Monadnock Ledger-Transcript – BUSINESS QUARTERLY: Local farms are branching out
Making money by farming can be tough these days, and according to some local farmers, the best way to get around it is to branch out.
“To be able to make it as a small farm, you need to have some other kind of income,” said Christie Reed, who owns The Root Cafe in Temple.
Reed and her husband purchased their farm in Temple after a cafe in Wilton that Reed helped start, Hilltop Cafe, closed in 2018. Hilltop Cafe was farm-sustained, and Reed said that she wanted to keep up that kind of work.
“I wanted to continue being involved with food. I love cooking and just creating space for people to gather together around food,” she said.
And when she was working on starting the farm, a key element of her decision-making was having the cafe as a way to supplement the farm’s income.
“Because it’s a short season, definitely you’re counting on farm goods to be your livelihood, you have to have some way of turning them into something…
