COMMUNITY, CUSTOMERS, COMMUNICATION

Sixteen years ago, I began my path in regenerative farming. Little did I know at the time what a bountiful role community would play in the success of Copper Hill Farm. To this day, it’s the singular biggest reason why the Farm continues to grow and evolve every season.

Our most fruitful connection to the local community comes from the Ellington Farmers Market (open Saturdays 9am-12pm from May-October) and the amazing customers who attend the market on a weekly basis. Through word-of-mouth, social media, and the contributions of the market’s unique vendors, it has turned into one of the most well attended and diverse farmers markets in the state. It is without question the highlight of the week for me and my family and always offers something new and communityoriented to enrich our lives, along with progressing the business.

From a community aspect, the market offers so much more than just local food. It provides a peaceful and unbiased place for people to gather, while shopping and interacting with other members of the tight knit agricultural community.

It all starts on Fridays at the farm, with a mass egg washing & packaging, along with a family vegetable harvest. From snow peas to heirloom tomatoes, my wife and daughters (aged 8 & 10 years) assist however they can with the preparations. Market mornings are usually a 4:30am start for me as I harvest the hyper-fresh vegetables such as Baby Greens, Radishes and Spinach. Once the coolers are full and the vehicle is packed, I take the 15 minute journey to Ellington, where things come alive rather quickly. Upon arrival, it’s always a pleasant environment, with vendors setting up and buzzing about the day ahead and the past week on the farm. Glorious culinary scents loft throughout the air, from the No Coast Taqueria food truck, the maple cotton candy vendor, and Misfit Spices (who serves free samples of chicken spiced with their unique spice blends). By 8:45, customers have started to trickle in, forming lines to snag their favorite hard-to-get products that tend to sell out quickly, such as Copper Hill Farm Nitrate Free Bacon, Golden Beets from Easy Pickin’s Farm or Macaroons from Mama’s Macs.

All walks of life can be seen at the market. It is truly a spectacle of community that is unparalleled with any other event that I know of. Customers come from all over the state to attend the market and shop from the 50+ vendors who attend weekly, with a devotion that can be seen and felt through their smiling faces, fruitful conversations, and overflowing baskets of local goods. Having grown up in Ellington, I interact with a lot of customers whom I knew well before I started farming, whether it be friends, parents of friends, teachers, or neighbors that I grew up with. They all have one thing in common – a goal to feed themselves and their families with fresh, local and organic food, that can only be found at a farmer’s market.

From a community aspect, the market offers so much more than just local food. It provides a peaceful and unbiased place for people to gather, while shopping and interacting with other members of the tight knit agricultural community. From weekly live music to special market days like the Peach Festival, Salsa Festival, or the Zucchini 500 Car Race, the market offers something unique for people of all ages. It also provides a place where people can directly connect with local farmers, something which is otherwise difficult to accomplish. I am often amazed at some of the topics of conversation that arise at my market tent, all directly related to local food. Questions are essential, and I encourage people to ask them, positive or negative. This leads to transparency, something which is extremely important to me as a farmer and community enthusiast.

Having grown up in the farming-rich town of Ellington has only helped steer me in the direction of a homesteading lifestyle, whether I realized it or not. After attending Green Mountain College in Vermont and receiving a degree in Environmental Liberal Arts & Agroecology, it became clear that a career in farming was indeed the path for me. Even from those early days, community was the number one driver in learning to be successful in a world where young farmers struggle to overcome the obstacles put forth within our capitalistic society, and that have made farming next to impossible for the younger generations for a plethora of reasons.

Thankfully, with the help of many friends, family, neighboring farmers, and customers, Copper Hill Farm has found its stride in 2025 and is ramping up production of pasture-raised meats, eggs and vegetables to meet the demand of the local consumers who have an insatiable taste for locally farm raised organic foods.

Another key role that the Ellington Farmers Market plays is to help inform people about the Farm Store on site here at Copper Hill Farm in Somers. Opened in late 2017, our Farm Store has provided the hyper-local community with our farm products 3 days a week, mostly on a self-serve basis. Along with farm tours and small live music events, the space has provided an outlet for neighbors and customers to gather and have access to uber-fresh and healthy organic food that simply cannot be obtained in supermarkets.

Social media (mainly Facebook) has proved to be the lone source of outreach and awareness for the Farm. With close to 5,000 followers currently, it has provided me with a free platform to get the word out about the farm, and keep followers informed as to what is happening and what is seasonally available. Many new followers have turned into devout customers that never would have known we were here if it weren’t for a simple post shared on the community forum about the farmers market or a newly available batch of Nitrate-Free Bacon.

Facebook also allows me the luxury of transparency, something which a majority of mainstream farmers do not strive for on a regular basis. It results in a trusting relationship with customers that otherwise would not occur. I encourage people to openly ask questions, leading to open-minded conversations related to the realm of regenerative farming.

Our farm tours are the ultimate onsite event for creating a combination of everything I have just described – Community, Customers, and Communication through transparency, all of which contribute to healthy relationships with customers, which all ultimately lead back to the farmers market. I can confidently say that the Ellington Farmers Market is the single largest contributor that has kept Copper Hill Farm operating and growing on a yearly basis, for which I am forever grateful for!

• Follow Copper Hill on FB – @CopperHillBeyondOrganic