A Conversation with Marie HIlls of Kimball Fruit Farm

What Makes a Farmer’s Market Stall Successful?

For the past two years I go two or three times a week to farmers’ markets in our area. Each time I would visit a market where Kimball Fruit Farm was, I noticed that they always had a lot of customers. As I paid more attention I noticed that not only were they busier than other stands but they would often have a line of customers while some stands only had a few, and one had almost no customers. The vegetables at each stand were all similar, so therefore something had to be different at Kimball’s and I wanted to know what it was. The only way to find out was to ask and this is what I did.

Marie Hills and I spoke one evening and it became apparent from our conversation that their success was due to:
1. Good farming practices
2. Good help
3. Personal qualities of both the family and their employees
4. Good business practices

The farm has been fortunate to have been around since the 1920s when Allen & Foster Kimball took over a burned down dairy farm and planted 80 acres of apple and peach trees. They had a small farm stand and a wholesale packing house. At this time they were 80% wholesale and 20% retail. They ran the operation this way until 1969 when Allen Kimball passed away. The land was than sold to developers and they in turn leased the land to Allen Kimball’s brother-in-law Harold Hills who had been working on the farm since 1939. In 1990, Harold sold the business to his son Carl. This was right at the time that the New England apple industry went into decline due to imports from the west coast and other locations around the world. Many apple farms closed and the Hills’ knew that their biggest threat was yet to come from China. With this in mind they decided to rip out half their apple trees and plant strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, plums, melons and a full array of vegetables with the idea that if one crop failed others would come through. At the same time they turned their business on its head by going 80% retail and 20% wholesale.

The Kimball’s have one large and one small greenhouse to get the crops started (primarily lettuce and radishes). When they are ready to transplant the produce they lay plastic down on the soil to heat it up and lay a hoop house over it. It is very labor intensive but this allows them to get their produce to market early when they can get a better price for it. If they were to do everything from seed it would delay the availability of produce, and the name of the game at farmers’ markets is having produce available both early in the season and late.

They have also been blessed with excellent soil. I am just one of many customers who tell them that their arugula is incredible but so too are their tomatoes that have been voted the best in the area for past two years in a row and their apples are fast approaching the same status.

Kimball’s is an IPM farm and customers accept this process because they know that some things are just plain difficult to grow in New England. Kimball’s is very responsive to their customers’ requests and their low spray farm policy is just one case in point. Kimball’s puts up a sign at the market reminding their customers that they asked for low spray and so the corn may have worms in it and their customers’ don’t seem to mind because it always sells out. It was their customers who asked them for arugula and mesclun mix before they knew what it was. Later Carl Hills started reading about heirloom tomatoes and they have now been growing them successfully for over twelve years.

Based on customer demand for a certain kind of vegetable or fruit they will spend lots of time in the winter doing research. Carl Hills is currently starting to graft antique apples. They are playing around with them, not in big quantities yet because they have to feel out which ones are going to yield, which will taste good, and which are worth doing because they are always looking for that niche.

New England has been suffering from a lot less rain and more heat lately as a result of global warming. For Kimball’s this has been a double edged sword, as this year their peaches were wonderful because of the lack of rain but lack of rain stresses the trees. So they are spending more time and money moving the irrigation around to keep the trees growing. This year their corn tips were dry too. They put up signs for their customers explaining that there had been no rain for 45 days so the tips were dry but the corn was wonderful. They did this so their customers would understand that it was not old corn. They are always educating their customers.

Marie Hills feel that many things are important at a market but in particular the display and the personnel. People today are looking for that personal connection and this is what they get at a farmers’ market. All of Kimball’s staff is friendly and helpful and recognize their regular customers. Many customers will ask them how to cook so and so vegetable and Marie feels that if you say “gee, I don’t know” that will turn them off but if you say “gee, we have just started growing it so I don’t know that much about it but I tried it cooked this way and it was great, customers will really appreciate that.” More than once Marie Kimball told me that they were not just selling a product but that they believed in their products. They are passionate in what they do and take great pride in it and they believe that this comes across when they are communicating with their customers. They also put a tremendous amount of time into training their help. Marie told me that ‘when they start working for us they may not know what banana fingerlings are, or heirloom tomatoes, or what IPM is but by the time I have finished training them they do. I give them brochures to read and learn and then they have things they have to answer appropriately before I let them go to a farmers market.”

Learning the best way to display their products was a process of trail and error. Today Marie Hills says that she will watch someone at a new stand and say “gosh, if only they would display their products this way or that they would do much better”.

Here in Massachusetts the Dept. of Agriculture runs three coupon programs for women with children, elders, and low income. It is a federal program that trickles down to the states. The farmers’ love these programs because it brings people to the markets’ that would not normally come, it encourages them to eat fresh produce, it doesn’t cost them anything, and it gives the farmers’ new customers. A lot of ethnic groups are use to fresh produce in their home country so when the come to the markets with their coupons they are hooked and will come back again even when their coupons are gone.

Kimball’s have an incredibly loyal customer base and they see the same customers at two or three farmers’ markets including myself.

They hand out brochures to their customers telling them to come and visit them at the farm. They let them know that they have mountain views, lots of beautiful orchards, no animals and that they can come and bring a picnic and watch the beautiful sunsets. Through this connection they have gained a lot of additional pick your own customers.

Although they always had a farm stand it was not doing well and for this reason they concentrated most of their efforts on the farmers’ markets which accounts for 60% of their income. Once they felt secure with this side of the business they again looked at the farm stand and wondered how to promote it. They did a business plan and weighed out options on how to increase their business. Last winter they decided to invest half a million dollars to gut their old stand and rebuild in the same location.

They knew that customers had been coming into the stand and finding little to buy in the wintertime. So from the moment they opened that had a full array of everything not just their produce which meant they had to install milk coolers. Because they have a lot of customers that want their produce they labeled everything accordingly.

Marie told me that they knew they needed a bigger back room to wash and process all the produce that goes to market. With their new stand the pickups back up to the sliding door, off load the produce into the stainless steel sinks were it is washed and then it goes out right into the trucks and off to the markets’

Marie feels that with all the recalls on hamburger, lettuce, and spinach, etc. there will be stricter regulations coming down the pike which is why they built a stainless steel room. They hope that when this time comes, they will be ahead of the game and not behind. She believes there will be stricter regulations on how you pick and bag and everything. Although she believes the government will start out with the big farms in California she says it will trickle down to the smaller guy too. Marie said that “small growers always have their ears open to what is going on with the big growers in case it trickles down to us”. The farm stand accounts for 20% of their income.

In Boston they have both a tomato and an apple broker. Over the years they have developed a small niche for their heirloom tomatoes and so they are shipped out in boxes with their name emblazoned on the outside. If they have an over abundance of apples or tomatoes it is a good place to send them but they will not get the same price for it as they do at the farmers’ markets but it saves it going to waste. The wholesale business accounts for 20% of their income.

One continual problem is the shortage of labor. Marie says that Americans just don’t want to work on a farm or do any manual labor at all. For the past twenty odd years she has used the same Jamaican labor force. Without them she would be doomed.

They use QuickBooks for their accounting and they keep records of production from one block to another. A lot of that is for insurance purposes in case of a disaster. They also keep track of what they sell at each market by counting manually what goes on the truck and what comes back. This way they know what to grow and what to put on the truck for any particular month.

A happy ending or a happy beginning! In 2000, they bought all 178 acres of the family farm land from the developers. To make sure the land is never developed in the future they sold the development rights to the State of Massachusetts through the agricultural preservation program.