By Andew Sharp
It’s a sunny morning at the Homestead Market, a new farm store just west of Seaford. It’s not packed midweek, but a regular procession of customers stops in at the red barn-like building to grab some fresh produce – a dozen ears of corn, a quart of cherry tomatoes.
The store is one of a growing number downstate that let people bypass big supermarkets to buy fresh local farm products and knickknacks. It’s not necessarily a new phenomenon, as roadside produce stands have long lured tourists, along with spots like Elmer’s Market along Route 404.
But those have been joined by a swarm of others over the past couple of decades, like Story Hill Farm, Vanderwende Farm Creamery, Evans Farms, and the Frozen Farmer, and many others catering to a hunger for locally grown food and a rural experience. Some of these are older family farms shifting to a new approach to meet that demand.
It might seem southern Delaware is caught up in a transformation of agriculture from mega-farms to smaller, fruit and vegetable based operations. That’s possible, but if so the numbers show it’s the infant stages of the wave. Local farmers I talked to had the same perception: Large grain operations and big poultry farms aren’t going anywhere.
According to a 2021 U.S. Department of Agriculture article highlighting its research, “local foods represent a small but growing share of the U.S. food system,” a reflection of consumer demand. From 2015 to 2017, sales of local edible farm products grew from $8.7 billion to $11.8 billion, but that’s still only 3 percent of all agricultural sales.
In Sussex County in 2017, sales of vegetables and fruit, while substantial, were dwarfed by grain and livestock like chickens according to the USDA’s agriculture census.
Shane Marvel, who with his wife Cassidy runs Marvelous Produce and its Homestead Market, is a first-generation farmer who started selling produce to pay for college. He gradually cobbled together land and now farms about 70 acres of grain and 35 acres of vegetables.
“It’s been a dream of mine to have a market,” he said.
But despite building the market this spring, he said the bulk of his produce is sold wholesale to stores like Redner’s and Fifer’s Orchard in Camden. The market serves as another revenue stream to help out.
“Everybody’s got to think outside the box, you’ve got to figure out how to make a little bit more money,” said Steve Breeding, president of the Sussex County Farm Bureau. Breeding raises about 300 sheep on a farm of 50 acres or so, and says he’s seriously considered an on-farm stand to bring in additional revenue.
His family has been farming for generations, but his father had an office job. “He told me one day, he said, ‘You’re never going to be a thousand-acre farmer. So you’re gonna have to figure out how to do something different.’”
Breeding doesn’t think farms will get much larger in the area, in part because farmland is disappearing to burgeoning development, but he also said some small farms are being consolidated into larger ones.
That’s backed up by USDA data that shows small farms in Delaware actually decreasing from 2012 to 2017, while farms of 500 acres to 2,000 acres increased.
Still, lower Delaware’s strong tradition of produce farming continues. But it’s changed a lot.
“There used to be canning houses in every town … all of that’s obviously gone by the wayside,” Breeding said. But, he said, probably just as much acreage is devoted to produce. It’s just going to a different place. Just because you see produce in a supermarket, he said, doesn’t mean it isn’t locally grown (think watermelons, a big traditional crop in the area.)
Marvel said while most of his business is wholesale, most of his customers at the market and farm stand are local. He’s seen decreasing profits from the wholesale business as costs rise, and has thought about cutting back there and focusing more on retail.
In his out-of-the-way spot on Chapel Branch Road, he doesn’t get as many tourists as stores like T.S. Smith Orchard Market. Marvelous Produce relies on the Seaford area market and Marvel realizes he needs to expand his reach. This summer, he launched a Community Supported Agriculture program, with about 30 people signing up and getting regular produce boxes curated by the farm. And now it’s fall, with the store gearing up for U-pick pumpkins, a corn maze and a fall festival every Saturday in October featuring vendors, bounce houses and live music.
Will it be enough?
“Time will tell,” he said.
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[https://marvelousproduce.com/]
[https://delawaregrown.com/pick-fresh/]
