Beginning Full Moon Farm

I want to talk a little bit about the beginning of the farm just to give context around how much has happened since 2016, and also, how much more can be accomplished as a community and as a collective force. Hundreds of people have helped get this farm started, but now that it has truly matured and blossomed we can all expand on these successes as the force behind the non-profit.  

We bought the farm in July 2016. Jacob and I moved onto the property with a camper and we brought three horses - Linus, Lucy, and Papoose. The first farm purchase was a Norwood Sawmill and the first task was to build a barn to be the hub of Full Moon Farm. Jacob would cut these really large pine trees that are on Elk Lane and I would drive the horses to pull the logs over to the sawmill and then he would mill all day. I would help some with the milling, but I also worked at a spa and he also had some odd jobs at the time. All summer and into November we were milling and building and we had started to make a lot of connections with our neighbors in Triplett. These early friendships with our neighbors were really important for the beginning of the farm because they wanted to help us build the barn and give their input. There were a lot of older people on the street who had built their houses or worked as carpenters so it was really sweet to bond over such a physical project and that they wanted to support us. And then 2017 was our first season growing. We didn't have any tunnels. 
We did all of the plowing and tilling with the horses. We made a meager profit that year; it was a summer of working other jobs and just seeing what we could do between spring and fall. Then, 2018 was the first spring that we had small tunnels made out of PVC pipe. In March and April we got rocked by very heavy winds and snow. Amidst the weather, we lost all of our Spring Brassica crops to root maggots, which was a rare occurrence, but it happened at a very hard time for us. About 12 beds of crops were removed and we burned the small plants to eradicate the root maggots. That was a point where we almost gave up because we didn't have the experience or the finances to pull through a really hard spring. I am grateful we found our grit and stubbornness to continue farming in 2018. Going into the 2019 season, we knew more about how to control pests and how to make our tunnels stronger and we started getting some extra funding to get more equipment on the farm. This is when we bought our first large tunnels that most people will recognize. The third year is when I think things started to turn towards understanding what grew wel - like sweet peppers, lettuce, brassicas - and also how much we were going to continue to use the horses versus doing this tunnel production. Fast forward 2020, February is when we build the current large greenhouse using a WNC AgOptions grant. Keep in mind, all the buildings on the farm are built with lumber that we have sawmilled, so that is always going on in the background, especially in the winters for us. The Covid-19 Pandemic happens when we were in full production mode. It was going to be a very big year and we had hired our first employee then everything shut down. Restaurants at that time were 60% of our income and for them to close was like a death blow. Except, F.A.R.M. Cafe forwarded us money so that we could continue to grow food and deliver the produce later, much like a business advance. The next thing to save Full Moon Farm was the FarmShare program through CFSA which started late summer. The FarmShare program was a model that 1) bought local produce from farms through the High Country Food Hub 2) Food Hub employees compiled the produce into boxes 3) these were given to service workers who had lost their jobs through the pandemic. These were people that we love all coming together through farming, the food hub (Blue Ridge Women in Ag) and our greater restaurant community and friends that we knew that had been laid off from the pandemic. That box program continues on in several different forms into 2024 and hopefully forward. 


We continued expanding our Food Hub and Hunger and Health Coalition sales 2021 - 2022. The program that funded most of our HHC and food pantry sales was called Appalachian Farms Feeding Families through ASAP. 2022 is when we had our most productive and financially successful year on the farm. We had two employees, Jacob and I are working full-time, and we had honed in on salad mix, which we became really well known for. Salad mix was something that we could almost automate between the seeding, planting, harvesting, removal and turnover process. And that was a really good business model. I think it's something that we could have perfected and done for many years if we wanted to keep full-time farming and selling only through market outlets. But we decided that wasn't our prerogative and that we also were pretty done working as a couple. We needed a physical break from the business and to reassess our needs as a relationship. It’s indescribably difficult to split the responsibility and the financial burden of both people working on the farm because it is such a stressful job. Even if you do make it by the end of the year, the beginning of every season can feel very risky. We wanted a little more stability in our lives and also the ability to leave. think that's one thing that we learned year after year is that we couldn't leave and feel confident about the success of any of the crops or the health of our animals. It just felt like we didn't have many good systems in the beginning between watering and planting and even harvesting and delivering our produce. The first six years, we didn't have either the workflow or the equipment to hand over watching the farm to anybody. I think in that time we took a handful of one week vacations. That's where you don't really track your time commitment to a business like this because it feels like it's all the time. For example, if there is a windstorm, you're up at 2 AM tightening down ropes or taking down plastic or putting on plastic doors on the tunnels just to ensure that it makes it through the storm in the middle of the night. And then the next day it's sunny and bright and you need to open everything up and there's no more wind. You can't really track those extra hours that happen every week to deal with the random weather or the animals getting out or an order gets messed up and it takes half a day to fix it. So, for the sanity of ourselves and the people around us, we wanted to bring more people into this dream and project, but also have it be a greater impact for the community. Meaning, not just the people that could pay for the food, but the people that are not able to afford farmers market prices but who also deserve to have just as high quality food as everyone else. 2023 is when we took a sabbatical year and switched our thinking and dreamt up The Full Moon Farm Collective nonprofit. We went into 2024, establishing the nonprofit and producing on a smaller scale while we saved money and got the farm back in working order. Going forward, I'll write more about 2025 and the vision for years that are to come. Hopefully this gives you a little background on building things here, pushing through hard storms, hard pest experiences, personal life challenges, and all the unexpected things that push you to the edge. Farming has taught me to be good at failing - and in the end seeing the successes that survive the painful losses. I am endlessly grateful to have a community both in our neighborhood and in Boone that has always encouraged us and seen the potential of this place. All the years come through the beauty of the farm today and the nutritious, delicious, vibrant food that we grow and that so many people have come to enjoy.