Since I’ve been in Virginia I’ve worked at 4 farmers markets in the area; Harrisonburg, Rockbridge, Staunton and Lexington. I went to Harrisonburg and Stuanton with Mountain View Farm Products and Lexington and Rockbridge with Cherry Ridge Farm. Harrisonburg Farmers Market is one of the largest in the Shenendoah Valley area. It’s set up in similar in Ithaca’s since it is also located in a large wooden pavilion. It is open Tuesdays and Saturdays and is a highly competitive market for vendors. The market managers and staff look for unique products and crafts like handmade dog collars, glass blowing and wood carvings. Along with these specialty items, they also have vendors that carry traditional vegetables and produce. Harrisonburg only accepts vendors that sell products that were made or grown directly from their farm. This helps ensure that customers are getting and supporting local products.

Mountain View Farm Products stand at the Harrisonburg Market

Harrisonburg also allows credit transactions because their volunteer booth uses a system where they can swipe credit and debit cards and exchange it for wooden tokens that can then be used as money with the vendors. This system also takes food stamps and then the market matches the amount. For an example, if someone had a ten dollar food stamp, the market would give them another ten and they would have twenty to spend. The market also has a cooking demonstration that offers benefits for low-income individuals if they come and watch it. This demonstration also uses ingredients from the market. I believe that this system is extremely beneficial to people in the community and helps promote healthy eating.

Marketing is very important to farmers markets. Many markets in the area had Facebook pages and used other social media sites to help promote the market, vendors and help increase awareness of the local food movement.

The Rockbridge, Stuanton and Lexington markets are much smaller and are not located in a pavilion or other infrastructure. For these markets the vendors bring tents and set them up in a designated parking lot. They also require all vendors products to be brought and produced directly on their farms.

Some of the markets are very competitive. There is a huge waiting list for the Harrisonburg market and a lot of politics involved. The Lexington market is also pretty picky about the vendors they let in. These systems showed me how important it is to have unique products, plants, produce and crafts. Value added products seemed to sell well because there was an abundance of beautiful produce. Its hard for vendors to compete and most of the markets had set prices for more mainstream produce.

Marketing for the volunteers and organizers of the farmers markets is vital. Marketing for vendors is also extremely important. Set up, product displays and speaking with customers all play pivotal roles in this process. Being friendly, inviting and informative is also important when dealing with customers and I gained experience and confidence in all of these areas. I was also able to meet a lot of wonderfully interesting customers and other vendors.

During the early months of my internship, the region I was in experienced some wacky and unusually wet weather. In late May and June we experienced heavy rain on a daily and weekly basis. Because of this, multiple farms and the community experienced different effects from this. There was major flooding of fields, roads and homes. At times sections of the bottom field at Cherry Ridge Farm were completely submerged in water for days. The rain and flooding created some negatives and positives for the farming community in the area. Some examples of these were that the outside tomato crops get diseases and died and potatoes were rotting in the ground.

Another crop that was greatly effected were the hops at Whipple Creek Farm. In June we realized that some of our plants had downy mildew. Downy mildew produces stunted shoots and yellowed spotting of the leaves. We soon realized after doing a more advanced sweep of the field that the majority of the plants were infected.

Our next mode of action was to completely weed the beds of all the hops and strip all the leaves and new growth about 2 feet up the plant. This was extremely time consuming and labor intensive and took us about a week and a half. In conjunction to this we began using a fungicide called Zerotol to help control this problem. We used a mixture of 2 oz. Zerotol, and a gallon of water. We then used hand sprayers and individually sprayed every plant. This was another job that took a lot of time to complete and was also a health hazard if the person spraying wasn’t wearing the proper protective gear. We continued to spray about twice a week for about the next month and a half. The mildew eventually subsided and seemed to have mostly gotten under control.

The weather continued to be rainy throughout the summer and never seemed to be normal. This spring I took a class about Climate Change and Food Systems and learned about flooding and the problems it might cause our farmers. I feel like I definitely experienced the challenges that a rainy season brings and it helped prepare me for the some of the problems I might encounter later down the road with other jobs I have.

Throughout my internship I was able to work with multiple different farmers and their businesses. One that I spent a lot of time with was Mountain View Farm, a 250 acre dairy farm that also made farm fresh dairy products. In the summer Mountain View Farm milks about 180 of their 200 cows twice a day, during the winter this number decreases. Their cows are grazed and fed a non-GMO grain. The owners, Fred and Christy Huger and their three wonderful kids live and work on the farm. Fred handles and manages the dairy and cows while Christie makes the dairy products. Their business has a great story and has evolved and grown in a short amount of time. Christie originally started making cheese out of their kitchen, then upgraded to a trailer. As demand continued to grow she quit her full time job as an art teacher and decided to make cheeses full time and eventually built a cheese making and cheese aging facility on the farm. They sell and make a variety of different products like hard and soft cheeses, milk, butter and ice cream. All the their hard cheeses are made from unpasteurized milk and because of certain laws have to age it for 60 days. Their soft cheeses and spreads all use pasteurized milk. Mountain View Farm makes a variety of different cheese products like: jumpin’ jack chive, cheddar, feta, gouda, swiss, pimento cheese, mozzarella, fromage blanc and colby. Many of these cheeses have different flavoring added, like herbs or habanero apricot jelly.

During some rainy days I helped make cheese at Mountain View Farms. One day I took the cheese wheels out of the press and put them in a mixture of salt water. I also took cheese from their aging room and dusted off the mold, then painted wax on the bottom and sides. I helped churn, make and package fresh butter, and this butter was amazingly delicious. Everything sold was hand packaged. When we made salted butter I sprinkled in the sea salt then hand stirred it in.

One very interesting business and marketing strategy that Mountain View Farm used was with their product, Meow Milk. This milk was commercially sold as a pet food product because it was hand bottled, lightly pasteurized and non-homogenized. For these reasons it could not be legally sold for humans. Despite this, it was a top selling item.

I also helped make mozzarella which was a delicious process! I stirred the cheese curds, then stacked them to be put in plastic bags and refrigorate overnight. The next day you have to heat up two pots of water, then put the curds in the first pot for a couple minutes, then switch it to the next. Then you take the curds and stretch the mozzarella and form a baseball sized ball. The trickiest part of all this is not eating all the warm and gooey cheese.

I also was able to go to two local farmers markets with Mountain View and help sell their products. I also grew very close with this amazing family and their kids even took me out shooting and hunting. The Huger family taught me about cheese making, running a profitable business, marketing products and working extremely hard and efficiently. I had a truly wonderful time with them and cant wait to go back and eat more cheese!