(Source: Aaron Shellow-Lavine/WAMC)
A couple who lost their home in 2010 now earns almost $700,000 a year growing vegetables on just two and a half acres in upstate New York. Corinne Hansch and her husband, Matthew Leon, went through serious money trouble during the 2010 recession. They rented a 2,100-square-foot storefront near Main Street, turning it into a certified kitchen, market, and café called Lovin’ Mama Kitchen. Leon told WAMC: “For 15 years we’ve been vegetable farming and not had a certified kitchen with which we can turn that product into a value-added item. They paid for the new store using several sources: $35,000 raised through crowdfunding, a $35,000 Community Development Block Grant, and another $32,000 from the National Grid Main Street Revitalization Program.
Their first try, in Northern California, fell apart when they lost the land they were renting.
“The cool thing is, because we are the farmers, we can really provide things at cost, and we can get really creative… we’re really at an advantage because we are the producer,” Hansch told WAMC. When their home in California was about to be taken away, they decided to try growing food for a living. So they moved to New York’s Capital Region. Starting on just a third of an acre, they built a small but very productive farm. It has since grown into a large local food business with its own store downtown. To bring in more income and help solve local food access problems, the couple opened a retail space in downtown Amsterdam. The downtown area has very few grocery stores nearby, so many residents without cars have to travel miles to reach a supermarket. So, basically, now with a certified kitchen we can take the thousands of pounds of tomatoes that we produce every year and can them into salsa, posadas, tomato sauce. The shop sells fresh produce, ready-made meals, and discounted food boxes, and it accepts EBT (food assistance) payments to help lower-income shoppers.