The Turner brothers wanted a bunkbed, so they started an organic farm.
“Our parents wanted us to raise half the money and suggested we sell leftover produce from the backyard garden,” said Logan Turner, 19. “We set up a stand in the driveway and made enough to purchase a bunkbed in full. After that, we realized how successful vegetable farming could be and kept upscaling from there until we got to where we are today.”
This is not your typical farm origin story but this small farm in Orchard Homes is not your typical farm. For one thing, Turner Farms’ roots go back not multiple generations but to 2006, when the brothers began the small enterprise that has grown into something of a community institution.
Moreover, Turner Farms—unlike older, more-established farms—is a bottom-up venture. While parents Erin and Jon certainly do their part, Logan along with brothers Ethan (21) and Gus (16) form the core of the farm’s operations and ethos. This unlikely setup has opened the doors for all kinds of experimentation: for Logan, it meant growing a small batch of wheat and milling it to make cookies; for Gus it meant breeding Suffolk and Black Welsh Mountain sheep and producing healthy offspring.
“This whole place is based on radical ideas, which kinda comes with being a first-generation farm,” said Ethan. “We base our entire lifestyle around these ideas that we just come up with and try out to see if they work.”
At the same time they are pushing the envelope, the farm utilizes age old models like crop rotation and local engagement to achieve a sustainable and resilient framework. This proved to be a huge advantage as the COVID pandemic wreaked havoc around the world, disrupting the massive chains of commerce that bring most of us our food.
“During the pandemic there was a huge break in the supply chain, going from farms to processing plants to stores,” Ethan explained. “There were empty shelves everywhere. But here, produce goes from the farm to the store and there wasn’t that break. We’re able to pick it and sell it and that’s that. It’s a lot more intimate and a lot more secure.”
“People actually flocked to the farm to buy their produce and meat, which is a testament to the community,” Logan continued. “People want to buy organic and local, to know where their food comes from, and that showed when the pandemic started.”
Most significantly, the pandemic provided a reversal of fortune for Turner Farms, for whom the community-based, small-scale approach was a strength in the market instead of a weakness.
“This was the first year ever that our farm actually paid for itself and didn’t have to use outside income, just because of [COVID-19],” said Gus.
Though Turner Farms sits on a modest five acres, they boast a flourishing array of plants and animals, and the list is impressive: they raise sheep, goats, chickens, peafowl, turkeys, waterfowl, angus cattle, and hogs, and they grow sweet corn, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, spinach, lettuce, kale, beets, carrots, kohlrabi, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, onions, garlic, squash, pumpkins, and grass hay. It’s true what they say: that big things come in small packages.
In addition to the abundant life thriving in their pastures and fields, the biggest yield at Turner Farms is definitely in the worldview they generate and spread to their community. The farm is something of an incubator for big ideas, the kind of big ideas that come with small and simple actions like putting your two hands in the dirt and growing your own food.
“By 2050 they’re predicting a massive boom in population, and the way we’re producing food in America right now isn’t going to cut it,” Logan said. “We’re going to need more local, sustainable, small farms producing good, healthy food. American agriculture needs new perspective, and the overarching goal or our farm is education.”
“For example,” Gus continued, “we had kids plant corn at one of our camps. Then their parents come back and buy that corn for their families to eat. Which is cool because those kids then get to see firsthand what farming is.”
“This is our home but it’s also a home for our community,” said Ethan. “It’s where they base their life because it provides sustenance. This is something that’s so strange and distant to today’s culture but it’s an incredibly powerful thing to be connected to where your food comes from.”
