Tom Carey: My neighborhood farm and farmer

After my wife and I settled in to our homestead in 1983, the first order of business was hacking out a garden plot in the sandy soil of our scrubby pine forest. Mel Bartholomew’s book, “Square Foot Gardening” had just been published, and planting in small plots was initiated in earnest. Between several incarnations of our business plans, Sundew Gardens became a vendor at our nearest farmer’s market.

The produce we sold from the Winter Park Farmers Market’s gravel parking lot at that decrepit train depot was the freshest available in town. In that day and age, explaining what “organic” meant was a routine chore. Selling only what I grew myself, in competition with vendors bringing in truckloads of wholesale product from California or other continents, opened a new awareness of what seasonal and local food really meant. Customers began to brave the journey and caravanned home with me after the farmer’s market to pick even fresher vegetables and herbs straight from my gardens.

We needed to train and assist guests in the correct harvesting methods to avoid damaging the crops where we snip individual leaves or fruit instead of pulling the whole plant from the ground. I’m still amazed how food-gathering instinct kicks in after just a few trips to the garden, but with new folks visiting every week even teaching this shallow learning curve was becoming cumulatively onerous. Along with the irascibility of weather and holidays, we needed to develop a more sustainable business model.

The term “community-supported agriculture (CSA)” was still a few years from being coined, but we were already employing several of its principles. Banks would not even consider us, so we had to create alternate forms of financing. Repeat customers saved time spent on giving driving directions over the phone in the pre-Internet and email era. We realized that the picking, packing and shipping are some of the largest expenses for small farms. A cover article in Organic Gardening magazine brought us the publicity we sorely lacked in the marketing department. Hence, Sundew Garden’s “Harvest Gardening” membership program was born!

Unlike our early years when families would visit from all over Florida, today most of our “Harvest Gardening” members are practically neighbors. Although most other CSA farms only offer a packaged share, our member families can select the items and quantities they need and can consider Sundew Garden an extension of their own backyard garden. Our ultimate business goal of creating a career from our land, sharing the healthiest food possible and working with our neighbors to create a community has been met!