Tomatoes as Trump Cards

Granby, Massachussetts

While growing over forty vegetable crops each season, it’s their nearly year-round abundance of award-winning tomatoes that have made Red Fire Farm, of Granby, Massachusetts, the talk of the valley. Growing crops on about 45 acres, owner Ryan Voiland loves his work because of the diversity of the skills it requires — and the reward of growing healthy, nutritious and organic foods for others.

Red Fire Farm’s swelling clientele can buy Ryan’s certified organic vegetables, small fruits and cut flowers from two farm stands — both on the farm in Granby or in Montague — two farmers’ markets in Springfield and Greenfield, or by purchasing community supported agriculture (CSA) shares. Red Fire Farm also sells directly to several food cooperatives and a few restaurants to complete their diversified mix of customers that help Red Fire Farm gross over $200,000 in sales annually and support one full-time Granby farm stand manager, ten seasonal part-time growers, and three to four growing season farming apprentices who live on site and benefit by the practical experience gained. The farm is part of the Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training (CRAFT), offering apprentices other learning opportunities as well.

Since high school, Ryan has demonstrated a talent for growing high quality tomatoes, among other vegetables. Even before picking up a degree in Horticulture and Vegetable Science from the prestigious Cornell University in 2000, Ryan swept five out of thepossible twelve awards in the State of Massachusetts-sponsored Boston Tomato Contest. His quality produce was first sold from his family’s property at the Old Depot Gardens farm stand in Montague Center, about 30 miles north of Granby, which he still supplies to this day with produce grown on his present farm purchased in 2001. Ryan rents out 30 acres of his upland pasture to neighbors for their ponies and needs to rent 25 adjacent acres for vegetable production, added to his own 20 acres of tillable land.

“I liked the nature of the work and diversity of skills that farming requires — organizing different aspects of the business including marketing, sales, science and machinery,” shares Ryan. “It’s continuously interesting. Nothing is more fundamental than growing good food for people.”

Since Ryan’s first farm stand opened during high school, the operations have diversified in such a way to garner about 40 percent of sales from the farm stands, 20 percent from farmers’ markets, 20 percent from CSA shares and 20 percent from direct wholesale accounts.“We need to capture retail dollars,” says Ryan. “Our quality product, plus our organic growing practices and nice presentation, allows us to get 25 to 30 percent more money for many of our products over competing conventionally-grown products sold at farmers’ markets. I realize, however, that every market is not open to us, like schools, hospitals and other institutions. There’s still price pressures and only a certain segment is willing to pay more. So that’s where I focus my marketing efforts.”

Admits Ryan, “We realized that we ask a lot from our customers to pick up their CSA share boxes at specified times, at certain locations and with less choice from the standpoint of what they received in their box in any given week. CSA membership is also a lot of money for some folks to pay up front, even though we also offer payment plans.”

“Our solution,” replies Ryan, “was to offer a farm stand membership for $125.” With the farm stand membership, customers receive $140 in credit toward the purchase of fresh vegetables and fruits sold at theon-farm stand in Granby, as well as locally produced items like bread, honey, pickles, and maple syrup. “Our goal is to serve as many possible types of customers as we can without turning people away.” Red Fire Farm now has a mix of about 125 CSA shareholders and 90 farm stand members.

Ryan continues, “With the farm stand memberships, we attracted more customers to the farm and our products without the restrictions often imposed on CSA members. Feedback has been very positive, since the program is more flexible and allows the members to buy other locally-made products.” As it turns out, his CSA members tend to be families with children and with parents who enjoy cooking, often not knowing what will show up in abundance in their box from one week to the next. The farm stand members, however, tend to be more elderly, or single, and interested in smaller quantities and a more predictable selection of vegetables and fruits.

“Our focus has always been upon educating our customers,” says Ryan. “We have a bi-monthly newsletter that we include in the CSA share box and send to our farm stand members, filled with recipes, tips and explanations of our products. Very soon, we’ll be updating our website with an on-line glossary of vegetables so our customers can better understand what we’re putting in their boxes or have for sale at the farm stands. They can visit the website whenever it’s convenient to them.”

While not, yet, producing value added products on site, some of Red Fire Farm’s organic cabbage finds its way into the locally-produced and locally-owned Real Pickles product line of specialty cabbage products that include sauerkraut, kimche and fermented green pickles. Those value added products are then offered for sale at the two Red Fire Farm stands.

“I guess you can say we specialize in tomatoes,” admits Ryan, noting that their latest Annual Tomato Festival in late August attracted over a thousand visitors to the farm to partake in a celebration of the tomato, including the “Everything Tomato Auction” to support the purchase of new farm equipment. “We grow over fifty varieties of heirloom and hybrid tomatoes and offer them throughout most of the year by using our two greenhouses and early field tunnels, in addition to sun-ripened varieties in the summer.”

“When folks around here talk about our farm, they refer to it as ‘the tomato place.'” smiles Ryan. “Our tomatoes are what draw people in.”