Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt and Kim Brown.
Hi Matt and Kim, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Matt and I were high school sweethearts who got married and started our life together in a nice little house in a quiet neighborhood in Centerville, Ohio. That first summer, we started our own small garden and little did we know, that would be the beginning of a dream we hadn’t even realized yet. About four years into our marriage, we decided to start a family. From the minute we got that first positive pregnancy test, priorities started to change for us. We had this new tiny life that was dependant on us to make the best decisions for him, and keep him strong and healthy. Over the course of several years, we had two more children, went into our thirties and realized we won’t always be young and healthy so easily, and saw some personal health transformations of close friends and family. These things motivated us to begin to research and realize that food- not just what we eat, but the quality of the actual food we are eating- is so important. Our gardening practices changed as we learned about soil health and the importance of restoring the life in the soil. We noticed our garden thriving, the vegetables tasted better, and as we changed the way we ate overall, our family’s health flourished. Each year, the garden got bigger and bigger. Matt has always been a dreamer, had wanted land of some sort, and wanted to do something important with it. We had discussed and dreamed up ideas since college, but nothing felt right until he met a friend who was about to move to South Dakota to take over his family’s multi generational produce farm. This friend gave Matt a reading list written by several different regenerative farmers, focusing on soil health and growing amazing produce on smaller acreage. He was immediately hooked. We learned all we could through reading, classes, and visiting our friends’ farm and waited for the right piece of land. Finally, one morning Matt met a friend for breakfast who showed him the listing for a beautiful spot in Bellbrook and the rest is history.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I’m honestly not sure how we survived the first two years when I look back. We sold our house and lived off of the property our first season while renovating the farm house, raising three boys, Matt working full time, and Kim doing the farm work during the day while Matt would help out in the evenings and weekends. We wanted to do everything on our own terms. We were not interested in investors, which meant that we were starting from scratch. We had no infrastructure at all. Everything was done by hand that first season, from starting each tiny seed, to digging every individual hole to plant the seedlings, to weeding and harvest. After everything was harvested and washed up, I would load up our family van and do farmer’s markets away from the property, sometimes with all the kids with me. Our second season, we were excited because we actually got to live on the property, but even with that bonus, I would say the second season itself was more difficult than the first. We dealt with an extremely hot and dry summer. Eight weeks in the hottest months without a single drop off rain. We were too new to have irrigation set up, so we moved hoses and sprinklers throughout the day to the most important crops. We lost our entire planting of pumpkins due to circumstances beyond our control. We were running ourselves ragged trying to start selling here at our farm, but feeling the need to continue to go to farmer’s markets since we didn’t have enough customers at our property yet. We knew heading into our third season, we needed to streamline some things, make investments in tools that would help with efficiency and take a risk by only selling from our farm instead of going to farmer’s markets.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We are a small scale regenerative produce farm, which means we use natural methods to focus on regenerating the health of our soil. We believe that healthy soil will grow healthier and more delicious produce. To build and maintain fertile soil we use minimal tillage methods, compost, organic fertilizers and minerals, cover crops, and livestock rotations. Weeds are taken care of manually without the use of sprays. We sell these vegetables, along with other local goods in a weekend market on our farm property. We are unique in that we only sell the vegetables that we grow. While we do have vendors for things such as fresh baked bread, jam, honey, salsa, etc. the vegetables sold in our market were picked fresh on our farm, usually within 24 hours and grown using our very high standards. Customers know when they buy our produce that it is beyond organic (not certified though), fresh, and they are literally buying food straight from the hands of the person who grew it.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Starting this farm was a really big leap of faith and risk for us. We left a very nice, comfortable lifestyle in a great neighborhood to start something really hard all the while with young children. We believe in calculated risk. We planned, dreamed, and learned before jumping in. We knew we had a community of family and friends to support us. We have a deep Christian faith, and so praying and trusting in God’s timing and wisdom was huge for us. There will always be risks in life. Levels of comfort for how big of risks to take vary from person to person. For us, the biggest risk was obviously jumping in to starting a farm from scratch. But each decision we make for our business and how we invest and spend our money is a risk still. We handle each risk with careful consideration. Rather than jumping into something, we discuss big decisions with each other and mentors in our field. We hope our kids will see and learn from us, that if they are patient and willing to learn and put in the hard work, they can follow their dreams and do something they are passionate about.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@threetreesfarm.net
- Website: www.threetreesfarm.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_threetreesfarm_/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/3TreesFarm
Image Credits
The professional pictures were taken by Sarah Maigur owner of All My Heart Photography
