Farmers Danielle Keeter and Mark McDonagh are co-owners of Mighty Gnome Market Garden in Waynesville, NC.
Danielle: We really wanted to emphasize how a small market garden can have a big impact on the local food community.
Mark: Mighty Gnome is the name we came up with. Our belief is that a small market garden can have a tremendous impact on their local food economy. We thought a gnome being more of like a garden-sized shape, but having to be a mighty gnome because we want to be sure that we’re really churning out a lot of produce to our community every week.
Danielle: I went to school to study environmental science, so not a direct path to farming. After working in a lab inside for a little while I found an opportunity to apprentice at a farm and knew pretty much right away that that’s what I wanted to do.
Mark: I didn’t study agriculture in college. I got a degree in graphic design. I got a summer job working at a ranch out in Wyoming, which piqued my interest or my curiosity and led me to a passion for the local food movement and just sustainability in general. For us, everything is just done by hand. We’re not riding on the back of a tractor or anything.
Danielle: We follow organic practices, so you’re not going to see any conventional pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers used here. We grow watermelon. It’s one of the few fruits we actually grow on the property. Watermelon is in the cucurbit family so it’s related to cucumbers and other melons. It has the highest amount of lycopene, which is an antioxidant. Outside of just cold, fresh watermelon, grilled watermelon is kind of a unique way to enjoy it. Not a lot of people think to do that. It actually holds up on grill really well. For me the unique and special thing about our farm is that it’s just the two of us doing all of this.
Mark: The size of the farm is definitely unique to this area.
Danielle: Right now we are selling primarily through our CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] program, where we have both a farmer-selected option and then a custom online shop where you can pick exactly what you want each week. And then also at Haywood’s Historic Farmers Market.
The effort with Haywood Christian Ministry is one of the most incredible things that’s happened to the farm since we started it. It is a local organization that distributes food to people who can’t normally access food at the farmers market. That has been a really powerful change to be able to provide for people locally who can’t normally get to a farmers market on a Saturday morning. It’s enriched my experience of being a farmer here in the community.
Mark: People really appreciate being able to pick up at the farm. This is a pretty rural area. The closest grocery store would probably be like a Dollar General. So I think for people to have access to fresh produce that they can physically see as they come and pick up and talk to us about it, I think is important to them. We’re looking forward to becoming more and more of an integral part of the community.
Danielle: The organizations that we are a part of include ASAP. They’ve helped us with just about every aspect of the market garden that I can think of, from packaging to finding and applying for grants to being able to attend markets. They have been a huge resource for us, so thank you ASAP.
Mark: We’re just going to try to keep getting better and better at what we’re already doing for the foreseeable future. Then in the long term it would just turn into more produce available for longer periods of time—whether that means through the winter or earlier season tomatoes or earlier season eggplant, pushing those extremes.
Danielle: My favorite thing about running the market garden is is a toss-up between eating really great food, which is a definite plus, and the community that has surrounded us here.
This video was created as part of ASAP’s Growing Minds Farm to School program. Resources for including these as part of a classroom curriculum are available on the Growing Minds website.