We started the farm stand last season in August 2021. We started small and repurposed an old bus shelter at the top of our driveway. Season 2022 will start late next month out at the road again.
The produce is all by donation. There are two reasons for this: one, practically speaking, it’s time consuming to price things out and we’re choosing not to spend our time doing that right now. The second reason is that we are passionate about feeding our community nutritious food. But we know organically-grown local produce is not cheap. So by offering produce by donation, we hope everyone will be encouraged to take what they need. We all gotta eat.
For now, farming is our family’s part time gig. Chris works off the farm and Hannah is a full time mom. We would love to make our living from the farm, but it’s not feasible at this point. Because of that, we‘re only able to be open 3 days a week. This year, we’ll be open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays (and maybe some Mondays with the weekend’s leftover produce).
We farm in the most sustainable way we know. We’re new to farming and still trying to establish our gardens and infrastructure. We’re consistently learning and implementing different practices that are good for our soil & ecosystem. A few buzz words we pay attention to when we seek out learning material include: sustainable, organic, indigenous traditional knowledge, regenerative agriculture, biodynamic, no-till, and permaculture. We read extensively and watch tons of YouTube videos from farmers who are doing what we are/want to be doing. Our commitment to ourselves, our land, and our community is to never use harsh pesticides/herbicides and to always seek out best practices that will care for the earth when growing food. We can’t officially call ourselves an “Organic Farm“ because that takes an expensive certification. It’s cost prohibitive at this stage with a farm our size. But that doesn’t stop us from using organic practices!
In the future, we hope to offer more of everything and offer vegetables year round (we can do that here because of our maritime climate!). We’re also planning to have a CSA starting as early as 2023, but more feasibly 2024. Stay tuned. And we’ll move the farm stand down the driveway so we can expand shelving and have a fridge for perishables. So many cool plans, but for now, we’re committed to growing gradually and sustainably.
Looking forward to seeing many of you again and some for the first time. Cheers!
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