Tool Dude's Blog: Trip to Wegman's Organic Farm, Harris Seeds, and Worm Power

In March of this year, Clara Coleman had asked me to build a 48 ft Moveable Caterpillar Tunnel for Wegman’s Organic Farm. Both Eliot and Clara had both been consulting for Wegman’s and Clara thought it would be a good addition to all the other work they were doing there to have one of our moveable tunnels on site to present to their organic partner farms. So, we built one in the shop at our trial farm in Albion, ME.

And then we shipped it to them.

They used a portion of it in a demonstration at the Rochester Home and Garden Show and another local trade show, then sent it on to their farm. We had to include some pretty specific instructions for the covering to be used at the trade shows (which was very different from what it would be like in the field), including some line drawings. This is what one of their presentations looked like.

On June 7^th, 2012, NY Territory Sales Rep Amber Flint and I traveled to the Finger Lakes region of NY with the main goal of visiting Wegman’s Organic Farm because there had been an interest in a partnership with Johnny’s and Wegman’s and because I was interested in how they were making out with the tunnel and how else we could help them.

We decided to make a few other stops while we were in the area. Our first visit after we arrived was at the Bejo Seeds Trial Farm in Geneva. We met with farm manager Dennis Ferlito, our former sales rep Jan van der Heide, and our new sales rep Tom Gordon.

After a brief stay at the farm, they from Bejo were nice enough to take us to dinner in town at the Red Dove. Great place. Great company. Jan was nice enough to download onto a thumb drive some images of some multi-row seeders that he had taken when in Europe. Thanks, Jan!

The next day, we went to the Wegman’s grocery store in Geneva, with the hopes of getting some pictures of the store before we went to the farm.

The manager there was a little leery of that, so we left and headed for their farm in Canandaigua.

The first thing we saw when we arrived was the tunnel – front and center. Pretty cool.

We stopped at the “barn”, where we met up with their farm manager, Jamie Robinson, who was nice enough to give is a tour.

Some of the crew were washing lettuce and spinach in the washroom, which was inside the barn.

We then walked up the steep hill and toured some of their fixed tunnels, which he said were mostly Ledgewood models. Wegman’s Organic Farm is located on owner Danny Wegman’s property, along the shore of Seneca Lake. It is on a pretty steep slope, which Jamie indicated was a constant challenge.

Then, took a close look at the two moveable tunnels that were built and installed by Four Season Tools.

After that, we headed down across the field crops to where the Moveable Caterpillar was located. They did a great job putting it up.

Next, we visited Wegman’s flagship store in Pittsford, NY (near Rochester).

We were given permission to take a few photos. Their store is like a nicer version of Whole Foods Market. Pretty awesome, really. It's like sensory overload, especially if you arrive hungry. We noticed some great displays and recognized some of our customers’ names on the produce. That was cool.

After that, we stopped at Harris Seeds to meet with Mark Greene, who is their hardgoods manager. He is also the product manager for Ken Bar products, which include mulches and heat mats. Harris bought Ken Bar last year and I was there to speak with Mark about the products that we distribute in that product line, which include the red mulch and paper’s paper mulch and just out of plain curiosity about their operation. Mark gave us a great tour, but I have just one photo of the outside.

Mark suggested that since we were in town, we should go visit the worm farm that supplies their Worm Power product. So, we headed off to Avon, NY, which was about a half hour away. We met their facility manager there, who also gave us a tour. He did not allow us to take photos, but Harris had all the photos I would have taken available to the public right on their website, so I downloaded a few of them that were very representative of what we saw. It was a fascinating operation.