16 years ago Jerry Pisano left his profitable career path as chief financial officer at area hospitals to work in the dirt. “I wanted to play with the big toys,” he laughs, so he switched from spreadsheets to terrain maps, starting his own excavating company. Meanwhile, his wife Martha has for 24 years run her own commercial cleaning business, which currently has about 30 employees, primarily working maintenance contracts for office buildings.
The two entrepreneurs met and married 13 years ago and decided three years later to move to her parents’ farm on Doe Run Station Road east of Coatesville.
“Then we read about this woman in Lancaster who was making her own sheep cheese,” Jerry says. “We were both interested, so Martha went to her seminar and came back with a ram.” Literally. Eight years later, the Pisanos are still at their day jobs—one digging dirt, the other cleaning up dirt—but they also are proud owners of 20 East Friesland variety ewes currently milking and another 10 yearlings. Their Highland Farm provides sheep cheeses and yogurt to area businesses and farmers’ markets. in Coatesville, Pa, 13 July 2008. (Photograph by Jim Graham)
