Farm Hands

Get to know your farmers-market regulars.

We buy their corn and shellies, heed their advice on storing basil, and maybe (secretly) wish we too could show up for work with as much hard-earned dirt under our fingernails. Allow us to introduce the grand marshals of summertime in Indiana—the salt-of-the-earth folks you see manning the farmers-market booths every week. Have a look around their home offices. Just watch where you step.

Click here for a breakdown of local farmer's markets.

By Corrie E. Cook • Photography by Tony Valainis

Seldom Seen Farm

When he was growing up in suburban Zionsville, John Ferree was eager to leave but never certain which exit to take. “I’ve worked a number of different jobs in a lot of different places,” Ferree says. Taking gigs in Idaho and Montana, hitchhiking across the country, and sailing a three-masted schooner in Milwaukee were all stops on the road that led him back to a small farm in Indiana. Today, he uses crop rotations, long-term cover crops, and unheated greenhouses to farm about 2.5 acres of the 20 acres that have been passed down through generations of his family. While Seldom Seen Farm—named for a character in an Edward Abbey novel—isn’t certified organic by the USDA (a lengthy and sometimes prohibitively costly process), Ferree produces heirloom tomatoes, Asian cucumbers, arugula, mezzuna, mustard greens, and more without the use of synthetic fertilizers and biocides. After he started the farm in 2004, Ferree made a quick reputation for his salad mixes. The crisp, exotic greens stay fresh for days and taste as herby and succulent as they look, and Ferree cuts snow-pea shoots from their roots only after customers order them so that they’re at their peak of sweetness.

Seldom Seen Farm, Danville, 509-7828, seldomseenfarm.com. Available at Traders Point, Binford, and Broad Ripple farmers markets.

Your Neighbor’s Garden

Fifteen years after retiring from Eli Lilly Credit Union, Ross Faris is a natural fit for farmers markets—on both the agricultural and business fronts. In the late ’80s, he helped restaurateur Peter George—owner of Peter’s Restaurant and a driving force in Indy’s fine-dining scene at the time—organize Indy’s first farmers market in decades. The market, on the sidewalk in front of George’s northside restaurant, helped spur the markets in Broad Ripple and downtown. These days, Faris uses his talents to expand his own family business, peddling his homegrown vegetables at five area farmers markets and providing a long list of local restaurants with produce from various local growers. His roster of clients includes some of the city’s best places to eat—places that know a superb tomato when they see one. Elements, L’Explorateur, Harry & Izzy’s, St. Elmo, Goose the Market, and H2O Sushi all use his produce in their dishes. Chef Regina Mehallick of R Bistro looks for asparagus from Your Neighbor’s Garden as the first sign of the growing season. “It heralds spring,” she says of the spears she serves with pancetta, local free-range egg salad, and rhubarb dressing.

Your Neighbor’s Garden, 251-4130, yourneighborsgarden.com. Available at Broad Ripple, Zionsville, Irvington, 38th and Meridian, and City Market farmers markets.

Harvest Moon Flower Farm

While city folk are still in rush-hour traffic, Linda Chapman and her crew pop in some music and begin arranging bouquets of ranunculus, rudbeckias, zinnias, and dahlias in the cool barn on her family’s five-acre Spencer homestead. Cutting the flowers before the midday heat ensures that the blooms will be at their peak for the day’s farmers markets. Lilies, prairie roses, and cock’s combs are among the most popular flowers. “And sunflowers always sell,” says Chapman, who also grows some salad greens, herbs, tomatoes, and blueberries. Almost 20 years ago, Chapman and her family began transforming their back-to-the-land homestead into a working farm that would support them and the independent lifestyle they wanted to lead. Over the years, they expanded flowerbeds and increased hoophouse ground coverings to 2,400 square feet; they doubled the size of their solar greenhouse just last season.

Harvest Moon Flower Farm, Spencer, 812-829-3517, harvestmoonflowerfarm.com. Available at Broad Ripple and City Market farmers markets.

My Dad’s Sweet Corn

In 1998, Delta flight attendant Jennifer Baird needed a little extra income, so she picked up some of her dad’s bicolor corn, set up in a Carmel parking lot, and proceeded to sell as many ears as she could pick in a day—before local police informed her that, according to the zoning legislation and because of the traffic hazard, she was a sweet-corn outlaw. After selling corn in five different locations (and receiving five police and city-council warnings), Baird found a sales point at a good spot between the Hamilton and Marion county lines at 96th Street and Range Line Road—because police weren’t sure whose jurisdiction it fell under. There she stayed until the cold weather cut off her corn supply. That first year, Baird was on her own in the renegade sweet-corn business, out in the fields picking corn on her own, knowing customers would be waiting for her. Through all her moves, they always managed to find her, and they urged her to go legit by opening a booth at the Carmel Farmers Market, which she eventually did, chugging in with her 1980 Oldsmobile Delta 88, popping open the trunk filled with sweet corn, and selling out in 40 minutes.

My Dad’s Sweet Corn, Tipton, 496-4638, mydadssweetcorn.com. Available at Fishers, Carmel, Noblesville, Binford, Abundant Life, and City Market farmers markets.

Valentine Hill Farm

During the mid ’90s, Maria Smietana and her husband, Bill Swanson, visited dozens of country properties searching for the future site of their dream house. On Valentine’s Day 1999, they looked at a wooded area in Zionsville with two sloping hills that seemed to be hugging each other. “It’s kind of cheesy,” admits Smietana, “with Valentine’s Day and the hugging hills. But we really fell in love with the property.” The couple launched Valentine Hill Farm in 2004. Along with organicallyproduced vegetables, the couple offers homemade whole-wheat sourdough bread, corn muffins, English muffins, European spritz cookies, dried pasta, and whole spelt bread. This year, Valentine Hill fans can enjoy fresh produce and baked goods throughout the season by regis-tering for the farm’s first Consumer Supported Agriculture (or CSA) program, kind of like a “produce of the week” club. Participants pay ahead of time to receive regular allotments of whatever’s fresh from the Valentine Hill soil (and itsovens) throughout the growing season.

Valentine Hill Farm, Zionsville, 733-9311, valentinehillfarm.com. Available at Traders Point, Zionsville, Abundant Life, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, and Avon farmers markets.

Royer Farm

Since 1876, Nikki Royer’s family has been farming the same 125 acres just outside Clinton in Vermillion County. Fifth-generation Nikki and her husband, Scott Royer, have a sixth generation—their pre-kindergarten twins Cale and Knic—already in training. From giving the pigs fresh water to helping in the barn during the spring lambing season, these boys have an intimate knowledge of the family business. “They know all about umbilical cords and where the lambs come from,” their mother says. Nature’s lessons come easily at the family’s beef, lamb, pork, and poultry farm, though “it’s not the easiest job,” she admits. Bringing their pasture-raised and locally butchered meats to Broad Ripple, Zionsville, Terre Haute, and Fishers is a year-round service for the Royers. They operate booths during farmers-market season and, during the off-season, use an e-newsletter to announce when and where customers can meet them to pick up meat. (“Look for a dark-blue quad-cab Chevy truck with white freezers in the back,” the newsletters instruct.) “We provide cuts that you won’t find in a grocery store,” Royer says of her farm’s savory ox tails, chuck roasts, and plump Boston butt roasts that accompany more-traditional cuts.

Royer Farm Fresh Beef, Lamb, & Pork, Clinton, 765-832-7104, royerfarmfresh.com. Available at Broad Ripple, Zionsville, and Fishers farmers markets.

Homestead Growers

Homestead Growers began satisfying Indy’s mushroom cravings in 2002, after Anita Spencer’s husband, Steve, visited a friend in Florida who had just purchased a mushroom farm. When Steve, who grew up hunting wild mushrooms with his family, came back to Indiana and searched in vain for a Hoosier fungus farm, he decided to take mattersinto his own hands. On the farm that’s been in the family for seven generations, Anita, Steve, and Steve’s brother Jeff Spencer built a 2,000-square-foot temperature- and humidity-controlled barn full of long, wide shelves, like mushroom bunk beds. From sawdust flats that come inoculated with mushroom spores, Homestead Growers produces shiitake, oyster, and portobello mushrooms. Under the Spencers’ all-natural care, and free from artificial or chemical stimuli, the sprouting mushrooms double in size within 24 hours and are ready for harvest after about a week. When Homestead Growers first set up its booth at the Traders Point Creamery Green Market, Anita remembers teaching hesitant customers what they could do with the exotic mushrooms. “We’ve given away a lot of mushrooms over the years,” she says of their tempting sales technique. Homestead’s sister company, Local Folks Foods, puts its label on pasta sauce, ravioli, and sandwich patties, all rich with Homestead Growers’ mushrooms and available at their farmers-market booths.

Homestead Growers, Sheridan, 727-2730, homestead-growers.com. Available at Noblesville, Carmel, Broad Ripple, Traders Point, Binford, and City Market farmers markets.