Today we’d like to introduce you to Greta Jankoviak.
Hi Greta, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We started the farm in 2014 after returning to Greta’s hometown of Cheboygan. We initially had planned to start a winery, so we planted five acres of wine grapes. We knew they would take a few years before producing, so we started growing vegetables in the interim and, well, we never stopped. The vineyard quickly took a back seat as we grew out the farm, following the demand for local produce that was lacking in our area. We initially started at the local farmers’ market and eventually added a CSA (community supported agriculture program) the following season. The CSA program has evolved over the years from a farmers’ choice box, to a customizable box, to its current model, with members purchasing a pre-loaded debit card (called a Farm Card) to the farm in January/February, that they can use to purchase anything we produce through the season, earning “Harvest Rewards” points on their purchases that they can convert into discounts. Members can shop at the farmers market and farmstand, or they can order online for pickup from our mobile walk-in cooler conveniently located in Cheboygan. Orders are delivered to the cooler weekly and members are given keycode access, so they can pick up their order at their convenience anytime over the week.
We built a farmstand in 2021 following requests from customers to shop at the farm. The farmstand is self-serve, utilizing a checkout kiosk, which allows customers to use any form of payment and affords us easier sales tracking. Despite being off the beaten path, the farmstand has been a surprising success – it’s been a great way to give customers more access to our product in a more low-key way versus what can sometimes be a pretty rushed pace at the farmers’ market. Many customers also enjoy coming to the farm each week to see how it progresses over the course of the season and we’re happy that they can make that special connection to their food.
In the past few years, we began growing dahlias on a larger scale with a little over 4,000 plants this year. We have grown them since before we started the farm, and decided to finally put a little more effort into them so we could share their beauty with others. We now sell the flowers locally and ship the tubers (the root used for propagation) across the country. The dahlias were a pretty good fit into our farm, filling up periods in fall (for digging the tubers) and winter/early spring (for dividing and shipping the tubers) when we’re not so busy with other things. We added a dahlia you-pick on a whim in 2023, giving customers a chance to come explore the dahlias and cut a bucket of their own. The you-pick has become more popular than we expected, so we’ve been expanding it to every Sunday for the month of September. This year we’ll be adding dahlia-related workshops and live music each week.
We also grow and sell plants in the spring. It started as just some vegetable and herb plants that we seeded to fill up some extra greenhouse space and has grown pretty naturally from there. We now have a seasonal garden center stocked with everything from annuals, perennials, and veggies to shrubs, trees and houseplants. With our landscaping background, it seemed like a natural addition to the farm and a good way to more fully utilize some of our time and infrastructure during the early part of the season. This spring, we added a series of gardening workshops and classes, which gave us a new way to share our knowledge with our customers to help improve their gardening abilities.
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?
Starting the farm was not a smooth, simple process. Between weather and pests and diseases, we had a lot to learn. Neither of us had any prior farming experience, so a lot of it was learned the hard way, through failing, learning and trying again – which sometimes ends in failing for a whole new reason. With enough persistence, we’ve learned how to do most things well enough to make it all work. We’ve had bugs, disease and drought destroy crops and wind tear down greenhouses, but a lot of it is just knowing to expect these kinds of things. Farming rarely goes smoothly and expecting it to can be exhausting. We try the hardest we can to keep things on the rails and that’s about the best we can do, from there we hope all those uncontrollable factors align enough to get things to the finish line. Fortunately, we have built a lot of systems over the years to mitigate some the effects nature throws at us – greenhouses to avoid cold temperatures, a robust irrigation system, etc.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Many of our customers are regular, weekly shoppers, which means we have well developed relationships with them, many of them all the way back to when we started 10+ years ago. We’ve watched their children grow up and have watched them proudly show off the farm they get their veggies from to their guests.
On top of active Facebook and Instagram pages, we also publish a weekly newsletter for our Farm Card members, which allows them to follow along with our successes and failures during the season. Last week’s newsletter becomes a natural conversation starter for customers; its amazing how many people take the time to read it every week despite their busy schedules. We think it’s important to bring our customers on this journey to help connect them to what it takes to get the food on their plate. It’s much more interesting for people when we tell them the real story rather than just celebrate all of our successes and ignore the failures.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://harvestthymefarm.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/harvestthymefarm
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/harvestthymemichigan
