The large motor coach with socially-distanced participants for UMES Extension’s Small Farm Conference took a turn into the modest parking lot of Chesterfield Heirloom’s Farm Stand on November 5 for a tour of the unique market garden in downtown Pittsville, Maryland. The Barfield family proprietors, Matt, Stefanie and Grayson, were the afternoon’s hosts. Below are some answers to questions that inquiring minds may find interesting.
What is your specialty?
The unique, the exotic, the heirloom vegetables that you really can’t find anywhere that offer a flavorful past. Because of their culinary traits, they have withstood the test of time!
Why heirlooms?
Heirlooms are just better – the flavor of an heirloom vegetable will always win in a blind tasting against a hybrid or GMO vegetable. The taste is exactly the way that nature intended it to be from decades and even centuries before our time.
How has the business evolved?
What began as a hobby garden has evolved into a 12-acre farm that produces heirloom vegetables all year long to supply local restaurants, the Camden Avenue Farmers Market and our very own store—The Farm Stand.
Currently, the Farm Stand is open all year long on Fridays from 12-6 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. We have added eight season extension structures that have allowed us to support all of our revenue sources and grow in the neighborhood of 20 different vegetables throughout the winter season.
How many local restaurants do you serve?
We serve eight core restaurants from Willards, Maryland to Lewes, Delaware.
What type of products are the restaurant chefs interested in—organic, heirloom, taste, variety, uniqueness?
All of the above, but really the big priority is taste. Each year, we work with our restaurants to plan the coming season and what they would like to have grown. Our goal is to find the most unique produce with the absolute best flavor.
How about your regulars at the farmers market?
Taste, of course! When we began farming nearly 12 years ago, organic produce was the rage, but it has migrated over to local produce taking the lead in terms of preference.
What innovative methods have you come up with?
It’s difficult to pinpoint one “innovative method,” but what we can tell you is that we strive to find solutions every day to make our farm the most efficient and productive possible. For instance, we make updates to the wash & pack station based on feedback from our team members. What makes it flow better? What updates can we make to ensure that they can work smarter—not harder?
What are your successes?
- Growing exotic vegetables like fresh ginger and turmeric.
- Extending our growing season with the high tunnels.
- Maintaining a strong group of wholesale clients through the years and one pesky pandemic.
- Opening the Farm Stand to allow a new shopping resource for consumers.
What have been your biggest challenges?
The weather continues to be our biggest challenge. Extreme fluctuations in the weather patterns may prevent our team from planting, which results in a crop that is planted too late and may not produce. On the flip side, the weather may prevent us from harvesting in a timely manner, which could result in a wasted harvest. There are days when Mother Nature is on our side, but there have been some days and weeks that we could have certainly done without!
How does the Vegetable Club Card work and where did the idea come from?
The Vegetable Club is essentially our version of a CSA. Years ago, we offered a traditional CSA program that stretched for X number of weeks during the summer season. We partnered with three local drop sites and customers could pick-up their CSA boxes on a specific day each week. What we found was that some of our customers couldn’t pick-up each week or they didn’t like the element of surprise that a CSA box offers, so we created the Vegetable Club—a pre-paid vegetable gift card that customers can use to purchase what they want, when they want and at the quantities they want. It’s a super flexible program and each time our Club Members load funds onto their card, we add a bonus 10% veggie cash to the card. Like a traditional CSA, the pre-paid card allows us to use the funds in advance to purchase our growing materials.
How has the pandemic helped or hurt the business?
Like most small businesses, the pandemic really caught us off-guard and we had to pivot quickly in order to keep producing. The Farm Stand is in a building that was already on the property that was utilized for storage. The pandemic was the positive force that motivated us to quickly renovate the building in order to open the store and offer an additional outlet for our customers to purchase quality and locally produced goods without having to make multiple stops to do so.
Was it then that you added vendors to your farm stand?
Yes, exactly. When we opened the doors in March 2020, we began with about eight producer partners. Now we offer products from over 35 producers who are local to our area and stretch across Maryland and into Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. The Farm Stand has truly become a one-stop-shop offering our farm produce, dairy products, local meats, honey, bread, jams and jellies, pasta, grains, ice cream, coffee and a whole lot more.
For more on Chesterfield Heirlooms visit: https://chesterfieldheirlooms.com/
