Community Grown
Anderson’s Farm Market, established in 1904 as a dairy farm in Central New York, has been passed down for five generations, evolving into the beloved market supplying produce from around the region and fulfilling popular demand. Owned by Matt and Jenn DeHartt, the local community of Homer, New York, and some infrequent but loyal customers are like family. They uphold the principles of supporting small businesses and embody the essence of “locally grown” and “locally sourced.”
Anderson’s plays a big role in community outreach and fundraising. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they put on a regulations-compliant barbeque to raise the locals’ spirits. For any new business, Matt and Jenn have a strong inclination toward a food-related venture, reflecting their ongoing passion for the industry and for a business that can connect with their community.
Anderson's Farm Market opens at 9 AM, with deliveries coming in around 6-7 AM. The DeHartt's humble listing of various fundraisers and events they have hosted through Anderson's Farm Market includes one for Billy McConnell, the son of Bill McConnell, the owner of the Courtland Crush, an NCAA-sanctioned member of the MLB-endorsed NY Collegiate Baseball League. "They're like family," Jenn said. Suffering from two kidneys that were not processing protein properly, Billy received his cousin's kidney. Bloodwork was the only requirement after his surgery, and Billy took down his GoFundMe page immediately after funds were raised. "We raised a lot of money for him" with our fundraisers, said Jenn. He was in the Air Force and now has civilian contracts for them. That was one of many fundraisers Anderson's put on.
"In his words, 'we're good people,'" said Jenn, as she recalled how they fundraised for Paul Sandy, the Chief of Police of Cortland, when he had cancer, and he and his family were doing a collection for medical bills. Most of Anderson's fundraising during COVID-19 was for the fire department. The Fire Department usually did its fundraising through chicken barbeques. Still, COVID's negative effect on fundraising spotlighted Anderson's Farm Market fundraising events as they helped fulfill the Fire Department's money-making efforts. Anderson's also played a massive role in providing safe, outside activities for their community, and "everybody loved it."
They put on a fundraiser for the Sheriff's Department, one for First Responders, another for the emergency room at the hospital, and many more.
Matt and Jenn’s 17-year-old daughter Olivia stands dollar-bagging produce in the corner of Anderson's Farm Market. To save money and food from being wasted, Anderson’s bags veggies that are not the quality customers demand and sells them for around a dollar each.
Matt and Jenn’s opinions on higher education rest upon each child’s desire to pursue a degree or enter the workforce. No one is pressured to join the family business. Yet, all have picked up shifts at the store, usually working at least a few days a week. Olivia has been working at the store for four years. She doubled up on classes in her junior year of high school and is saving up for college. After a tragedy with a close friend, she is striving to study criminology.
A thick layer of fog coats the road surrounding Anderson’s Farm Market and the crossing towns and farmland in the early days of fall. The day is warm, but the temperature drops at night, creating an encroaching fog across the grounds until around 7:30 or 8 AM.
In the late '60s, Anderson’s Farm Market owned a pumpkin patch until renting out the space in 2005. The land is now rented out and has remained a space for growing and picking pumpkins.
While cooking Swedish meatball soup, Jenn recalled her and Matt's beginnings. They’ve been linked since Jenn came back from college. “Every time I saw him, a little voice in my head said, that’s the guy you’re gonna marry,” and here they are, passing their twentieth anniversary this year. When she was back again from college, after seeing Matt push a cart past her, she “went home that night and wrote a letter to (her current boyfriend at the time), packed up all his stuff and sent it back to him. He was in the Air Force. I broke his heart so bad he named his first daughter after me. It was in the newspaper. Who wants to read that? I don’t want to read that!” Matt read the newspaper and came by the shop the next morning shaking. “Will you go out with me?” he asked. “It was the sweetest thing,” Jenn said, beaming from laughter. As a couple working together for many years and long working hours, “there are days I wanna kill him… He always jokes and is like, ‘You know I’m worth more dead than alive,’ and I’m like, if I wanted to kill ya, I know how to cook,” said Jenn, jokingly waiving a knife in her hand.
Todd loads the cartons of apples Matt ordered for the Market onto his pickup truck's trailer. Todd is bigger than life with much of his size due to his extensive knowledge of apples. Todd's apple orchard has been in business for 101 years. Jenn and Matt bring a hot lunch and freshly made cookies whenever they come up.
His facility is capable of storing apples year-round. It's a highly controlled atmosphere. "We can cool these rooms down to less than 1% oxygen, so it kind of puts these apples to sleep," Todd said. One of the rooms can hold up to 600 bins. Each bin is roughly 20 bushels, or 800 lbs, making that room 480,000 lbs worth of apples that will be stored in a temperature-controlled room until the lot is sold to vendors across the county.
"What we have found is that, whether we like it or not, people see us as the expert, quote-unquote, when it comes to produce. We would claim to be the fruit and vegetable people," said Matt, so he and Jenn are trying more and more to educate and make aware to their customers aware of when certain types of produce are going in and out of season. What is in season is very different compared to other regions. As the climate changes with global warming, Matt said he and the farmers he sources from find that the seasons shift earlier or later into the year, depending on the region, so predicting when a certain type of produce is in season is changing.
Apple growers and Matt himself can see how the climate is changing by looking at its impact on apple patches. He goes down rabbit holes of information on the internet, so holding up the Honeycrisp Jenn grabbed for the drive back from Cherry Lawn Farms and analyzing its origin, structure, and where other apples of the sort are headed was a relatively easy task for Matt to achieve. While there are better apples, the Honeycrisp is hugely popular among consumers; a huge part of that is thanks to its name. "Outta all the varieties that are Honeycrisp, it's either the Sweet Tango or the Honeycrisp," said Matt. Cherry Lawn Farms is currently working on an internal red flush apple. "It's the name that grabs people... look at Honeycrisp. They couldn't have picked a better name than to market that apple cause, in my opinion, there are better apples," said Matt while talking to some of Cherry's workers.
Matt unloads cartons of apples after he arrives at the Market with Jenn after picking them up from Cherry Lawn Farms on one of their last trips of the season. Driving to pick up eight crates of apples, approximately one-hundred-and-sixty bushels, takes four hours round trip. Every orchard in Upstate New York is scrambling to pick all their apples when they are ripe for filling their last orders of the season, or so they can store them for up to a year. Ever since Cherry Lawn Farms fell short of a driver, they have been taking their own pick-up truck and trailer to take the apples they ordered back to the market to sell, carefully picking how many apples of each variety to order for next week's pick-up based on customer demand.
Ian, Matt and Jenn’s son, wheels a cart of cardboard boxes to the back while Cindy, an employee of Anderson’s, checks out a customer.
Extra boxes for produce, orders, and other storage of sorts are kept above the store's ground.
Cindy checks out a customer near closing time at the market as Ian is putting away boxes. Not only is Cindy a trusted employee of Anderson's Farm Market, but she has become a part of the family amongst customers and employees alike. She started working at the Market five years ago after the gas station down the road closed.
“I wanted to be more than just a number. Here, I’m a someone.” She’s a part of the family, and so are all their employees and customers alike.
Matt and Jenn stand in front of Anderson’s Farm Market on a chilly day. Jenn packs a special lunch for each drive to pick up produce, stopping on the way back to snack in the truck before driving back to unload the truck. These drives are a rare occasion of alone time they get together.
“Things change, you get bigger. Not that we’re huge, but we’re bigger than just one person,” Matt said about Jenn’s father and the growth of the market since him. “ My father is a very simple man,” Jenn continues, “But even now, Dad could not run the store that it is now. We’ve grown since he left… If we stayed the same, we would have gone broke.” While Jenn’s family has owned various stores for roughly 119 years, there is no long-held expectation of keeping a business within the family. However, owning and running a business is where Matt and Jenn seem to have found a particular passion. Jenn’s father always told her, “You guys own it for as long as you want, and don’t feel bad if you end up selling it.”
Matt and Jenn have developed a close relationship with local law enforcement. In gratitude, they hosted fundraising efforts for the local police station in 2020 during the Defund the Police movement. This drew backlash and threats from online sources, including the Cortland BLM chapter. "There were some of our customers who came to our aid, but we were just like, we don't need to put that out there. That's not what this is about. This is not a political thing... it was just a thank you" for the help and precautionary protection from the police. "We were burgled... that's fun to say... anyways, we just didn't need to make a big deal about it," said Jenn. Fundraising is "a decision that needs to make sense to us that's personal" for the store, Matt said. Jen continued, "we were afraid. When those comments came out, I had friends that followed those pages just to know what was going on," and followed up with the police to ensure the safety of their store.