Small Farms Offer Growers Clients Big Rewards

Small Farms

Offer Growers & Clients Big Rewards

By Gina Gallucci-White Photos by Turner Photography Studio

Andrew Grimm

After spending months growing and nurturing plants, Dandelion and Rust Farm owner Laura Genello loves seeing the final product in the hands of customers. “It is so great to have somebody send me a photo of a meal they made with vegetables that I grew,” she says. “That is such a cool thing. I think that contact you have with the people who are actually using and enjoying the products is really nice.”

Small farms can offer a wide variety of locally grown produce, along with strong relationships with customers.

Genello was first drawn to agriculture about 15 years ago during an apprenticeship at a Rhode Island farm where she learned about planting, weeding and harvesting to using equipment and keeping financial records.

“I didn’t grow up on a farm or anything like that,” she says. “I have always enjoyed being outside and working with my hands. When I started studying environmental science, I realized that agriculture is a field where so many things that interested me really connected. …The unexpected thing that came out of (the apprenticeship) is I really fell in love with the actual work itself and the actual process of farming.”

Genello has spent years in food education including her current work as a Farms to Schools program specialist with Baltimore City Public Schools. While getting her master’s degree in organic agriculture several years ago, she realized she missed the hands-on aspects of agriculture. In 2019, she founded her Myersville-based farm, focusing on growing the unusual like aromatic culinary herbs and funky fruits.

“I really like to cook so I love trying to play around with different varieties that you would not find in the grocery store,” Genello says. “You can find green zucchini anywhere. …But I think one of the advantages to shopping local is that with local farms you can get things that you might not be able to find at your local grocery store.” Her most popular products include varieties of tomatoes, ginger and melons.

The farm’s name comes from Genello’s love of nature, mixed with her husband’s career as a metal worker. “Dandelions, I think, are very under appreciated flowers that most people just think of as weeds, but they are actually hugely useful as medicinal plants and great pollinator plants,” she says. “Both dandelions and rust are nature’s way of saying ‘You think you can win but you can’t.’” New this year is a pick-your-own flower Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Genello plans to have different flower colors and textures for people to play around with for bouquets, including snapdragons, dahlias, sunflowers and zinnias. “There is something really nice about freshly picked flowers,” she says.

Andrew Grimm has always been interested in gardening, fascinated by watching plants grow. His wife, Katie, grew up on a farm, but not one focused on produce. For years, the couple had a garden. “It got to the point where we were producing way more than we could consume,” she says. They started giving it away “and everyone was raving about it.” After being encouraged by

Laura Genello family and friends, they began selling at the Myersville Farmers Market, their most popular items include lettuce, carrots, garlic, onions and strawberries. Patrons also love their eggs which come from over 15 different breeds--about 30 to 35 hens.

Location played a role in their farm’s name—A Piece of Harmony, located off Harmony Road and Harmony Cemetery. “Our little piece of property — we thought it was a little piece of harmony and (the name) just felt right,” Katie Grimm says.

Being at the farmers market and talking to customers is Katie Grimm’s favorite part of farming. “It is nice seeing the same friendly faces and getting to know them and their families even to the point where we know what our customers like to eat and what they don’t like to eat.”

Deeper than Money

Andrew Grimm adds, “It is not just a transaction anymore when we have (so many) repeat customers. You really get to learn about them, their family. It is just deeper than a money transaction.” Ben and Heather Sayler started the Walkersville-based Pleasant Hill Produce nearly a decade ago primarily because they wanted to start a business that directly impacted people’s lives. “We think that eating healthy food and having a healthy diet is one of, if not, the most important things you can do for yourself. … We wanted to be able to provide that for people,” he says.

Some of their best sellers include tomatoes, mixed salad greens and garlic. For the third year in a row, they are offering a customizable pay as you go CSA which is one of, if not the only, farm to offer this option to customers. “There is no big up-front cost,” Sayler says. “Members can skip any and all weeks they do not want a share. If they are going on vacation for a month then that is fine. They just put their share on hold. We don’t pack them a box and they do not pay anything for it.”

They also offer home delivery (within 30 miles of the farm) for their CSA participants for a fee. The Saylers provide these options because “we wanted it to be set up where there is no reason for a customer to not join our CSA,” he says. “After doing it for so many years now we looked at all the different reasons why we were not retaining customers year to year. One of the biggest ones were people were getting items in their shares that they didn’t need. So, by offering customization people are getting exactly what they want each week and that has helped our retention tremendously.” They added delivery because in the past some of their locations were not convenient for their customers.

Andrew Grimm checks out salad greens growing in a hoop house on the farm, A Piece of Harmony, that he owns with his wife Katie. The Myersville farm also has over 15 different breeds of chickens that supply customers with eggs.

“We are trying to make ourselves stick out in the marketplaces,” Sayler says. When it comes to being a small farm, there are numerous challenges. “Any time you start a business there is a need for a lot of capital investment and it takes a lot of money to basically build the infrastructure that you need to start a business,” Genello says. “My approach has been to continue working full time while starting a business so I can have an income and use some of that income not only to support myself but also to support some of the investments I need to make.”

Not Enough Hours

The need for more time is also huge. Genello notes small scale agriculture is very labor intensive. “I never feel like there are enough hours in the day,” she says. She works during the day at her full-time job and then comes home to tend the farm for several hours. Andrew Grimm works as a school bus driver and shoes horses while Katie Grimm is a nurse, and they have a young family. “We rest whenever we can but pretty much when we are awake, we are up and moving nonstop,” Katie Grimm says.

Working with Mother Nature can also be difficult. “Sometimes we luck out,” Sayler says. “It is raining now which is great. It is supposed to rain for the next couple of days. We finished all our spring planting on Monday, so we were able to get all our plants in the ground right before this rain came. But sometimes it doesn’t work out like that.”

Genello also notes there can be knowledge challenges as a first-generation farmer. “I can’t fall back on giving my parents a call if I have a question on how to do something,” she says. Sayler says, “Be ready to have failures and learn from them and know you are going to have to adapt a lot.” Being a small farmer means being a jackof-all-trades. “It is a business as well and there is a lot more to it than just growing the food,” he says. “…I have to be the accountant, the electrician, the plumber, the everything around the farm. Growing the food is only half the battle.”

There is also a huge difference between large and small farms. “Most of our sales need to be directly to the customer just because small farms can’t afford to sell all their products at wholesale pricing, so we need to market directly to the consumer and with that there is lots of time and effort to do that,” Sayler says. “We also have to diversify our crops. We couldn’t just grow tomatoes and be able to sell all those tomatoes directly to customers as an end customer.”

Pleasant Hill grows over 80 varieties of vegetables while large farms can grow just one crop over hundreds of acres and market straight to wholesale outlets. This is a challenge, but Sayler also sees a benefit. “Some of these large corporate farms, if their tomato crop fails, they are out of business. With us, if our tomato crop fails, yes, it is going to be very hard on

us but we will likely not lose the farm because of it because we have so many other crops to fall back on.”

Small farmers see many rewards in their work. Genello says, “I love seeing the results of my work, that hands-on process. At the end of every day, you know exactly what you got done because you can look at it…I love also just the mix of working both my body and mind. …I think running a business really requires such a variety of skills that I find it really interesting and challenging.”

Katie Grimm says being outside and not stuck behind a desk is a great benefit to farming. “I like just being with the animals,” she says. “I find them therapeutic.” Because they always have excess produce, she has gotten into canning, dehydrating and freezing. Andrew Grimm says. “It is something that our kids have gotten to see which is a benefit for our family.” Sayler enjoys the relationships with their customers as some have been with them since the beginning nine years ago. “We go to the farmers market, and I remember some of these 9-year-old kids that are coming with their parents when they were babies,” he says. “Being able to grow up and living alongside our customers is awesome.” He also finds joy in harvesting the first tomato. “We put in so much work to baby every single plant for months before they produce and to see that happen and be able to put in the time and effort and work and (handle) all the challenges that come with it and in the end to have a high-quality product for somebody to eat and be healthy, we just love it.”

Ben and Heather Sayler, owners of Pleasant Hill Produce, Walkersville, have had the operation for nearly 10 years. They wanted to start a business that directly impacted people’s lives.