Market Forces: Cherry Grove Organic Farm

This week, Patch spoke with Matt Conver, owner of the Cherry Grove Organic Farm in Princeton. A long line of vegetables, from salad greens and squash to beets and eggplant, covers his market tables. On the asphalt nearby, buckets hold bouquets of flowers grown on the farm; bright gold, fuchsia, purple, and red, their colors are as strong as a punch.  The Cherry Grove stand is located in the corner of the market lot near Maple Street and Springfield Avenue.

How did you get into farming?

When I was 13, a friend got me a job bailing hay. I fondly remember the job, and that sort of got me hooked. As a kid, I would always tell my mom and dad that I was going to be a farmer, and they laughed. So I don’t remember exactly reading about it, but at some point as a young kid I knew about it and thought about it. Back then a farm to me was still animals and bailing hay. To get into vegetables, that was happenstance how it worked out.

I was going to college and did fairly well the first two years. The third year – I’m not much for school, and I was getting bored with it. I was going to take a summer off, and I found this farm to work on our in central Pennsylvania, and I just loved it. Then I worked for Mike (Ed: Michael Rassweiler, owner/operator of North Slope Farm, who is also a vendor at the Summit Farmer’s Market) for four years, and then this local family approached me about leasing land. They own a ton of land, and I’m not sure what their ultimate motivation was other than they wanted to keep it open and have it be productive. I think they were looking for a long time for somebody to farm their land, and they really took a shot on me. My business plan was sort of written in pencil. We joke about it now. I had spent five years working for people pretty intensively, and I was getting to the point where Mike and I were starting to butt heads. I wanted more responsibility, and it was time for him to push me out the door, like a kid leaving for college. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but it’s worked out really well.

Would you describe your business?

We’re organic, obviously. We have about 15 acres of mixed vegetables, flowers, and a little bit of herbs. We do two farmer’s markets – Summit, and a little one in Hopewell. We do a CSA – that’s community-supported agriculture. We have about 200 families, and they come to the farm to pick up on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

This is our eighth year. I lease the land. We probably have five or six full-time employees, and three or four people that come and go, and one intern. I’ve been coming to the Summit Farmer’s Market for eight years on my own and before that for three years with Mike.

How did you decide to focus on organic farming?

The first farm I worked at was organic. I’m from right outside of Allentown, PA. I worked on farms growing up, but mostly bailing hay. I didn’t know a thing about vegetables – I don’t think I even knew what an eggplant was. The first farm I worked at happened to be organic, and now I really don’t know another way of doing it. Now I think it’s the right way, but I didn’t go into it looking to be organic. That was 15 years ago. Organic farming has become much more mainstream now.

Is it true that you basically grow food for the market in Summit?

What we bring to the market in Summit is actually less than half of what we grow. The CSA eats up much more. Say we’re distributing four heads of lettuce per week through the CSA, that’s 800 heads, versus 200 we might bring to Summit.

I’m starting to think about scaling back on the CSA and doing more markets. All the pressure I feel is through the CSA. There’s something about the market where you just bring what you have, you put the price you want to sell it at, and people buy it. Versus the CSA where there’s the expectation that each week there will be something new. If there’s a big yield one week, then people expect that every week. Although this has been the hardest year I’ve had since I’ve been on my own, and all the CSA members were very supportive. At this point we could sell everything we have at the market. The CSA is wholesale. We’re just not going to have any new members, and we’ll see what happens.

What’s your best-seller at the Summit market?

We try to do lettuce all summer, which is sort of an odd thing: head lettuce, salad mix, arugula. Those have been doing well. In a normal year, though, it’s definitely tomatoes.

You lost your tomato crop this year to late blight. Any thoughts on that as the season winds down?

I’m just happy that it’s behind us. I view it as a one-year thing and expect next year to get back on track. The weather was bad this year too. The rain just really throws you off; you get backed up and you can never really catch up. It’s part of farming – you have years like that.  

What’s the hardest thing about what you do?

I’m a pretty big planner, so for me it’s just when you get thrown off because of the weather or stuff you can’t do anything about. You can have a big plan for how you want the year to go, and then it can get thrown off. It rains for two weeks and you just sit there and know that you’re falling behind and there’s nothing you can do about it.

What do you do when it rains?

You can always do something in the greenhouse. I don’t mind having tons of plants around waiting to be planted, so we’ll do that. There’s always something to harvest – on Mondays we harvest for Tuesdays, Tuesday for Wednesday, etc. So there’s only two days a week when there’s absolutely nothing to do, and then we work in the greenhouse. 

What’s the best thing about what you do?

I like being my own boss for sure. I don’t think I could work for anybody anymore. I like running my business. It’s still new to me, running my own business, so it’s always sort of exciting.  There are a lot of successes along with the failures. I’m still really happy when something works out. I still get excited when I see the tomatoes ripening up or the eggplants getting ready. I like being outside all day. We have a great crew, so I like working with them. And I like the challenge of it. Every year’s exactly the same. You know what month you’re in. It’s like a game. You’re full of energy and optimism in spring, and then the dog days of summer hit, and every day you’re out and you start wearing out, and then it’s fall and you can see the end of the tunnel, you can see it’s going to end in a month or two so you start feeling good, and then it’s winter and you can start laying low. And then it starts up again.  

Any advice for someone thinking about becoming a farmer?

You hear a lot about how farming sucks and you don’t make any money, but I tell people it’s a great job. The great thing about New Jersey is there’s a lot of demand for it. So many towns have markets. Our CSA has a waiting list hundreds of people long. It’s hard to own land in New Jersey – you have to lease. But business-wise, it’s great – there’s just so much demand.