Joan Walker, Fiddlesticks Farm
Season Extension Infrastructure Improvements
Grant Award: $8,000
Fiddlesticks Farm is a mama-owned small farm in Alexander, NC focused on producing high-quality flowers, salad greens and vegetables using sustainable, regenerative methods. Joan and her family started the farm three years ago, out of a passion for living closer to the land and protecting the environment.
Now established with a solid customer base and growing demand from farmer’s markets, direct to customer sales, and wholesale, the award from AgOptions was used to dramatically improve season extension infrastructure at the farm with the addition of a new high tunnel, upgrades to existing high tunnels that were bootstrapped on a budget, building low-tunnels for early field crops, and several other strategic infrastructure upgrades.
For a small farm with intensive production on less than one acre, these improvement projects will allow for optimization of Fiddlesticks Farm’s operations, allowing a greater number of planting successions in a year, longer season, and reduced pest and disease pressure. This AgOptions award will help to diversify into new products and supply greater market demand; provide our community with fresh, local, sustainably grown produce and flowers; and sustain WNC’s tradition of small, family farms.