Life & Work with Rick and Josiah Bale

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rick and Josiah Bale.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started? 
The land that makes up Bale Kenyon Family Farms has been in our family for over 100 years. The Bales were the first to settle on the road, which serves as the business’s namesake, and the first Bales settled here in the late 1700s. It has been a traditional farm, with crops of corn, wheat, and hay over the years, with a large number of cattle and a few horses as well, but in more recent years, the farm has been primarily used for various 4-H animals and projects in the raising children with good work ethics and an appreciation for The Farm. 

Although all of our family members have helped out at times, with some able to more than others due to other commitments and dreams of their own (they are all adults now), Bale Kenyon Family Farms has been an entrepreneurial ‘dream’ of primarily two of the family members: Rick Bale, the father, and Josiah, his son. 

Josiah runs the lion’s share of the business as a part of the nursery that he has created and grown, since initiating in 2020. However, it all started when he was 10 when his mom suggested that he take a gardening project for 4-H; though he was not initially thrilled about the idea, he found out that he loved it! Watching his plants grow through the season as he put in the work to care for them was fascinating to him. When the time came for college, he decided to major in Greenhouse and Nursery Management at Ohio State ATI. After finishing those associate degrees, he decided to broaden his focus and finished his education at Ohio State’s main campus with a bachelor’s degree in Horticulture Science, minoring in Agriculture Business. He has always been entrepreneurial, wanting to own his own business in the future and he shared that at the dinner table one day after graduating. We indicated that we were living on his grandparents’ farm, and he could probably use a portion of it to start a business if he wanted to do so. He started up the business in 2020, put up the first greenhouse, and was serving the community by 2021, with an additional greenhouse added each of 2022 and 2023. Josiah found that there is an enormous amount of enjoyment he gets from seeing his customers walk away with plants that they’re excited about. He feels that teaching others about just how cool plants are is something he will never tire of doing! 

I (Rick) retired from the corporate world in the late summer of 2020. I’ve always had a love of the farm I’ve spent my life on, but running the farm as a Farm to Market business was new to us (and still is, as it’s a constant learning process). We want to make use of this property to remember the family and agricultural heritage that helped build the area we are in, as early pioneers moved ‘west’ and settled here in Orange Township in the southern end of Delaware County. Our objective is not only to make good use of the farm but to help connect our customers to the farm and perhaps just as importantly, to the farmers. We believe in faith, family, relationships, and the benefits of farm life, and in farm-grown products and education. Our goals include helping the community to beautify the landscape of their homes with our plants and to improve the health and taste of their food, and we are working to have family educational and other events on our farm as we get more established and improve our facilities here. We hope to provide an additional outlet to increase the quality of time that the community can have with their families, all while getting to know their local farmers. We’ve started very small but are trying new things each year, and although it’s hard work and doesn’t always go as planned, we are enjoying the process of learning and serving the community! 

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Oh, no. I’m not sure it ever is when you start something new. You have to be willing to try new things and fail. We’ve had challenges building greenhouses, getting raw materials delivered (the larger our needs, the larger the trucks and our entrances have had to be modified in the process), knowing when and how to get help when we need it, keeping up with weeds, dealing with issues with deer, racoons, groundhogs, and critters, in general, and just learning what we have the bandwidth to do, and how to order and plan for each year. Solving problems or, in some cases, determining that something may not be what you want to focus on in the future is a part of the process of running a business. Developing relationships with others is a great way to help resolve some of those issues, as there is a lot of knowledge available in others, and simply drawing upon that knowledge (and, in many cases, their generosity in help as well) is part of the fun of learning how to resolve some of these struggles we run into. 

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
From a product perspective, I would say one of our specialties is definitely the nursery side of the business. Josiah has a great deal of knowledge about plants, with his background and education, and he has expanded in his short business tenure to grow a great selection of annuals, perennials, some shrubs, herbs, vegetable starts, and houseplants. As far as what sets Josiah’s greenhouse apart, he always tries to grow unique plants! He loves when people remark about never seeing a plant before until coming to the nursery. In addition, since his prior full-time job was working in a landscaping business, he’s also developed skills that he puts to use for folks to design their landscaping desires to improve the value and enjoyment that people gain from their properties. Josiah is also able to order most any product he does not currently grow due to local wholesale sources. This year, he also sold pre-cut Christmas trees during the Christmas season. 

On my (Rick’s) side of the business, we start off the year making maple syrup and hope to be expanding into other maple products this year. We sell much of what many farm markets do: sweet corn, tomatoes, squash, green beans, peppers, and other vegetable produce and some baked goods and pantry items we make from our produce, such as spicy mustard, during the summer, while also selling a lot of pumpkins, gourds, corn stalks, and other fall decorations and edible items in the autumn. This year, we began experimenting with making apple cider and maybe expanding to sell some of that in the upcoming years. Next year we hope to be expanding our cut flower portion of the business and will be targeting to expand to grow different varieties during different times of the year. We are hoping to get a fence around a small portion of a field for that this year, to protect from the local ‘critters’. One of the areas we have not specialized in heavily, though we hope to in the future, is in educational classes. We have experimented in providing classes on things such as maple syrup making (including a pancake brunch!), Ohio native perennials, fall seed collecting, winter sowing, and fall and Christmas wreath making. We believe there is a deep desire for not only adults but parents wanting to train their kids in some of these agricultural practices, while some are just making use of country products or nature to enhance our creativity and joy in life. We’ve had struggles with space in the past to hold these classes and hope to have some better resources for doing so more in the future. 

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
There are a lot of people seeking to know more about how to help their plants thrive, enjoy their landscapes, grow food organically, homesteading, and understanding more about where their food comes from. I believe this is where there may be more opportunities for educational events. That said, families are also finding it a struggle to spend time together, learn, and grow together, and with all the electronic games and social media, to start to return a bit more to some simpler forms of learning and growing and enjoying more some of the simple things in life, in the midst of our very busy schedules. In some small way, we hope to encourage the community around us to enjoy this aspect more in life, appreciating what God has given us in our surroundings and our families. 

Contact Info:

• Website: BaleKenyonFamilyFarms.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balekenyonfamilyfarms/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=bale%20kenyon%20family%20farms