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Molly and Ted Bartlett offer
unusual options, such as eggs, flowers or hand-knit sweaters,
as part of their CSA farm. |
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Molly
and Ted Bartlett
Silver Creek Farm
Hiram, Ohio
Updated in 2005
Summary of Operation
15 to 20 acres of fresh market vegetables
Transplants grown in greenhouse, including herbs and heirloom vegetables
100-member community supported agriculture (CSA) operation
600-700 blueberry bushes
Flock of 100 sheep
1,000 chickens and 50-75 turkeys annually
Problems Addressed
Better connecting to consumers. Molly Bartlett sold
her produce successfully to large wholesale markets and upscale
Cleveland restaurants for years before she decided there had to
be a better way. The backbreaking work seemed to bring few rewards
of the sort she had sought when she began farming. Her goal was
to produce good food for people who appreciated the “craft” behind
farming.
“We weren’t doing what we always thought we’d do:
make a direct connection to a local body of consumers in our community,”
Bartlett says.
Undertaking community supported agriculture.
Bartlett and her husband, Ted, mulled over how to best market their
small farm and decided to focus their efforts locally. Starting
a community supported agriculture (CSA) operation seemed a great
way to connect with their customers while bringing in a steady income.
CSA involves consumers as shareholders in the farm in exchange for
fresh produce every week during the season.
Background
Bartlett brought to the farm 15 years of experience
in marketing, having worked for both a major Cleveland department
store and a family-owned design business. The jobs served her well;
at the time, she and Ted did not know they would run the most retail-oriented
farm in northeast Ohio.
The Bartletts tested their green thumbs for 12 years
before buying Silver Creek Farm. They bought a small farm when both
worked full time — Molly in retail, Ted as a philosophy professor
— and raised a bounty of vegetables for themselves and their five
children. They also grew sweet corn, which the kids sold at a roadside
stand, and invited their friends to garden on the plot.
Bartlett wanted an enterprise she could share with
Ted, and she wanted to translate her growing affinity with the nation’s
environmental movement into action. In 1987, they were ready to
become full-fledged farmers and purchased a 75-acre tract near Hiram.
Located about 40 miles from both Cleveland and Akron, the farm was
ideally situated for direct-marketing opportunities.
“Farming seemed to be a very natural aspect of our
interest in the environment,” she says. From the first, they grew
their crops and animals organically.
Focal Point of Operation
—Education
“We grow the whole gamut,” Bartlett says, including
20 varieties of greens, squash, heirloom tomatoes, oriental vegetables,
blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb, carrots and potatoes. Much of
that goes to their 100 CSA shareholders, with the remainder sold
at their on-site farmstand.
Silver Creek Farm, Ohio’s oldest CSA enterprise, offers
its members a plethora of options. They can buy shares including
eggs, chicken, lamb, flowers and/or hand-knit sweaters. Such choices
add more income while helping other organic farmers with whom Bartlett
partners to broaden the possibilities.
The Bartletts grow herb and heirloom vegetable transplants
in their greenhouse and raise 100 lambs a year under their own meat
label for direct sales. They raise between 800 and 900 meat chickens,
which are processed by a neighboring Amish family and sold at the
farm. They also offer brown and green eggs from heirloom hens.
They practice a four-year rotation that makes good
use of their 20 acres of fertile ground. Annually, 10 or 12 acres
are devoted to vegetables, with the remaining ground in cover crops.
They compost their sheep and poultry manure before spreading it
on the fields. Some compost is saved for the greenhouse as a soil
medium. “It’s our most important secret,” Bartlett says.
If compost is their production secret, then bringing
the customer to the farm is their best marketing strategy. In the
beginning, the Bartletts planned to grow vegetables and sell their
produce wholesale and directly to restaurants in Cleveland. Bartlett
joined an Ohio Cooperative Extension Service project, “It’s Fresher
From Ohio,” that sought to examine the possibilities for direct
farm marketing. The project gave Bartlett the opportunity to meet
a group of Cleveland chefs, and both soon came to the natural conclusion
that she could sell them fresh, locally produced food for their
upscale menus.
In 1992, they took a new tack. Rather than delivering
to retailers, the Bartletts would draw customers to farmers markets
and the farm itself through CSA. CSA fit perfectly with Bartlett’s
desire to teach others about good food. Gradually, they stopped
doing the farmers markets to concentrate all the elements — production,
harvest and distribution — at the farm.
“One of the most important issues to me is helping
to educate people about food sources,” Bartlett says. “We wanted
to make our farm a place where people could come and learn about
food production.”
The Bartletts have hosted groups from every corner
—schoolchildren by the busload, foreign visitors, numerous farmer
tours and friends and neighbors attending chef-prepared dinners.
They received a SARE grant to teach the old art of canning to CSA
members. Bartlett has taught classes on making dilly beans, herbal
vinegar, canned tomatoes and beer, and publishes a weekly newsletter
to generate interest in the harvest, complete with recipes. In 1999,
they received another SARE grant to hold a farm festival, giving
farmers a venue to sell their produce as well as to conduct “how-to”
workshops of their choice.
Economics and Profitability
Silver Creek Farm’s CSA enterprise has proven more
profitable than other direct-marketing channels such as selling
to restaurants and farmers markets. Centering sales on the farm
makes most financial sense, Bartlett says.
“In the big picture, CSA’ers are more loyal than any
other market,” she says. “But I don’t want to have all my eggs in
one basket, so we continue with other options.”
The Bartletts have never advertised their CSA. They
have no trouble selling shares to 100 subscribers, with a return
rate near 85 percent eager to pay $375 for a working share or $475
for a full share.
“We’re profitable,” Bartlett asserts, although it
wasn’t always that way. They never expected to turn a profit in
the early years, especially with building and equipment expenses
and new enterprises such as raising Lincoln sheep. For years, the
Bartletts sustained the farm with revenue from other sources — Molly’s
work as a potter and Ted’s university teaching career.
“We wouldn’t have been able to take the risk we took
in farming without those jobs,” she says. “The sheep didn’t pay
for themselves for four years. You can’t start any business without
knowing that it’s risky, and having capital from other things helped
us limp along.”
The CSA operation went far toward making them profitable.
Knowing they’d get an influx of $45,000 cash each May became a great
security blanket, allowing them to buy seed, new equipment and extra
labor.
Environmental Benefits
Like any organic farmer, Bartlett has devised a
multi-tiered plan to manage pests without pesticides. With lots
of observation, she learned to plant certain crops — such as arugula
and bok choy, which attract flea beetles in the spring — at different
times to avoid seasonal pests. Rotation remains key, as does using
products such as fabrics that blanket crops in a protective cover.
They regularly plant a mix of vetch and rye covers, along with other
green manure crops.“Our customers aren’t interested in looking at
flea beetle-damaged produce so we don’t grow arugula in the spring,”
she says. “Produce should look really good; I have art in my background
and I want things to look pretty.”
Before the Bartletts bought the property, it was farmed
by tenant farmers with a common Ohio rotation of continuous corn.
The first time Bartlett walked across the field, she literally lost
a boot in the mud. Today, it’s a vastly different place, something
she attributes to cover crops, spreading compost and aggressive
crop rotation. “Yields have increased, soil tilth has improved and
the populations of beneficial insects are ever present, as are numerous
species of birds,” she says.
Community and Quality
of Life Benefits
Beyond Bartlett’s 100 shareholders, Cleveland and
northeast Ohio residents have diverse opportunities to visit Silver
Creek Farm. The farm stand is open Wednesday through Saturday, and
Bartlett advertises the availability of tours, picnics and slide
shows in her newsletter.
“I want people to come to a farm and see where their
food is grown and how it’s grown,” Bartlett says. “I want them to
bring a picnic lunch and sit under a tree and eat — or wander the
farm — and have respect for the people who grow their food.”
As for her family, Bartlett feels a life of hard work
in the open air making and preparing food has offered “the best”
to her children, now grown and off the farm. Always interested in
food, Bartlett finds cooking with farm-fresh or farm-preserved produce
a wonderful beginning to any menu.
“Good food tends to make healthy, happy people,” she
says. “This type of work is so very satisfying, and our kids have
a deep appreciation for good food and a good lifestyle.”
Finally, her type of farming has created opportunities
to meet “ingenious other farmers and grand people of all stripes.”
Transition Advice
From experience, Bartlett advises a diversified
income stream. “Have some off-farm skills or job skills you can
do right from the farm to generate income,” she says.
CSA farmers need to develop “people skills” to relate
to the community. Bartlett also advises looking for opportunities
to team with other farmers, with whom she co-sells products.
“You can work together to buy hay or sell another
farmer’s eggs at your market,” she says.
The Future
Despite how far they’ve come, Bartlett poses more
marketing challenges to herself, such as how to attract an even
more local customer base to the market. “It is still easier to attract
people from the city and suburbs than our neighbors,” she says.
She and Ted hope to be able to restructure the CSA
enterprise so they can slowly hand over the reins to a core group
of members. Looking down the road toward retirement, they want to
have more time for family, their new nonprofit educational center
and, perhaps most important, quiet walks in the fields and woods.
 Profile
written by Valerie Berton
For more information:
Silver Creek Farm
P.O. Box 126, 7097 Allyn Road
Hiram, OH 44234, (330) 569-3487
silvrcf@aol.com
Editor’s note: In 2002, Molly and Ted Bartlett took
“an earlier-than-expected leap toward retirement,” ending much of
their commercial farming operation. After decades of farming, they
wanted to spend more time with their family and travel. To that end,
they sold their flock of ewes and disbanded their CSA enterprise.
They still grow chickens and vegetables for themselves and local market
customers. The Bartletts are working to put a conservation easement
on their farm to ensure its continued use as an agricultural site
far into the future.
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