Growing Delicious Partnerships

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The story below is from our November/December 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you! 

Catch our season 1 finale podcast segment with Alex Stewart of Thornfield Farm, who shares more insights into how hard local farms work to get food on your favorite menus, overcome challenges and celebrate successes.

These local farms are producing the goods for many of your favorite menu items.

Bite into a hamburger at Burger in the Square.

Sink your fork into a meat entree at Local Roots.

Cut up a leafy salad at Bloom.

These menu items are brought to you by local farmers.

Meet some of the faces behind your food, and learn about why they love growing the foods that you savor.

Fields Edge Farm

Four years ago, Leslie and Roger Slusher traded jobs in higher education and insurance for a new way of life.

They relocated from Pennsylvania to Virginia to run Roger Slusher’s long-time family farm, Fields Edge Farm in Floyd.

“We decided that if the family farm was going to keep going, we would come back,” said Leslie Slusher, who taught genetics at West Chester University for 26 years.

At Fields Edge, located in the Rush Fork Valley area of Floyd, the couple manages the farm’s day-to-day produce and meat production.

Terry Slusher, Roger Slusher’s brother, manages the farm’s Hereford cattle.

The Slushers sell produce and meat at farmers markets in Roanoke and in downtown Blacksburg. Area grocery stores and restaurants also sell the farm’s meat and produce, from  Local Roots in Roanoke to Square 5 Public House and Rising Silo Brewery, both in Blacksburg. The farm supplies the food for Villa Appalaccia Winery’s farm to table dinners in Floyd.

Leslie Slusher is the face of the farm at the Roanoke farmers markets, where she said she enjoys interacting with the customers directly.

“I really enjoy talking about food and giving people recipes,” she said.

In fact, she recently explained to her market customers how to cook with fennel, an herb that she featured at the farm stand.

For farms like Fields Edge, selling directly to the community is essential. They can’t compete with large grocery stores that buy products in bulk and offer lower prices, said Leslie Slusher.

“For the small family run farm, I think direct to consumer with a couple wholesale accounts is the only path to survival,” she said. “We’re looking for the consumer who wants to know where their food came from and know how it was produced. They are willing to pay more.”

Rabbit Head Farm

Glancing at a map of this Franklin County farm, its name is self explanatory.

Tara and Jordan Sharpes are co-owners of Rabbit Head Farm. The 14-acre property where they live and work is shaped like a rabbit’s head.

The Sharpes are first-generation farmers who moved to the Roanoke Valley in 2011.

Their farming dreams became a reality in 2014, and at Rabbit Head, meat is their focus. They raise antibiotic-free chickens, hogs, dairy cows and free range veal calves. Their focus is poultry and pork, but they’re growing the farm’s veal operation, in particular rose veal.

You’ll find them selling whole chickens and other meats at the Grandin Village Farmers Market. Rabbit Head meat also is sold at the Roanoke Co-op and at Yard Bull Meats in Roanoke.

The farm offers a subscription service and home delivery for customers as well.

Like many family farmers, the Sharpes live on the farm. Jordan Sharpes is an attorney in Moneta, while Tara Sharpes homeschools their three girls.

Their children are involved with farm life as much as possible. Even their school year is based on the farm’s growing cycles.

“We couldn’t do this any other way,” said Tara Sharpes. “We are passionate about raising children on the farm.”

Thornfield Farm

Flowers are the newest product fueling sales at Thornfield Farm in Fincastle.

Susanna Thornton started a flower cooperative several years ago, selling the farm’s blooms to local florists. She’s growing at least a hundred different varieties, with fall dahlias as the marquee flowers.

But that’s only a slice of what Thornfield Farm offers. Thornton’s family farm, where her dad still raises beef cattle, produces meat, eggs and produce, and is a regular seller at the Grandin Village Farmers Market.

“We have a strong emphasis on stewarding the land to the best of our ability,” said Thornton, who grew up on the farm, but moved away after college to chase nonprofit work in larger cities.

Eventually, a rural lifestyle beckoned her back to her roots.

“I decided that I didn’t want to live in a city, too much concrete,” she said. “I missed the land of the mountains.”

Thornton worked on a farm in Maine before making her way back to her family’s farm, where she now leases about 15 acres of the 300-acre property from her parents.

Thornton and her farm crew sell items at the farm’s own stand on Tuesdays, along with one at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church in Roanoke. Additionally, they have a pre-order farm share program.

Thornfield’s farm fare also is available at several Roanoke area restaurants, including Bloom, Lucky, Fortunato and Local Roots.

“I enjoy the ability to be outside and work with my body,” Thornton said. “It’s a big life improvement to be connected deeply with the outside.”

Woods Farms

When Mark Woods was a teenager, he had his own tomato patch. He distinctly remembers grating his own tomatoes, which is a process of peeling and pureeing the vegetable. It was clear then that farming was in his blood.

He grew up working on his family’s farm, Woods Farms in Boones Mill, an enterprise that his grandfather started in 1947.

In 2015, Woods became the farm’s owner.

He said he most enjoys seeing plants grow throughout the different seasons.

“You plant your seed and then you see your tomato plants and then you harvest the tomatoes,” Woods said. “The changing of the product…it’s like your adulthood.”

Over the years, the farm business has diversified its selections of foods, from chickens and eggs in the early days to apples, tomatoes and peaches in the summer.

During the holiday season, the farm sells Christmas wreaths and trees.

Woods Farms is a staple in the local farming scene, namely at the downtown Roanoke Farmers Market. Several years ago, in response to the pandemic when fewer people worked in the city’s downtown offices, Woods opened a second stand at the South County Market on Virginia 419 in Roanoke County.

Now, the farm sells its offerings from the downtown market Fridays and Saturdays, and at the county market a few days a week. It also has its own store in Boones Mill.

Look for the farm’s tomatoes paired with hamburgers and other menu items at two area restaurants, Burger in the Square and Holly Jo’s Creekside Grill in Boones Mill.

Garden Variety Harvests

It began with a backyard.

Cam Terry, who runs Garden Variety Harvests, moved to Roanoke in 2017 after a career detour. Formerly a film producer in Colorado, Terry wanted to build an urban farming business.

He started a backyard garden at his in-laws’ home in Garden City. And the business concept sprouted, literally, soon making its way into backyards across the community.

Since then, Terry moved much of the operation to a 3.5-acre site at Lick Run Farm on 10th Street in Roanoke. The space is located in the midst of a neighborhood. Family and friends make up the farm crew and work to grow 40 to 50 different crops throughout the year.

“I don’t believe that food production needs to happen in one part of the community and transported to where we live,” Terry said. “We teach people that small spaces can be productive.”

Garden Variety Harvests is a regular vendor at the Grandin Village and West End farmers markets and sells its produce to local restaurants, including Local Roots, Bloom, Rockfish, Blue Ridge Catering and others. Its best seller for restaurateurs is a bagged lettuce mix, which combines spinach, arugula and kale.

Terry said he’s inspired daily by the magic of growing food that people want to eat.

“There’s so much optimism to it,” he said. “The planting of food is the most hopeful thing you can do.”

The story above is from our November/December 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!