Garver Farm’s expansion considers consumer habits, region’s growth

“When my parents got married that they wanted to start a produce stand,” said daughter Alayne Garver Taylor.

It started with a folding card table set up on Saturdays and Sunday piled with a couple dozen ears of corn and a few tomatoes.

“If they sold enough to go out on a date for that night they thought that was a win,” Garver Taylor said.

Over the last 30-plus years the operation has expanded to a destination for visitors offering local produce and a look up close and personal to farming business three seasons out of the year.

It continues to be a whole family affair with Alayna, her husband Daylon, and her parents working at Garver Family Farm Market. Lots of goodies are located in the farm stand barn and throughout the fields of vegetables, sweet corn and soybeans ... and of course, a fall favorite — pumpkins.

“We plant about 50 acres of pumpkins. You can actually pick the pumpkins off the vine,” Garver Taylor said. “The farm where everyone shops is our home farm. That’s about 200 acres.”

But the Garvers actually farm a total of about 2,000 acres across Butler, Warren and Preble counties.

In addition to harvest, they are also thinking forward to spring, prepping a strawberry crop that will mean an opportunity for customers to pick their own next year.

“We are constantly doing something, It is a yearlong effort,” she said. Veggies are actually started in February in the onsite greenhouse. “It is a constant go, go, go.”

Currently the farm store is open from May to Oct. 31, but with a new building under construction, that will change to year round.

On Saturday, Harvest Fest from 10 to 6 p.m. will feature music, about 40 vendors, food trucks, plenty of pumpkins and fall home décor and hayrides for the kids along with a chance to get a peek at the new store slated to open in January or February.

The expansion has been about five years in the making, beginning before the pandemic. After things reopened, the cost of the building tripled and the plans were scaled back to a larger market and winery with tastings

An eighth of an acre is now planted with grapes for winemaking that will happen about the time the new store is completed.

“This fall will be our first year for harvest — we are really excited for that,” she said, noting it takes three years before the plant grows and the grapes are ready for winemaking.

Other expanded goodies will include an in-house bakery, lots of local produce, a coffee shop and a deli.

“The deli will be a full farm to table style café. People will be able to eat inside the store,” Garver Taylor said.

She added there will be locally made gifts and home décor and a patio in the back for events.

Garver Taylor, who returned home after graduating from Wilmington College, said as farmers, it is a balancing act to see the suburbs move into the open land, but knowing everything eventually changes. And she said they know part of the growth of the farm has been possible through that growth and added traffic along Ohio 63 in Monroe.

“Another reason we decide to do this (expansion) is for future generations, we want to have something to pass down to them because they are not making anymore farmland, it is just the opposite. Farmland is going away faster than you can even say it. It is to carry on to the future and to provide for future and provide the community with things they have asked for and want to see. Because if we don’t do it, somebody else will,” Garver Taylor said.