How one farmer adapted regenerative practices to his new vegetable farm in Maine
Moses Hostetler has been a familiar face at Acres U.S.A. Eco-Ag conferences over the past several years — and it’s a face that seems perpetually enthusiastic about regenerative farming.
Hostetler and his family recently moved to Maine and have begun a medium-sized vegetable operation that they market directly, via an on-farm stand, and through wholesale. In this interview he discusses the process and the challenges of moving the farm and shares wisdom about both growing and marketing.
Acres U.S.A. The name of your farm is Jolly Eco Farm. It’s such an appropriate name! Why are you so excited about farming? You have an infectious enthusiasm for it.
Hostetler. I guess I tend to look at the whole picture because of the health experience we’ve had. In the future, I’m excited that we can make farming and food better. We tend to sometimes get on one road and forget the birds, the bugs — all that is involved in our success.
So, the reason we came up with “Jolly Eco Farms” is that we wanted everything to be involved — from the soil to the humans.
Acres U.S.A. You grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, correct? What part of the state?
Hostetler. In Mifflin County, which is in central Pennsylvania. I grew up on a dairy farm. We milked by hand and put it in cans beside the road. So, I had that background in farming, and I enjoyed it. We had an ice man in the community who would come around every two days with ice in the summer.
We sold the milk as a Grade B, until I was probably 12 years old. Then the markets got a little leery, because Grade A was taking over.
Acres U.S.A. How many cows did you have?
Hostetler. We were up to 20 at the most. I was the only child on the farm. There was a lot of work involved. We had the kind of barn where you had to scoop all the poop onto the wheelbarrow and push it out onto the manure spreader.
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. I learned a lot. But as time went on, markets changed, the needs changed, and the co-op struggled for many years and then shut down. So, I left the farm when I was 14 or 15. I was working here and there. I was still farming — just regular crops and making hay. But that was not our income source. We could not foresee a future in farming that way.
Once I got married, I got the home farm. But our first child was born with food allergies. That really opened my eyes — that we needed to do something different. We did a lot of research, and the answers were obvious — that the problem came from the food we ate. So, we started growing our own food.
Before that, I used to always chuckle about people growing produce. I would be like, “What are they doing sitting along the road trying to sell produce? That’s just a waste of time.” I still kind of look at roadside stands that way, but not the produce itself.
One of the things I had missed was that when I was growing up, I was sensitive to chemicals. Every time my dad sprayed, I got sick. The first year after I was married, he still did the spraying, but the second year, after the child was born, and we were having issues, I said no more. And he was okay with that, but he said, “You’re gonna have struggles growing without chemicals.” And I was fine with that, because I was not making my living at the time from the farm.
After we saw the results of actually doing that — growing healthy food — we realized we’d love to share that. That’s when — after the first year — we decided we were gonna try to sell some of these products — so that we could help other people who had the same issue.
Acres U.S.A. Did you have other friends, family members, people in your community with kids who you started growing for?
Hostetler. Not so much in the community. I hate to say this, but you have to go and help people that want to be helped, whether it’s in your community or elsewhere. You have to be there for your community, of course, but if you have a passion, and nobody’s there to support you, you got to do what you got to do.
So, the first year, we started going to town on a spring wagon with radishes and lettuce and spinach, and we sold about $30 a day. It was a start!
Acres U.S.A. And when was this?
Hostetler. This was about 2011. I kind of chuckle at the way we did things at the beginning. I mean, we went out to plant potatoes with a hoe and a bucket, thinking we were gonna make a living doing this! After two years of doing that, I was like, “Okay, this is not gonna work!” But that’s how we should start, I think. Because we could not afford to buy equipment. We could not afford to buy much fertilizer. We had to start small.
The other thing was that we were in an area where there was a lot of produce. So, we had to find this niche market. Why would they come to me if they can buy it 20 other places? Which is why we started with heirlooms. Nobody else really grew them. And from there on, it just grew every year. We started going to farmers markets in year two. By year three we were up to two or three farmers markets. My goal at the time was to never sell a thing off the farm — to have a farmstand on the farm — because I did not want people showing up interrupting my work.
So, the farm just kept growing, bit by bit. We were doing a market on Tuesday afternoon. We did the market on Wednesday morning. We did a market on Thursday afternoon. We did the market on Saturday morning. We had people following us market to market, which was encouraging, because we knew that we had something people wanted. We were doing heirlooms, and we weren’t certified organic, but we were practicing organic.
Acres U.S.A. Were you personally at all of those markets?
Hostetler. When they started, yes. Every market that started I would go the first couple of times to make sure we got the hang of it — to figure out the system. At that time, my mom said, “I can try and help pick, but I can’t sell produce.” So my wife was doing a lot at the market. But then there were a couple of times when we were just so busy that we finally convinced grandma to go to the market and sell. It was a slow conversion, but 10 years later she’s still at the farmstand, and everybody loves her. She wouldn’t want to do anything else. That’s how change comes to stay!
Acres U.S.A. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder about that — at a farmers market, how much of the success is just the connection with the one person who’s there — whether it’s the actual grower or someone else.
How did you end up having what you said you never wanted to have — a farmstand at your farm?
Hostetler. Around year five we were getting these requests — “Aren’t you open on the farm?” And we’d have these local people coming in, maybe to talk to my dad about carpentry work or something, and they said they’d buy produce if we had it.
So, we ended up starting to have the farmstand open Fridays and Saturdays on the farm only. Now, we’re on a back road that’s off the road that’s off the road by a half a mile. Well, as time goes on, we’d have a couple of customers, and the word gets out, and then we started seeing more and more people who were willing to drive the extra mileage to come to the farmstand.
After a while, I was like, “Well, maybe we should just open the farmstand all week.” So, we dropped one market and were open from Tuesday through Saturday on the farm. And when people found out about that, they just started coming to the farm, to the point where the last year that we were still in Pennsylvania, we only did one market, on Wednesdays. All the rest of our sales were from the farmstand.
So, people would come to the farm, and they wouldn’t come just for the produce. There was somebody behind the farmstand — my mom — who had told me 10 years earlier she was never gonna do that. And people were attached to her, and she was attached to them.
I think a lot about that. Every farmer is different. Some people just want to wholesale, and that’s fine. But for the passion that we have, that would never work. Because I want to know my customers. I want to help the families that had the same issues we did. That’s what we want to do.
We got certified organic in year eight, which opened up another door because we had all these people that we knew would buy, but they didn’t trust us. So we had to do that, just to get that trust. And it opened up a whole new world because then we got those people coming in.
Acres U.S.A. These were English people?
Hostetler. Yes. Just from the local area. We were an hour and a half from Harrisburg, and State College was a 45-minute drive. We would have some customers coming from there. But you have to understand — there’s all this produce and all these markets that people go to in State College. If they were driving out to me, it was because of what we were doing and the connection we had with them.
We started hosting a health connection day on the farm in 2015. We brought in several speakers on how human health connected to the soil. That definitely opened up a few eyes. And that’s what we like to do. The problem was, how do we support this, because I did not want to charge people to learn. I still struggle with that. Even though I know I have to charge something to meet expenses, when we were trying to find answers, I didn’t have the money to go to these kinds of conferences. I have a heart for those people, so I want to try to make it affordable.
The first one that we did, I think we had 25 people, which was kind of discouraging, but year two was better, and year three was even better. We got Dr. Richard Olree from Hillman Health Foods to come speak one year. Doing these conferences brought in all those families that we needed to support the farm.
Acres U.S.A. That’s great. So, how did you end up making the decision to move to Maine?
Hostetler. At this point, we had more work than we could do. We couldn’t stay caught up; we were actually starting to wholesale.
Also, I had had this thought in the back of my head for a long time: what is the future gonna look like with agriculture for my kids? By the time we had four kids, it was like, what are we going to do? We couldn’t keep splitting the farm — which is what was happening. We wouldn’t really have a choice in that area. We were either going to have to keep splitting the farm or forget about farming.
Acres U.S.A. How many acres was that farm?
Hostetler. Ninety-seven acres. We could split it into 25 acres — that’s okay for vegetable farms — you could somewhat make a living — but that’s just for that one generation. I was trying to see beyond my children. You cut it in quarters, and then cut that in quarters, etc.
Acres U.S.A. There are people who make a living off of a two-acre vegetable farm — but they’re only selling greens and radishes and high-value crops.
Hostetler. Right. And if you are already in an area where there’s produce along the roadside for 20 miles, what would that future look like to see more intense vegetable farms combined? You would have to come up with a co-op or something to ship it out — which could be done, but not without a lot of work.
So, we took a vacation to Maine seven or eight years ago, and then another one two years later. And I really liked what I saw. There were some other families in the community who moved to Maine, and I started looking around. And it just so happened that when we were really serious about moving, this farm popped up for sale in Maine.
We bought the farm in Maine, but during the transition we kept the vegetable farm going in Pennsylvania. This was 2020, and the money just rolled in that year. You could sell anything — it was one of those years. We were thankful that we kept that farm going because it really helped out up here.
Acres U.S.A. What are your goals at the new farm in Maine? You’d already learned the basic skills of vegetable farming, but now you get to start fresh. That’s got to be pretty neat.
Hostetler. Yeah. Every year I would go to these conventions like Acres, educating myself on all these different ways of doing things with regenerative agriculture.
This farm in Maine was farmed in potatoes for almost 100 years. And then a conventional dairy took it over, and they farmed it for 15 years. Ten years ago, I would have said it’s impossible to restore a farm like that. But with what I’ve learned all these years — with biology, with mineral balance in the soil, and in the plant — I was like, “Sure, let’s do it.” I love challenges. Life would be boring without them.
So, the first year we only did a cover crop; this was 2020, when we were still doing produce in Pennsylvania.
Acres U.S.A. What kind of cover crop did you use? How many different species?
Hostetler. I had no idea what the environment would take in Maine — how anything was going to take off — so I did strips, with oats under-seeded with others. In one strip we did timothy/alfalfa — like 20 acres. And then we did regular freedom red clover, which I’m a big fan of. And then we did white clover mixes, and we had a strip of orchard grass. I believe in diversity, and I wanted to see what would actually take. I would have liked to do more diversity, but I had to do something cheap and quick.
But oats were the main crop. I at least wanted to get the biology started.
Acres U.S.A. So, you started with the cover crops in 2020. What did you do then in the spring of 2021 to get going?
Hostetler. We actually ended up making a cutting of hay off the clover in the fall of 2020. We had a drought, but the clover survived.
Then in the spring of 2021 I did strip plowing. We use the moldboard plow because we don’t have the no-till equipment.
Acres U.S.A. Does that even exist — can you put a no-till drill or a roller-crimper behind a team of horses?
Hostetler. I believe that if there’s a will, there’s a way, but we haven’t gotten there yet.
So, we only did a few strips of plowing in 2021. One was an acre for strawberries. But we didn’t do any produce yet. Again, it was just clover and cover crops
Acres U.S.A. Did you reseed any of the clover?
Hostetler. We just let it go and then plowed it down, and then I did oats following that — just to get everything started. And we did spray some biology on the soil — OP-8, which is a Tainio product, and Rejuvenate and Santerra, which are AEA products. My goal was to start trying to break down all the chemicals that were in the soil. I was very cautious about that. We didn’t do any produce in 2021.
I should point out that 2020 was a severe drought — everybody in Maine said it was the worst they’d ever seen. 2021 was the same. 2022 was maybe a little better.
Acres U.S.A. How are you irrigated?
Hostetler. So, coming from Pennsylvania, having all the running water off the mountain — any day, anytime I wanted, I had pumps running. Then I came to this farm and there’s no water source. I realized that if we were gonna do produce, we had to have a pond, so we spent $8,000 to put in an irrigation pond. Without it, it wouldn’t even be worth trying.
Acres U.S.A. What kind of soil is it?
Hostetler. It’s a really light ledge. In some places we only have five inches of soil on top of solid ledge — bedrock. There’s nothing under that that you’re going to tap into. But it runs like veins throughout, so there are places where there’s more soil. When we were digging the pond, we hit this thing in the center of the pond that’s only a foot or so from the top, and there’s no way to get through it without blasting. I talked to the guy about blasting it, but he said it wasn’t worth it, because then we’d screw up our water veins — because water follows the ledge.
It’s less than an acre, but it is underground-fed — if it’s wet enough. It did dry up — not completely dry, but getting there. It’s pretty low, but there was still water this year. We use a regular two-inch high-pressure pump. We use it for drip, as well as for frost protection on strawberries with the sprinkler.
Frost protection was a lifesaver in Pennsylvania in the spring. I had this consultant on the farm after I had my first patch out — like 1,100 plants — and we walked the field and he asked what we were doing for frost protection. I’m the type that when I hear something, I have to think about it. But he said that if I wanted to be profitable, I needed to call up the irrigation supply company and order sprinklers and get the pump to the creek, within a week.
So, I did that, and after I had the sprinklers set up, my strawberries came out in full bloom. And then they predicted a frost. The consultant told me I had to watch the thermometer, and when it hits about 33 degrees, start the pump. I was completely new to this. I had no idea how it worked. I was thinking the water would run off the plant into the soil and that would keep them from freezing.
So, I start the sprinklers, and I saw this ice forming. And I’m like, “Oh, my goodness, what am I doing?” I didn’t know what I should do, because there was ice on the berry plants. I didn’t want to go call the guy because it was almost midnight. I decided to keep it running until morning. I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, we got up, and my dad looked out the window and said we would’ve been better off doing nothing. The whole patch was aglitter. It’s just ice, weighing everything down. It looked horrible.
I felt terrible. I went to town and went to the phone and called this guy up. I said, “My berry plants are covered in ice!” And he goes, “Well, good!”
That year, we had strawberries. Nobody else had strawberries until later in the season. So that was a lifesaver and a learning experience.
Acres U.S.A. That’s great. So, in 2022 you had strawberries in Maine. Then how many other acres did you plant for other produce?
Hostetler. We had approximately 12 acres total of produce. Everything from sweet corn to potatoes. We also built greenhouses. We had one for cucumbers and one for tomatoes. In one we put a big wood furnace. We have a lot of woodlands.
Acres U.S.A. I assume you have to go feed it in the middle of the night?
Hostetler. Oh, yes. But in the early spring, it’s actually exciting. It’s like, “Let’s go — let’s do something.”
Acres U.S.A. Right. Can you talk about how you manage nutrition?
Hostetler. I’ve had several different programs. I’m kind of the type that thinks, “If you don’t understand your farm, why would you expect someone else to do that for you?” I’m a firm believer in observation, and in the fact that the farmer knows best what he’s dealing with.
I do believe in sap testing. It’s a new thing, and I’ve slowly adapted to it. I believe it’s definitely a valuable wrench in the toolbox. But I would not want to rely on that alone, either — you need a toolbox with diverse wrenches in it.
Acres U.S.A. Did you do a total mineral assay as well?
Hostetler. We did. That was the first thing I did — just to get an idea of what to prep for.
Acres U.S.A. What did you add, based on that? And did you have some excesses?
Hostetler. We did have excesses, particularly calcium. I had a high base saturation of calcium in Pennsylvania too. I was listening to Gary Zimmer years ago and someone asked what to do for high calcium, and he said, “Move!” At that time, I was like, “I can’t do that!” But it ends up that we did move — onto another farm with high calcium!
The reason this farm has such high calcium is that it was farmed in potatoes for so many years, and their program was to put on lime every year. To deal with this, we look at from the soil. But that’s also where sap testing comes in. I would not want to be without that tool, because then you can come in and try to correct the deficiencies — while you’re working on the soil and on the biology. I believe biology is the most important factor here.
Acres U.S.A. Did you do anything else to alleviate the calcium? Boron?
Hostetler. Oh, definitely. So, we did the soil test, and it was clear that calcium was gonna be the problem. We’re going to try to focus on sulfur, boron, and of course some of the other micronutrients. Surprisingly enough, copper was high — which I guess won’t make the organic certifiers happy, but I was happy to see that. Since I have it, maybe I won’t have to fight with the certifiers to put it on as much. But still, is it available? That’s the next question. That’s where sap testing comes in.
So, after I got the soil tests, I sat down, got my whole plan made up as far as minerals go, and I took it to the local supplier and said, “I know this is not your typical blend, but could you blend this up for me and then come out and spread it?” And he looked at it and said, “What are you doing for your nitrogen? We can do it, but where is your nitrogen coming from?” And I said, “What are we breathing?” And he thought I was an idiot, but he said he could get everything except the cobalt. So I had to get the cobalt somewhere else — cobalt being one of those minerals you apply by ounces, not by pounds — and I took it to him and he blended it in with everything else.
They came out with the truck to spread it, and this was supposed to be spread on 57 acres. But I wasn’t home the day they came to spread it, and when I got home that night I went out and looked at the field, and I saw tracks a little over halfway down the field and then nothing. There were about 25 acres that didn’t get anything. I tried to tell myself that maybe they only brought part of the load or something, but I got on the phone the next morning and he said, “Well, I guess there wasn’t enough product.” So I said goodbye to that company, and the next year I made my own blend and hired a local spreader guy.
The result of all this was that I overapplied boron and sulfur and cobalt and all the micronutrients. And it was dry at this point and the clover was like eight inches tall. Well, it so happens that this nice two-day rain moves in right after that. And I’m watching the fields, and I’m watching the plants, and something amazing happened. We ended up with an excellent crop. But where the truck turned around in the clover field, from there on back I started getting powdery mildew on the clover. So I thought, “Okay, I guess we’re on the right track.”
Acres U.S.A. You got a year ahead on your nutrient program!
Hostetler. Well, accidentally. And only on part of the farm — that’s the problem.
Acres U.S.A. Right.
You’ve had some thoughts about whether your practices are regenerative or not. What are you concerned about in terms of becoming more regenerative?
Hostetler. When we moved up to Maine, we knew we needed to learn what the local community was like, because we wanted to sell most of our produce from the farmstand. But we didn’t have a single customer. We needed to know what people were going to ask. So we decided, instead of going certified organic right off the bat, to just ask people what they wanted. But we did use the term “regenerative practices.”
But in my mind, with this whole issue of “what is regenerative?” “what is regenerative organic?” “what is real organic?” — I think we’re just creating confusion at this point. Not that any of those terms are bad, but we have to educate people about who we are. Most people who stop in and who actually read the sign are like, “What does that mean?”
To answer your question, can I tell people I’m truly regenerative when, for example, I buy my seeds? When I charge more than anybody else? I’m asking myself the question, “Are we regenerative if we’re not convincing people to try it?” For example, if I have strawberries that cost $10 a quart versus $5, are we regenerating people’s minds — convincing them that we need to eat better? Or are we just building a wall, where they’re like, “We’ll never go there — we won’t ever be able to buy from them”?
Acres U.S.A. You’re wondering whether you’re really regenerative if you’re only serving a small segment of the population because of price.
Hostetler. Right. That’s where my mind is going with this. Because with all these crises, I’m thinking we should be able to compete with conventional prices. Regular grocery store prices should go way up with the increases in synthetic fertilizer prices. Why can’t we compete with those prices and convince and encourage people — especially young families — that this is something they can do?
Acres U.S.A. What do Mainiacs like to eat that Pennsylvanians don’t?
Hostetler. Well, that was the other frustrating thing as a farmer. I knew what I like to grow, and I knew what I wanted to grow. And that worked to a certain extent because people in Maine thought you couldn’t grow certain things. For example, bell peppers, watermelons — they were like, “This can’t be possible.”
But on the other hand, we grew, for example, our winter squash. That was one of the biggest things we grew — our normal honeynut, butternut, acorn, delicata — the “real” squash, in my mind. Well, as the season goes on, people are starting to ask, “Are you gonna have winter squash? You have all this wonderful produce, but are you gonna have winter squash?” And we’re like, “Yep, we’re gonna have winter squash.” So, we start harvesting butternut and some honey nuts, and we have them out on the stand. And people still ask, “Are you going to have winter squash?” And we’re like, “Yes, they’re right there.” And they’re like, “No, no, no, the winter squash.” Turns out, everyone in Maine wants this thing called sunshine squash or buttercup. This keeps going, to the point where it was like every other customer asked about it. It got to the point where my poor mom had to say, “No, we didn’t know that people in Maine wanted buttercup squash. We’ll grow it next year.”
Acres U.S.A. There’s more regional taste than we assume sometimes, I guess. But you’re introducing people in Maine to new things that they like as well. You’re taking 100 year of potato farming and a conventional dairy farm, and then in year two — after one year of cover crops — you’re growing things like sweet peppers in Maine.
Hostetler. Bell peppers — and a little bit of garlic — were the only crops I wholesaled last year. I really enjoyed growing bell peppers in Pennsylvania, so I wanted to try it in Maine. After looking at the soil test — and the local mindset — I do understand why they think it’s impossible to grow bell peppers there. Because boron is practically nonexistent.
So, I called up this wholesale produce guy because I did not know where we were going to market our produce. We didn’t have one single customer, and we were investing pretty serious money (for us) — thousands of dollars — to grow it all. I asked the wholesaler what he needed there in Maine. He asked me what I could grow, and I could tell he wasn’t very confident I knew what I was talking about. But I told him I loved growing bell peppers, sweet potatoes, etc., and he’s like, “Well, there’s never enough bell peppers. If you can grow bell peppers, I’ll take all you’ve got.” I was like, “Is that true? Like, there’s no max?” And he said, “No, there’s no max.”
So we planted 10,000 pepper plants. And I called him up after they were planted and told him. And there was this long pause. Finally, he said, “That’s a lot of plants.” I said, “I’m from Pennsylvania; we don’t mess around down there. There is a market for colored peppers, isn’t there?” He said, “Well, yeah — if you can grow colored peppers, you’re way ahead of the game.”
As the season goes on, we came into this drought, and I was getting worried, because I’m a firm believer in irrigation. Halfway through the growing season, the pond irrigation pond is going down every day. But we did sap testing from day one, just to watch the pepper plants and see how they’re taking up the nutrients that are there. I was foliar feeding a lot. At bud initiation and bloom, I went out there with calcium and boron every 48 hours — for approximately two weeks. But it got so hot and dry, I was afraid to even do that. After that, I did nothing. I completely walked away. I was so stressed out. I’m watching the plants, and they’re doing their thing, but it was really dry. But we’d get maybe a tenth of an inch of rain here and there — just enough to keep them going.
And eventually we started picking peppers, and the wholesale guy was impressed. At one point I asked him how many he could really take that day, and he said he could only get 80 boxes in his van. And I was like, “Oh, so there is a max!” But yeah, that was great. Bell peppers in Maine can be done.
One other thing about Maine is that most farmstands are done in August or September. Nobody thinks that a farmstand would still be open and would have produce. That’s an advantage we have — we have produce much longer than most farms — but we also have to get people to realize that we’re still open.
I believe in growing produce and having it there — as marketing. Not just a little bit of produce — people aren’t going to stop for a few things on a table.
Acres U.S.A. Right. Stack it high and watch it fly.Hostetler. Yep. People told me I was crazy, planting that much. But there was very little we had to compost — we were able to sell most of it. It was a good first year.
