About Wholesome Harvest
The roots of Wholesome Harvest were really put down over twenty years ago when as a boy I could not get enough of agriculture. At that time it was any kind of agriculture I could be around. I spent most of my time at either of my grandparents or uncles farms working (playing) and learning about farming, animals, and so forth. As a high school student I spent most of my time explaining how schooling was taking the most important years of my life away from building my farm. I must have really been a handful.
Just out of high school I tried several different businesses to make enough money to buy our farm and start. I made pool tables for a while, and then we tried cabinets, then custom wood working. I learned a lot of tough lessons about business as well as how hard it is to succeed in small business. Along the way we were introduced to the word organic and spent tons of time researching and studying organics and farming methods in general. We also got introduced to the term CSA. The CSA model fit us perfectly, direct sales to the customer, a connection to the consumer which seemed to be totally lost, as well as some stability in farming.
Six years ago we started Wholesome Harvest. The initial plan was not to start farming right away but to simply sell organic grocery products from our store. Around the same time we received a real blessing when a family member helped us out with providing land to start our adventure. Our plan immediately morphed into starting a CSA, selling produce at farmers markets, and selling our produce in our store along with grocery items. After a season or two of running the farm and the store together our farm had grown too large to manage both the store and farm together. We closed the store and changed focus solely to the farm. Our farm has grown to include hundreds of members in our csa program and large number of friends, family, and workers helping out to produce our crops.
I always seem to have big dreams and aspirations. It is more a matter of convincing those around me that they are good ideas. As we move forward over the next few years we hope to add to our flock of chickens and be able to offer a full blown egg share as part of our csa. We also want to be able to offer a canned vegetables and fruits share. A little farther down the road we would like to begin milking a few brown swiss cows to sell raw milk. There is also the hope of reopening our store at some point down the road.