Business unusual
A 75-year-old american family farm faces an uncertain summer due to Covid-19.
JAKE Hunt, in a paint-splattered hoodie and a serious shiner under his left eye (he fell down the stairs) sits on a table strategically placed 2m or so from a reporter.
Jars of apple butter are stacked at one end of the table, bags of concrete mix at the other. This is about as quiet as Windy Brow Farms in Fredon, near the top of New Jersey, the United States, gets.
Pick-ups for dry goods and the farm’s terrific ice cream (take my word for it) are Friday to Sunday only, and it’s now midweek, a perfect time to catch Hunt at rare rest. All pick-up orders, ice cream or not, are done at the ice cream window, which will be busy this weekend and every one after. Hunt has sold about 200 pints (95l) or quarts (190l) every weekend for the past month, a healthy amount even during summertime.
Thank goodness for the certainty of ice cream sales, because nothing else at Windy Brow Farms is a sure thing this year.
“Eighty per cent of our income is pick-your-own (fruits and vegetables), which is insane,’’ the 30-year-old farmer says. “Will people be willing to go out in public and interact with other people even if they’re at a distance? Will we have the same sales? Do we still offer wagon rides? I don’t know if we do.’’
Windy Brow Farms, named for its windy location at a brow of a ridge, has been in operation for 75 years. This year will certainly be its most challenging, and uncertain. Mother Nature, always a crop farm’s biggest enemy, has been nasty so far this year. In early May, the temperature in Fredon plummeted to -2°C. “That’s not good when everything is in full blossom,” Hunt explains. “We won’t know for another week whether (all the crops planted) will be wiped out. For every degree you get under 32, you lose 10-15% of your crop. We probably lost 15-20% of certain crops last week when we had cold weather.’’
Windy Brow planted 1,500 tomato plants (enough for about 6.8t of tomatoes) this year, with 2,800 peach trees and 4,000 apple trees in the ground.
A week after the interview came this grim update from Hunt: “We lost probably 90% of our peach crop and 30-40% of our apple crop in the last cold snap.’’
Staff has been reduced; it’s now Hunt, his dad, several field hands, one store worker and one pastry chef. Hunt is the ice cream maker and bread baker, and oversees the farm’s day-to-day operations. A quick word about that cream: it’s top-notch, and Hunt makes both classic and off-the-wall flavours, like Taylor ham and tomato pie. The Taylor ham ice cream will return to the menu in July.
What Hunt misses most these days is the up-close-and-personal interaction with customers, “people we’ve known forever. We’re a family business; we have all these people who have been coming here for generations. Not being able to talk to those people about their week, what they’re doing, what they’re enjoying, what they’re worried about . ... It’s difficult, a small business not having that human connection.’’
Customers are not allowed inside the store. Orders must be done online, but Hunt says if someone calls and “sweet-talks Jake’’ he’ll take the order over the phone.
There are regular, cheery updates on the farm’s Facebook page, but that can never replace the human connection. “It’s not the same, it’s not as heartwarming or endearing,’’ Hunt says.
He worries that small businesses of all kinds may fall victim to the economic downturn. A poll by the US Chamber of Commerce estimates that one quarter of all small businesses say they are two months or less from closing permanently.
There were plans at Windy Brow to add a cafe, restaurant, event space and a distillery. All those have been shelved for now.
“I don’t know if people at the end of this – if there is an end to this – are going to be driven to realise what roles small businesses, small family farms, play in their lives, or just go back to relying on big box (stores) and everything else,’’ he says.
Business overall has been “three to four times’’ more than usual, much of that due to the addition of grocery items to the store, but costs are also three to four times higher.
There’s been another price to pay.
“I usually save my exhaustion for September,’’ he says, grinning. “I’m dead tired now. I’m working seven days a week when we’re in production, 15-, 16-, 17-hour days. I haven’t had a chance to breathe in the past month and a half.’’
There have been stories of dairy farmers in the Midwest dumping millions of gallons of milk because they can no longer sell to restaurants and schools. That has not been the case in New Jersey so far, according to Hunt, but crop and dairy farmers are feeling the coronavirus’ economic squeeze.
“It’s not devastating to us, but our margin is a lot lower,’’ he explains.
Asked if anything good has come out of all this, he replies, “We’ve seen in our community that people haven’t just shuttered themselves in, given up. They still continue to support small businesses.’’
Apart from pasta, butter, eggs, milk and yeast – “everyone wants to be a baker’’ – the store is stocked with Finding Home maple syrup, Ella Bella brownie mix, Kitchen Garden Farm salsas, Kilhaney’s pickles, Lesser Evil organic popcorn and other niche items not found in your average supermarket; it’s one way Windy Brow has managed to stay solvent the past few months.
Leftover bread and pastries are donated to local food pantries and Newton Medical Center.
With 90% of his peach crop and 30-40% of the apple crop already wiped out, Hunt says the rest of 2020 ‘‘is gonna be rough.’’
Apart from the economic impact, there’s been a mental/ emotional toll.
“The stress of the unknown,’’ the farmer explains. “We’ll survive one way or the other, roll with the punches, figure it out. You’ve got to be able to figure it out, or you’re not for this life.
“I’m not going to sit here and have a pity party,’’ he adds. “We’re going to keep farming as long as there’s ground to till and people to be fed.’’