communicate every change to pass holders first.

Plants are living things. The honeyberries and currants have already been transplanted and are settling into their new home. Some may sulk for a season. New strawberries and blackberries take a year to hit their stride, which is why we're planting now, not next spring.

Fulfillment. Jars and boxes are made from fruit already harvested and in the freezer. The only reward that depends on the new farm being open is the season pass itself — and those follow the same terms as the 2027 Founders Passes.

If we fall short of the goal, we grow anyway, just slower, with fewer of the community pieces on day one. Every reward still ships.