A Young Couple Relocated 3,000 Miles to Buy a Legacy Vegetable Farm in Brandon

Many new gardeners start a vegetable garden from scratch, often on bare turf. This is an exciting prospect but comes with some extra work.

Vegetables require nutrient-rich soil to thrive. Start by testing your soil and mixing in plenty of organic matter. Also, make sure to select a spot that receives sun (though there are some vegetables that tolerate shade).

When it came to buying their own farm, Dan and Elyse Wulfkuhle weren’t set on moving to Vermont. Both Massachusetts natives, they spent the past decade on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, where Dan, 35, managed large vegetable farms and Elyse, 37, worked in river conservation.

But Dan’s agriculture career has roots in the Green Mountains. “The first farm I ever worked on was in Vermont,” he said. His experience, at age 17, at Barnet’s Small Axe Farm “had a profound impact on me,” he added. “I really have been farming ever since.”

After graduating from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in plant, soil and insect science, Dan farmed in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, and then the couple went out west. The Wulfkuhles might have stayed in Washington, but over the five-plus years they searched for farmland to buy, it was a challenge to find a plot with adequate access to water. And their desire to be closer to East Coast family — especially once they had children — led them back to Vermont, a state they saw as especially supportive of farmers.

Last December, they finally made the transition, buying Wood’s Market Garden — an organic, diversified, 165-acre vegetable operation in Brandon. Their enthusiasm has not been diminished by one of the roughest growing seasons in recent memory.

On an overcast late August day, the farmstand — where they sell the bulk of their produce — overflowed with freshly picked bell peppers, several varieties of cucumbers, enormous scallions, purple-green okra, and a ton of other veggies and flowers. It looked as though the Wulfkuhles had been running Wood’s Market Garden for years.

The farm, located on Route 7 about two miles south of downtown, has been an area fixture for decades. Owned by the Wood family for a century, it was purchased by Jon Satz in 2000, who ran the farm with his wife, Courtney, until his untimely death from cancer in 2021.

Courtney was just thinking of listing the farm for sale when Dan reached out to her. He’d connected with several agricultural contacts in the state through Vermont Land Link, a database of farms and farmers looking to sell or buy land. But nothing had worked out until he spoke to Andrew Knafel of Clear Brook Farm in Shaftsbury, a longtime friend of the Satzes who put Courtney and Dan in touch.

The timing was right.

“We were super ready,” Dan said. “We had all our stuff together [and knew] what we were looking for, what kinds of questions to ask.”

He was acutely aware of the challenges of securing farmland as a younger farmer with limited funds and attributed the eventual successful deal in large part to an array of institutions specific to Vermont.

The Vermont Land Trust, Dan said, played an invaluable role by both expanding existing conservation easements and adding new ones to the property. This lowered the final sale price of the farm — which initially cost over $1 million — by several hundred thousand dollars.

Even so, the Wulfkuhles needed a lot of financial support as first-time farm buyers. They received two U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency loans, a Vermont Economic Development Authority loan and a loan from the century-old Lotta Agricultural Fund, a zero-interest program available only to graduates of University of Massachusetts Amherst. (Jon Satz, coincidentally, was one of only two other Vermont farmers to receive Lotta support.)

The couple also had help from Mike Ghia at Land for Good, a nonprofit that works to improve land access and tenure security for New England farmers. Ghia helped the Wulfkuhles navigate the complex farm transition and loan application process.

Ghia said he sees intense competition for available farmland and established farm businesses. “Vermont really gets inundated with people who want to farm here because of all the support we have and the support in the marketplace,” he said. He listed organizations and programs such as the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board’s Vermont Farm & Forest Viability Program, the Vermont Land Trust, and the nonprofit Intervale Center — all of which help facilitate farm transfer planning, partnerships with farmers looking to retire and conservation of agricultural acreage.

“Even before COVID, we were getting people who were looking from other states and other regions in the country to move to Vermont to farm,” Ghia said. “But after COVID, it got even worse.”

On a golf cart ride through most of the 25 acres under cultivation at Wood’s Market Garden, Elyse pointed out a cut-flower patch, heavy with weeds but still colorful. “I really like doing flowers. I want to get more into that, make that my thing,” she said.

Driving past plots of corn, squash, fall strawberries, lettuce and other crops — all ringed by woods with the Green Mountains in the background — one might forget that between the late May frost, devastating July flooding and almost incessant rain, this has been a pretty dismal year to get started.

Elyse said the couple had carefully evaluated available farms with past experience in mind. “A farm Dan used to work with had flooding issues, and it was such an ordeal for them,” she said. That weighed heavily in their search. “We’re really lucky we found a place that doesn’t flood — but has water,” she added, referring to irrigation restrictions out west.

That doesn’t mean there haven’t been challenges.

“Definitely, the excessive moisture and rainfall and lack of sunshine affected our growing season and a lot of crops,” Dan said. “We haven’t had any catastrophic losses, but we’ve had a lot of crops that have suffered.”

Pests are worse here than out west, Dan said, and the soil was not as immediately fertile as they’d hoped. During the two years that Jon Satz was ill, the farm was planted with organic corn. Dan believes the crop’s demanding nutrient requirements, plus this summer’s constant rain, depleted the sandy, fast-draining soils.

“Chalk it up to one of the very many learning curves that we’re going through this year,” he said. “In some ways, Vermont seems to be a more challenging climate than Washington. Just more extremes.”

Still, given the enormity of the transition, they’ve been pleased. “This year, my goal, I kept telling myself, was just get seeds in the ground,” Dan said. “Anything that we’ve been able to harvest and bring to market feels like a success.”

He and Elyse express enormous gratitude to the farm’s staff, some of whom worked the land under the Satzes.

“Several employees came back with all this knowledge,” Elyse said. They were key to organizing the farm’s early season plant sale of hanging baskets, potted annuals and perennials, and veggie and herb starts — a huge part of the business with which the Wulfkuhles had little experience.

Long-standing community support has also helped. “Every single person who came in was like, ‘We’re so happy you’re here,'” Elyse said.

That includes Courtney Satz — despite the difficult decision to leave the farm.

“Dan and Elyse were always so kind and thoughtful and inclusive and just wanted our family to still be very much part of things there,” she said. “I think they’ve done a wonderful job of retaining the history and the connection with the community but also putting their own spin on things.”

As they navigate this first year, the new owners also have their eyes on the future. Elyse hopes to host events at the farm, while Dan wants to expand the wholesale business. They currently sell to the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op, the Rutland Co-op, and some restaurants and other valued-added producers, including Burlington’s Pitchfork Pickle and Charlotte’s Sobremesa.

“I’d love to see our products, some of our stuff, on the shelves of [the Brandon] Hannaford’s at some point, and also schools and institutions,” Dan said. “We really hope to be a part of [making] organic and local produce more widely available.”

Taking over a legacy operation and connecting with the Satz family and the broader community have provided a longer-term perspective on the farmland itself.

“We’re just tending this land now,” Dan said. “Somebody’s going to farm this land when I’m gone.”

Source: sevendaysvt.com