Bear Path Compost owners Mark Melnik, from left, Mike Mahar and Peter Melnik. Gazette/Dan Little photo.
Published April 20, 2024 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
“Compost is not soil, but it makes your soil better,” says Mike Mahar, owner of Bear Path Compost in Whately. “It adds life to it. If you’re going to take something out of the soil by harvesting, you should put something back in, and compost is perfect for that.”
Bear Path Compost takes waste materials from other farms and turns them into compost that’s certified for organic use. They sell to local farmers and landscapers, but most of their customers are home gardeners looking to give their plants a nutrient boost.
Bear Path Compost owners Mark Melnik, from left, Mike Mahar and Peter Melnik. Gazette/Dan Little photo.
Mahar didn’t grow up in the compost business, but he did grow up next door to it. “Bill Obear, the previous owner of Bear Path Compost, was our neighbor,” he explains. “Since my brother Pete and I grew up on dairy farm, we knew how to operate farm equipment, so he used to pay us a little cash to come help out.”
When Obear wanted to get out of the business, Mahar was a natural successor. The two ran things together for a year, then Mahar took over. All the while, Mahar never stopped raising cows. He and his brother still run Poplar Hill Farm on his family’s land, where instead of a dairy herd, they now raise beef cattle. This year he’s also taken on new business partners for Bear Path: Peter and Mark Melnik, who also own and operate Bar-Way Farm, a dairy farm in Deerfield.
In the farm and garden world, compost is like WD40 or a flathead screwdriver – one simple tool that’s good for a lot of things. The main reason compost is so useful and versatile is its high amounts of organic matter, meaning materials that are or once were alive.
Windrows of compost at Bear Path Compost in Whately. Gazette/Dan Little photo.
Most organic matter in compost is already decomposing, gently releasing nutrients back into the soil. Usually, this infusion of fertility isn’t as potent as adding fertilizer, but the nutrients stay in the soil longer and are less likely to wash away.
Compost also supports a rich community of soil organisms, the benefits of which include better soil structure, nutrient cycling, and aeration, which allows plants to root deep and still give their roots access to oxygen. Adding compost also helps the soil absorb more water and release it more slowly. In dry years, this sponge effect helps farmers and gardeners water more efficiently. In wet years, more absorption capacity means less soil erosion or drowned roots.
As a soil amendment for farm and garden beds, Mahar suggests a baseline mix of 1 part compost to 3 parts soil. Compost can also be spread as topdressing on lawns or garden beds for an added nutrient boost, and it can even be used as mulch.
Mark Melnik adds a load of compost into a screening machine on at Bear Path Compost in Whately. Gazette/Dan Little photo
“Bark mulch is a better weed suppressor than compost, but as microbes break it down, they use up nitrogen,” Mahar explains. “Basically, bark mulch robs your garden of nutrients, whereas compost mulches and adds them back. We’ve started selling blends of bark mulch and compost, which allow you to have the best of both worlds.”
Mulch and compost mixes of 3:1 or 1:1 are available now. Starting soon, Bear Path Compost will also offer loam and compost blends in the same proportions.
At the most basic level, compost is made by mixing high nitrogen materials with high carbon materials and ensuring there’s enough moisture and oxygen for the composting process to occur. For high nitrogen ingredients, Bear Path mostly uses manure from the Melnik’s cows at Bar-Way Farm. For high carbon ingredients, they turn to spent shavings from horse shows at the Three County Fairgrounds in Northampton.
Mark Melnik delivers a load of compost into a customer’s truck bed. Gazette/Dan Little photo.
“Bar-Way manure is a natural fit (because of the Melnik’s involvement), and the fairgrounds generates a tremendous amount of bedding,” says Mahar. “Both work great for us because they’re very clean – hardly any trash or other contamination.”
Technically, it’s microbes that transform the mixture into finished compost. The farmer’s job is to create conditions where these microbes thrive. Getting the ratio of nitrogen to carbon is important, as is aerating piles, which they do by turning them by tractor every few weeks.
One sign of composting success is heat, generated by microbial activity, which speeds up decomposition and denatures most pathogens. As an added precaution, Bear Path also adds high carbon wood ash to bind and neutralize anything not denatured by the heat. After about nine months of turning, they’re ready to call it compost.
On average, Bear Path makes almost 3,000 cubic yards per year – about the volume of an Olympic sized swimming pool. They sell it by the cubic yard ($70 each) and other increments as small as a five-gallon bucket ($3.50 each).
From left, Mark Melnik, Mike Mahar and Peter Melnik. Gazette/Dan Little photo
“Since so many of our customers are home gardeners, we probably sell 100 to 150 yards through five-gallon buckets,” says Mahar. “That is a lot of five-gallon buckets.”
When buying compost, Mahar encourages customers to first use the calculator on their website, which shows how many cubic yards are needed for their project. From there, anyone buying smaller amounts can come fill their own buckets any time at Bear Path’s facility at 134 Webber Road in Whatley. From 9am to 12pm on Saturdays, anyone purchasing larger amounts can also have their trucks and trailers loaded up free of charge, or they can call to request another pick up time. Bear Path will also deliver any order, no matter how small. The delivery fee is hourly, based on travel time.
Bear Path Compost’s address, contact details, prices, and self-serve instructions are all available on their website: bearpathcompost.com. Their website also has a considerable amount of information on the science and uses of compost, in general and for their products specifically.
Typically, Bear Path runs out of finished compost by mid-June as most farmers and gardeners move from prep to plant care. Until then, they are a source of “black gold” for many a green thumb around the Valley.
Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). As the growing season begins, visit buylocalfood.org to learn more about local farms and garden centers near you.
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This week on the #LocalHeroSpotlight, Kaliis, Monte, and Phil visit The Zuzgos at Twenty Acres Farm and Greenhouses, a hidden gem of a farm stand on River Rd in Hadley. They raise tons of plants perfect for your flower or veggie garden. And they’ve been doing it a while, so they know a thing or two about quality!
Published Saturday April 13, 2024 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Every piece of farmland has its strengths and weaknesses. Often, the most successful farmers are those that learn to see their land’s potential clearly and build a business around it.
Steven Cowley, owner of Gwydyr Farm in Southampton
Gwydyr Farm in Southampton doesn’t have the kind of fertile floodplain soil best for growing vegetables, but their land can grow one thing really well: grass.
“People can’t eat grass,” says Steven Cowley, one of Gwydyr’s current farmers, “but cows can, and people like to eat cows. And our locally raised meat complements all the produce other farms in the Valley can grow.”
Cowley has been farming for 10 years on his family’s land, which he recently bought from the elder generation. At the start, he was literally just farming grass, cutting and selling hay for livestock and horse farms. Then 3 years ago Gwydyr Farm started raising beef cattle, and now are adding pasture-raised lamb and chicken to what they sell.
The farm’s slow and steady expansion comes as Cowley and his farming partner Caroline Holladay experiment with new farming projects while maintaining the old. All the while, both are still working full-time off the farm at Libertas Academy Charter School in Springfield, where Cowley teaches history and Holladay teaches math.
“Every school break is farm time, and many nights and weekends too,” says Cowley. It’s a lot of work, but breaks in the academic calendar make it manageable. Meanwhile, teaching provides a stable income alongside the farm.
Says Holladay, “we realized that owning a livestock farm wasn’t something I could jump right into financially, so for a while teaching has helped pay the bills. But we’re both looking forward to expanding the farm until it isn’t just something we do for summers and breaks.”
Caroline Holladay of Gwydyr Farm with Luna, their Norwegian Fjord horse (Peter Camyre photo)
Gwydyr Farm was originally named by Cowley’s father, a large animal vet whose expertise still comes in handy. Gwydyr is a Welsh word meaning “wild land,” which Cowley thinks is a fitting description.
“We go from really heavy soils to lighter stony soils,” he says. Some pastures have remained open for years, others are in various stages of returning to forest.
As farming operations expand, some of the wilder areas are getting tamed. Cowley and Holladay are orchestrating it, the animals do most of the heavy lifting.
“They’re our own army of land clearing tools,” says Cowley, “and they love to eat.”
The beef cattle make the first pass, the farmers rotating them through the landscape using a mobile electric fence. They clear brush as they eat and fertilize the soil with their droppings, encouraging the grassland species that are best for grazing and haying to grow back stronger. This improves the productivity of the very land that feeds them and sustains the hay business.
Gwydyr Farm photo
Cowley started his herd with different breeds but has since fallen in love with Devon cattle, one of the original breeds introduced to North America by European settlers. They’re a hardy, dual purpose breed sometimes raised for meat or for milk, and they aren’t picky about what they eat.
“Often with newer breeds, people are trying to breed them back towards eating grass instead of grain,” he explains. “But Devons have always thrived on grass. And as a history teacher, having a breed used here back in the 1600s means a lot to me.”
After the cattle, chickens follow in mobile coops. Says Holladay, “chickens are omnivores, eating grass, bugs and grubs and turning that into a source of fertility with their manure. We use them to target areas that need more fertility while creating another delicious product for us to sell.”
Sheep recently joined the grazing rotation too, creating yet another source of income from their fields. They’ve been careful to only introduce animals who can graze on land less suitable for haying and who tend to eat different species. That protects their haying revenue and makes sure pastures don’t get depleted. Yet from a business standpoint, offering more variety is good for them and their customers, since fans of local grass-fed beef are often interested in other pasture-raised meat too.
Gwydyr Farm photo
“From my experience, raising animals on pasture really affects the quality and taste of the meat,” Cowley says. “Grass-fed beef cattle are raised longer than those in a feedlot, which means better marbling and richer color. And our beef is also vacuum-sealed and frozen immediately after it’s butchered, which is great for quality and convenience.”
Plus, as Holladay points out, “because we’re a small farm, we can really customize orders to exactly what people want. We can sell you the exact cut of lamb you want as the centerpiece for your fancy dinner party, or have your steaks cut a specific way.”
In the future, Cowley and Holladay hope to sell through local stores and farmers markets, but for now, all sales are straight from the farm. Pricing and availability are updated often on Gwydyr Farm’s Facebook page, and customers can contact them via the phone and email listed there.
Cuts of beef and lamb are available now, and whole chickens will be available again later this summer. Beef prices are set to encourage larger orders, including 20% off orders over $100 and an even bigger discount for buying over 10 pounds of ground beef.
Gwydyr Farm photo
Cowley and Holladay farm for a lot of reasons. On a day-to-day basis, they both love working with animals and seeing the tangible results of their work. On a deeper level, Cowley says Gwydyr Farm helps root him in this moment in time as well as the local history that precedes him.
“The way I farm, I’m not someone who buys all new equipment,” he says. “I love taking old farm equipment and making it work again. I love rehabilitating overgrown land and making it productive again. And I love restoring the connection between land, food and people.”
“The sense of community and meaning that comes from the Valley feeding itself are both valuable things,” he adds. “We had a stronger sense of community and more local food in the past, and I think both are something we’re trying to get back to.”
Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). To learn more about local farms and where to buy local food near you, visit buylocalfood.org.
General manager Spencer Gowan of Great Falls Aquaculture
This week, Jacob takes Monte and Kaliis to visit Great Falls Aquaculture and the 180,000 barramundi raised there. They talk with general manager Spencer Gowan and hatchery manager Walker Wright-Moore about:
Terry Ragasa and CISA Board Member German Alvarado. Steph Craig photo
Terry and Susan Ragasa opened Sutter Meats, a whole-animal butcher shop located in Northampton, 10 years ago. They both had unrelated careers in New York before Terry started developing his interest in the culinary world and found himself wowed by what local farms were producing. After apprenticing and working in various butcher shops, the couple decided to start their own business, and they looked around for a place that had lots of excellent local farms and a customer base that cared enough about local farms and quality food to support the butcher shop they envisioned. They chose the Valley (a true compliment!).
It sounds simple – Sutter Meats buys whole animals from local farms, their expert butchers process them, and customers come and buy the meat – win for the farms and the customers they serve! But whole animal butchery is kind of a puzzle, and it requires a lot of careful planning, and an ongoing commitment to education and good communication with customers. Here’s an example: one cow has 2 tenderloins, 16 strip steaks, 1 hanger steak (which their neighbor at Ernie’s garage has dibs on), and 200 pounds of ground beef. Or another: chickens usually only have 2 wings – that makes it hard for them to capitalize on Super Bowl weekend.
But these challenges aren’t a deficit — they’re what make Sutter Meats what it is, and all of it results in a lot of delicious creativity: coming up with recipes for unique hamburger patties, skewers, sausages, deli meats, turning offal into dog treats, rendering fat, making bone broth, selling truly delicious daily sandwiches and, most importantly, showing customers other equally tasty options and cuts of meat that they may not be familiar with. They recently started offering a butcher club, a monthly box featuring a variety of cuts along with information about the meat and recipes.
Talking with Terry, the thing that comes through is excitement about sharing everything behind the meat with their customers: the story of the farms they source from, how the animals are cared for there, the many wonderful cuts of meat and preparations that are not as well-known, how all of this contributes to keeping farm systems intact and in place. They’re bursting with new ideas and possibilities, and completely dedicated to the daily work of making high-quality, carefully raised local meat available to their community – so for that, CISA is pleased to present Sutter Meats with a 2024 Local Hero Award.
Find them here!
Marty’s Local, owned by Nick Martinelli, is a food distribution company with a dedicated focus on local and regional sourcing.
Steph Craig photo
Marty’s functions in a part of our local food system that is absolutely essential but largely invisible to the general public (except inasmuch as we might see a truck making deliveries). We’re lucky to have thriving farmers’ markets, farm stands, and CSAs in our region, but the reality is that direct sales from farm to consumer make up only about 10% of Massachusetts farm sales. That means that 90% of the food grown by Massachusetts farms is winding its way through more complex channels from farm to table – and Marty’s Local smooths that complexity out, bridging the gaps and getting more local food onto more local peoples’ plates.
In 2015, Nick Martinelli loaded a station wagon with carrots from Kitchen Garden Farm and einkorn flour from upstate New York and made his very first deliveries. He saw that there was a gap to fill in connecting local farms with local buyers, sourcing super fresh, high quality farm products and then making it effortless for wholesale buyers to choose those products.
Today, Marty’s Local sources from over 100 local farms and specialty food producers, and sells to customers in about a 100 mile radius of their warehouse in South Deerfield. They buy from farms of all sizes, taking over the administrative, marketing, and delivery work that farmers are otherwise doing on top of their daily labors of growing food. They keep order minimums low so their customers include small farm stands, grocers, and restaurants whose order volumes might otherwise exclude them from being able to get delivery from individual farms or from large distributors – many of which are important sources of food for their communities. And they have set up systems that enable them to sell to schools, with all the specific needs that school purchasers have.
Everything they offer is source-identified so buyers, like Smith College Dining, can choose the Winter Moon Roots or Our Family Farms milk when ordering and then be sure that that is what they are getting. Most distribution companies don’t do that, and the biggest ones really can’t – it just requires too complex and too closely managed a system. This transparency is a form of built-in accountability to their farm partners, to the buyers who rely on them, and ultimately the eaters who otherwise wouldn’t be able to see the thread connecting their plate to the origin farm.
Nick emphasizes the relationships that are the foundation of Marty’s Local – the trust and long-term commitments that go both ways with the farmers they buy from and the purchasers they sell to. So for building a complicated, technical, logistics business that also has deep commitments and serious heart, CISA is proud to present a 2024 Local Hero Award to Marty’s Local.
Diane and Rob Rollins, 2024 Local Hero Awardees. Steph Craig photo.
D & R Farm is owned by Rob and Diane Rollins. Rob grew up on a turkey farm in East Longmeadow, and Diane grew up on a self-sustaining farm in Canada. They both had other careers, and then decided to return to their farming roots on their couple of acres in Hampden in 2009. Today they are farming that small patch at home along with 108 additional rented acres in town, and with that land, they do A LOT: vegetables, corn, eggs, meat chickens and turkeys, greenhouse crops, baked goods, and various prepared foods like soup and meat pies. And until this year, they’ve being doing it all on their own, except for occasional help from friends and family!
Still, that big a range of products isn’t uncommon for farms in our region. What really makes D & R Farm stand out is the way they approach getting all that food to peoples’ tables, and making it available for people of all income levels. D & R Farm was an early adopter of HIP, the Healthy Incentives Program, and they serve as the anchor produce farm at multiple Hampden County farmers’ markets – this winter, for example at, the Holyoke Winter Farmers’ market, and they’ll be at 4 markets this summer in Holyoke, Chicopee, and Springfield. They are farm partners on CISA’s Senior FarmShare program, providing fresh produce throughout each summer to low-income seniors through the Palmer and Hampden Senior Centers. And they set up a mobile farmstand at the housing authority-owned facilities in Brimfield and Munson, largely reaching seniors and people with limited mobility who live there.
This all reflects a real commitment to meeting the needs of their customers and their larger communities, and a willingness to try out different markets. The depth of these relationships, and their importance, is reflected in the fact that a number of people who represent various markets and community connections came to see Rob and Diane receive this award and cheer them on.
Talking with Rob and Diane, it’s clear that they take a lot of pride in growing and high-quality food that will bring customers back to them, and in meeting customers where they are – helping to bridge mobility and financial barriers to make food more available to everyone. For all of this, CISA is honored to present a 2024 Local Hero award to D & R Farm.
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Diane and Robert Rollins of D & R Farm in Hampden join the crew to talk about the love they put into farming AND all the ways they make local food accessible in their community, including how:
In recognition of their achievements over the last two decades, CISA was excited to present them with a Local Hero award at our 2024 annual meeting!
Samaita (Sam) Newell is a first-generation immigrant from India. She met Jared Newell as a student in the five-college area. Following graduation and getting married, the young couple dreamed of buying a farm with a store.
Without collateral, their dreams of buying land pushed farming beyond their reach. Newell says, “We needed to buy a business with real estate attached to it, so we could collateralize it. We were in our mid-20s when we started looking at Fruit Fair. We didn’t have experience with commercial real estate and jumped in half blind.”
Fruit Fair opened as a family-owned farm store in Chicopee in 1936 that enjoyed a loyal following until the owner’s passing around the year 2000. An interim owner took over, running it on a convenience store model until the Newells bought it in late 2019.
The renovations were dramatic. Newell continues, “Only later, we realized how bad of shape the store was in. We figured out it needed a lot of updating and maintenance. Since then, we’ve been fixing and updating fixtures, appliances, and the building.”
The couple replaced the floors and repaired the roof of the store. They added new signs that evoke the original signs. They added to the store layout a hot food buffet and a cooler for beer and wine.
In 2019, Chicopee Center met the criteria of being a food desert, as defined through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This reflects an area with limited access to affordable and nutritious food for reasons like income and transportation.
The larger supermarkets in Chicopee are not a walkable distance, four miles away. Bus routes, timing, and policy regarding how shopping bags must fit on the passenger’s lap or under the seat can be a deterrent for grocery shopping by bus.
As the young couple added new, efficient refrigerator cases, they brought in produce from local farms and vastly increased the varieties and quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables available to people in the community.
In April 2020, the world shut down for COVID-19. Public transit stopped, and the supply chain came to a halt. She notes, “We asked ourselves, how do we manage this? We decided to fill the gaps in our supply chain locally.” Because the Newells had already begun sourcing from local businesses, the couple leaned into those relationships. They got creative and added sourcing local goods like paper goods and packaging, filling their store while the shelves of the big box stores were empty.
Newell adds, “We rented a U-Haul and picked up food and goods to sell in the store. We sourced paper towels and toilet paper from Mansfield Paper in West Springfield, and we got carbon neutral food packaging material from a company in Holyoke. We never imagined there was a local company for paper goods.”
The surreal time of COVID-19 inspired creativity and collaboration with other businesses. Newell says, “Businesses surfaced that we never knew for sourcing. People bought the local food and products we offered during COVID. We just rode that wave and never let it go. As bad as COVID was, it was a lifeline for Fruit Fair.”
Hyperlocal sourcing through Chicopee Provisions supplies the store for the local Polish community with Millie’s Pierogi, Blue Seal Kielbasa, and Domin’s horseradish. The store offers a large array of Spanish ingredients and products for the local Puerto Rican community as well. The store purchases from local bakeries, including Chmura’s Rye Bread from Indian Orchard, Bernadino’s rolls, and pastry from Koffee Kup Bakery, both in Chicopee.
During the year, Marty’s Local supplies Fruit Fair with local products. As the growing season unfolds, the store gets deliveries directly from farms on full pallets. The season starts with fiddleheads from Joe Czajkowski Farm and continues with microgreens from Dusty Goat Farm, corn from Sapowsky Farm, mushrooms from Mycoterra Farm, and many more.
The store accepts SNAP/EBT. The program has a monthly dollar limit to these benefits for each user. While working the register, Newell observed that customers would load up their shopping carts, but when the cost approached their limit, they would put back all the fresh produce and meat—the more expensive items on the belt—in favor of the cheaper packaged, canned, or boxed goods.
Newell and her husband asked, “What can we do so people eat healthier? They can get canned goods at a food pantry, but they can’t get fresh food.” She continues, “We started artificially subsidizing the produce, meat, and deli departments so people can afford to buy fresh food. We’ve seen sales of fresh food more than triple since we first started. The sales from grocery, frozen, beer and wine offset the labor-intensive fresh foods.”
Through Fruit Fair’s offerings, Chicopee Center is no longer labelled a food desert by the USDA, and Sam and Jared Newell intend to keep it that way. To further their mission, the couple is building greenhouses on top of their store. The site work and easement, solar study, and engineering is complete.
Two years ago, the couple applied for and received a Food Security Infrastructure Grant (FSIG) for the greenhouses; however, the price of steel has doubled since the project began. If needed, they will use beds on the roof this summer until they can fund the greenhouses they envision. They plan a dumbwaiter to move products from the roof to the store.
Motivation for growing food on the roof comes from expanding access to healthy food. Newell continues, “Our store has the highest percentage in Massachusetts of SNAP/EBT sales, at 34%. This reflects our artificially lowering the price of fresh food to make it affordable, but we could help customers stretch their food budgets if we could grow fresh produce and apply for and accept HIP, so the people worried about getting the tomato can buy it.”
The goal is to have at least two of the greenhouses up by winter, extending the growing season. They envision offering CSA-style boxes of local food, including local produce from their greenhouses, local farms, and local producers. Newell concludes, “What brings me satisfaction, is that people with no other option to buy fresh food, can come to our store and eat healthy.”
Lisa Goodrich is Communications Coordinator for Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, (CISA). Fruit Fair is open daily, 7am to 9pm at 398 Front Street in Chicopee. To learn more about Fruit Fair including their weekly specials, check fruitfair.net, Facebook, and Instagram.
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This week on the Fabulous 413’s Local Hero Spotlight, Naomi Szymonik of Deere Creek Farm in Granby talks to Monte, Kaliis, and Phil about:
And more!
Published March 23, 2024 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
By Jacob Nelson
A knock on the door interrupts the conversation. Someone is here to trade cheese for Real Pickles’ fermented veggies.
Kate Hunter, a marketing coordinator, assistant sales manager, and worker-owner at Real Pickles, gets up to confirm the terms. Out the door go cases of their Organic Sauerkraut, Organic Ginger Carrots, Organic Beets, and Organic Turmeric Kraut. The return? Several pounds of raw milk, 100% grass-fed cheese from Chase Hill Farm in Warwick to be shared among staff. It’s a moment that captures the essence of Real Pickles — a company committed to cooperation, keeping things local, and really good food.
Shane Carroll, Gillis MacDougall, Marie Maude Joseph, Victor Signore, Katie Desi, and Andy VanAssche, package Kimchi at Real Pickles in Greenfield. Carol Lollis/Daily Hampshire Gazette photo.
“Real Pickles is a worker-owned co-op making pickles and ferments with produce that’s all organic and regionally grown,” Hunter explains. “A big part of our mission is supporting the regional food system, so we’ve committed to only purchasing veggies from farms in the Northeast (defined as New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania) and only selling in that region too.”
The business began in 2001 when founder Dan Rosenberg made his first commercial batches of lacto-fermented pickles in the kitchen of a friend’s restaurant. The cucumbers were freshly picked from Chamutka Farm in Whately, which still supplies Real Pickles today.
Rosenberg was inspired by the health benefits of fermented vegetables and the idea that food businesses could invigorate the local food economy if they committed to buying and selling closer to home.
The next year, Real Pickles started working out of the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center in Greenfield, run by the Franklin County CDC. By 2009 they outgrew the shared kitchen and moved into a newly purchased building across the street.
Kate Hunter, assistant manager in sales and marketing and a worker owner with Victor Signore, vegetable coordinator and worker owner, at Real Pickles in Greenfield. Carol Lollis-Daily Hampshire Gazette photo
Over the next four years business tripled, and in 2013 Rosenberg and his team made the big decision to restructure Real Pickles as a worker-owned cooperative. This democratized how the business was governed and allowed employees to literally buy into the business and its mission, earning dividends for their hard work.
Today Real Pickles employs 22 people. Fourteen are established worker owners, with two more on the way. They make a dozen different products, sell to over 700 stores, and this year aim to use almost a half a million pounds of produce.
The man whose job it is to secure all that produce is vegetable coordinator Victor Signore. Like Hunter, he is also a worker-owner and votes on the co-op’s board of directors.
Because Real Pickles always uses fresh produce grown nearby, “our production season runs with the growing season,” Signore says. “We process vegetables starting in June with cucumbers, mixing in carrots, beets and cabbage as the summer goes on, and continuing through fall and winter with storage crops.”
After being washed, diced, sliced, and spiced, veggies are packed into large food grade drums and sealed with an airlock to ferment. For most products, fermentation takes about three months. From there, ferments are packed into smaller containers for sale (usually 16-ounce glass jars that customers are encouraged to reuse) and shipped out to stores.
Packaging Kimchi at Real Pickles in Greenfield. Carol Lollis/Daily Hampshire Gazette photo.
Production slows over the winter, stopping once all the produce in Real Pickles’ large storage area is used up. Then attention turns to packing products for sale and, for Signore, lining up where next year’s veggies will come from.
Because of how much produce they use and their commitment to buy from Northeast farms, Real Pickles can’t wait until harvest time to buy what they need. That would leave far too much to chance. Instead, they make agreements with farmers ahead of time to grow produce for them specifically.
This arrangement works for both sides, explains Signore. “For us, it gives the best guarantee of getting exactly what we need,” he says. “And farmers get financial security, knowing ahead of time that if they can grow it, we will buy it.”
To begin, Real Pickles determines their sales and production goals. Using those numbers, “I start contacting the roster of local farms we buy from,” says Signore. “I ask what amount of different crops they think they can grow, and what their harvest times might be. By March, after many back and forth discussions, the full picture is pretty much in place.”
When Signore started at Real Pickles in 2020, they worked with nine or 10 farms. This year, they have agreements with 15 farms. Some are longtime suppliers, like Red Fire Farm in Montague and Granby, Atlas Farm in Deerfield, and their original partner Chamutka Farm. Others are newer as Real Pickles increases production and diversifies who they work with, like Mountain View Farm in Easthampton, Lakeside Organics in Hadley, and more suppliers in Vermont and New York.
Buying produce from specific farms does increase the chance of a bad growing season disrupting Real Pickles’ plans. “We and the farms are taking a risk together,” Signore acknowledges, “and climate change is increasing that risk.”
To counteract this, Signore is always working on a plan B, checking in with other farms to see where excess produce might be bought in a pinch. “We’ve also diversified our farm partners geographically,” he says. “If carrots do poorly in the Valley for instance, we can get carrots from Vermont or New York.”
Kimchi at Real Pickles in Greenfield. Carol Lollis/Daily Hampshire Gazette photo.
So far, Real Pickle’s business model has done well for farms they work with, for customers looking for organic ferments and to vote with their dollar for a strong regional food system, and for its worker-owners.
“Most of us gravitated to Real Pickles wanting to do something for our community,” says Signore. “We want to support local farmers, give people healthy, local organic products, and keep money, jobs, and food local.”
Adds Hunter, “It’s about healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people. Those goals are intertwined in our mission and support each other.”
It’s safe to say that Real Pickles is also deeply intertwined with other businesses in our local food community. Partnerships with local farms are one example. Their staff’s penchant for bartering is another — for cheese, sourdough bread from Rise Above Bakery in Greenfield, and food from other businesses too.
“It’s great to be friendly with Chase Hill Farm, and now they carry our ferments in their farm store,” says Hunter. “That’s the awesome part of Real Pickles — working with other local businesses and helping each other out.”
“That and working with a bunch of foodies,” she adds. “We make the best grilled cheese sandwich office lunches for days with a rainbow of ferments on top.”
Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). For more stories and info about local farms and food businesses near you, visit buylocalfood.org.
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Phil, Monte, and Kaliis talk with marketing director Jen Adams, produce manager Andy Ladas, and co-owner Kelly Lannon from Atkins Farm Country Market about:
Visit Atkins for everything you’d want at a grocery store, and plenty of local treats besides!