Battling the Red Tape of Liberty County and Fighting for Food Freedom

We are facing closing the farm stand because of the requirements the county is forcing on us. I thought it might be good to list where we started and then our 10 year plan going forward. It was always our plan to eventually become a full retail store to sell other items (items not grown or produced locally.) It was just many years down the road. We are not currently selling mass produced items that would be considered retail at the moment, but with a retail license we would be able to. Our focus right now is to support local farmers, growers, artists and bakers. Under Georgia state law, these items are considered value added products to help promote and grow traffic to a farm stand. Here is what the plan was for the farm before the county ever got involved.

Where we started:

Year 1 - Buy land and clean up the land (it had been used as a dumping ground for years.) (2018)

Year 2 - Build the gardens and work on soil health. Lots of compost! (2019)

Year 3 - Start selling goat milk soap and produce at farmers markets (2020 Covid )

Year 4 - Covid shut down all the farmers markets, so new plan! Buy a shed and build a farm stand on site. (2021)

Year 5 - Learn how to install insulation and drywall, flooring and counters in the new building. (2022)

Year 6 - This land broke me… lol two back surgeries put everything on hold (2023)

Year 7 - Still recovering from back surgeries and not a lot of labor I can manage. (2024)

Year 8 - The Farm Stand Officially Opened! (2025)

Year 9 - The County started requirements for a retail License and the farm stand is facing closing. (2026)

Going Forward - The next 10 year plan

2027 - Grow the farm stand enough to hire our first full time employee to grow produce full time and have more fresh organic produce in the farm stand grown right here on the farm.

2028 - Save for a larger building for the farmstand, continue growing produce and increasing our dairy goat heard to be able to meet demand for our goat milk soap.

2029 - Start looking at building plans and requesting quotes for a larger farm stand structure, while saving for this larger building.

2030 - Hire our second full time employee for growing produce and managing the goat heard and chicken flocks.

2031 - Hire our 3rd farm hand.

2032 - Begin licensing requirements for expanding the farm stand to a much larger building and starting construction on a 2000 sq foot farm stand.

2033 - Finish building the larger farm stand building.

2034 - Start the licensing requirements to expand and have a commercial kitchen located in the new farm stand building. The plan is to offer healthy smoothies from herbs and fruit grown organically on the farm. The soft served ice cream will be from freshly harvested Dragonfruit from our 28 different varieties of Dragonfruit grown here on the farm.

2035 - Save money for installing the commercial kitchen

2036 - Finish the commercial kitchen and start offering soft serve ice cream and fresh smoothies to our community, along with all of our other locally produced items.

As you can see, the plan was always to grow to what they want us to do right now. But we arent there yet. Everything we are doing is by hand, just us, and on a very limited budget. It took me 10 years to get to the point of just being able to buy this land. Its taken us almost 10 years to build it to this point and its going to take us another 10 years to get to the end goal. The vision for the farm is to be a hub for our entire community and offer healthy food alternatives and support as many local farmers, bakers, and artists as possible.