A friend pointed out that Tangleroot Farm was having a sale. I’d heard of them—in fact, one of my regular customers at my own burgeoning farmstand told me they had been CSA members with Tangleroot. They were now orphaned, as it were, because Tangleroot was folding its tent.
I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, other than wondering how many other orphaned CSA members might now be in the area. Were they hungry? Could I feed them? But the sale was an opportunity to both see what a retiring market garden might have in the way of equipment and supplies, and also what I might learn.
Tangleroot Farm, as it turns out, is really a man named Adam Reed. Originally from Saratoga Springs, Adam had worked with WWOOF—Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms—before developing a market garden in Saratoga. At the same time, he had friends at North Country Creamery, and they wanted someone to help distribute their delicious yogurts. So, Adam and his then-girlfriend found an amazing piece of property in Essex, NY, on the Boquet River. 20 peaceful acres, it would turn out, that avoided the worst of the snowfall in winter while getting the worst of the mosquitos each summer. So bad were those mosquitos, that Adam couldn’t really grow down by the river, the original dream. He cultivated the land closer to the road instead.
Tangleroot Farm. Photo by TJ Brearton
Fifteen years later and Adam is now 39. He’s married to a different partner, and she’s from the UK. In his blog, Adam writes that his wife told him she planned to return to the UK when they met. He knew this was coming, and he looks forward to the adventure. As I poked around his offerings—100-foot-by-35-foot silage tarps, 100-foot-long weed mats, mini wobbler sprinkler system, seed trays, weed burners, and more—I asked him what, if anything, he had to impart to any ambitious new market gardeners out there.
He thought for a moment before he said, “Know thyself.” He added, “No, I really mean it. You need to know the type of person you are.” He asked me whether I was the tidy and organized type or left a wreckage in my wake. I told him I was particular about things; I’d always been pretty organized, leaving room for improvisation. “That’s perfect,” he told me. He considered himself the latter type, prone to making messes and leaving them. But in this business, he said, you need order. You need an aesthetic sense, a way that you want things.
Bok Choy, Arugula, Parsley, Shallots, Tomatoes and Fennel. Photo courtesy of Tangleroot Farm
We talked a lot, too, about the different distribution channels for a market garden. A CSA is community shared agriculture. “It used to be actual shares in the farm,” Adam said. “It was, basically, if you have 100 people give you $100 for the season, and that season is a drought or some terrible plague, then 100 people lose $100 instead of one farmer losing $10,000.” Conversely, the better the season, the more it benefitted everyone. “Now it’s more like a loan that gets repaid in vegetables. You don’t want too many of those drought seasons. Customers will turn elsewhere.”
Farm dog at Tangleroot Farm. Photo by TJ Brearton
Once COVID hit, Adam leaned into the home delivery model. At his peak, he had 180 CSA members. He was also going to farmer’s markets in the region, plus downstate to Glens Falls and Saratoga. He developed wholesale customers, like the Meat Market in Willsboro. He’d hired a couple of people, too. Adam was forthcoming with what money he made from all of this. Not a fortune, but nothing to sneeze at either. It all meant to me: a comfortable living can be made from market gardening in the North Country. Being like Adam probably helps, of course. In his late twenties and thirties through most of this, he’s fit and healthy, with lots of energy. As I sifted through the gardening tools I might add to my own arsenal, he was walking around with his one-year-old baby strapped to his back, whistling as he went.
At 50, with kids no longer strapped to my back (but dancing on my brain with their teenaged angst), did I want to take all of this on? I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t.
The investment question
Adam was like a gardening therapist in this way. He understood. “I advise people to go into debt,” he said. “No, I do.” He meant that if you were really going to do this, you needed to be prepared to invest. For two reasons. If you don’t, it will become a 24/7 job. “The most sustainable models I’ve seen, people are working 40-50 hours a week.” The other thing is putting your money where your mouth is – investing in your business forces you to take it seriously, to work efficiently, to rectify mistakes.
We walked over to the giant four-bay greenhouse Adam has named The Monster. He whistled as we went, his blonde baby bobbling in the carrier on his back. It’s just tomatoes and lettuce in The Monster now, as he winds down the business. But this clarifies the essence of market gardening, really. “When all is said and done, people like a red tomato, a head of crisp lettuce.”
Greenhouse greens at Tangleroot Farm. Photo by TJ Brearton
I ogled the lettuce. It looked so good in neat rows with the weed mats doing their jobs. Nothing but bright green and deep purple fluffy heads of lettuce, irrigation hoses running through, a bit of shade cloth overhead. I’ve longed for a row or two like that for a couple of years now. Raised beds are great, but I’ve found weeds can be an even greater challenge, and volume, of course, is limited.
“Are you going to farm in Scotland?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see.”
Adam’s friends, people like Racey Henderson of Reber Rock Farm, tell me that Adam is the type of guy who’s always going to find something productive to do. He knows himself. He’s not as into scale or machinery as say, Adam Hainer of Juniper Hill. But he’s not going to put his boots on for a weedy patch of raised bed gardens either. He “bootstrapped” his way at the beginning, he admits, but realized it was a quick path to burnout. One can only trial-and-error just so much. You have to make a plan and put it in place and follow through.
It all sounded like a ton of work. But for my final truck load, I was feeling undaunted. I bade him and his cute baby goodbye, the warm breeze of mid-September wafting in my own window as I put the truck in drive.
“Sucker,” Adam said with a wink, and we both started laughing.
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