TRENTON, Ohio – Ten years ago, Elizabeth Schaefer, now Elizabeth Tindall, started Schaefer’s Farm Market and CSA with a 20-member CSA. That number has grown to 200. The farm is a 6th-generation family farm. Elizabeth and her sister, Sara Schaefer run the market alongside their parents, Tony and Ruthann Schaefer.

“I started it when I was 17,” Tindall, said. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I started it as a CSA (community supported agriculture) only and the first season I knew I had to find something to do with all of the extra produce we had besides what was going into the CSA shares. So, we started the market on a really small scale.”

Schaefer’s now offers a lot of their homegrown products as well as things from other local farms, Tindall said. They have flowers, produce, beef and pork from their farm. They get chicken from King’s Poultry Farm in Bradford, Ohio. Their 500 laying hens produce all the eggs they need plus they have milk from two local dairies.

Customers especially like their honey. They have lots of beehives to pollinate the vegetable crops. Ed Devault takes care of the hives, harvests the honey, and helps with bottling.

“We have a lot of other grocery-type items, some specialty breads and baked goods,” Tindall said. “A lot of our customers come here to do their grocery shopping.”

Things weren’t looking great at the market in 2020 but then COVID hit. People wanted to avoid the big stores plus they were looking to buy local. Business at the market boomed. At the time, Sara Schaefer was learning coffee roasting in Texas. But without hesitating she dropped that and went home to help. She hasn’t looked back.

“I loved the coffee industry, but circumstances brought me back here and now I don’t see myself doing anything else,” she said.

Ruthann Schaefer runs the store, open to close, the six days a week that they’re open, Tindall said. Tony takes care of the farming side. He does all the planting, fertilizing and spraying, plus the corn, soybeans, wheat, hay and livestock. He also helps with the mums – they retail nearly 10,000 a year. He farms regeneratively, testing the soil annually, composting, and using cover crops.

“He keeps track of all the rotations,” Tindall said. “With the variety of things that we grow and the possibility of disease transfer in certain crops, we have to sit down and talk it out each year and plan where things are going to go.

“Sara and I help with the chickens quite a bit,” she explained. “The cattle are his thing, so he spends a lot of his time on the other end of the farm but all of our sweet corn, green beans, all the things we plant with big planters he helps us with.”

They have two high tunnel houses and four other propane-heated greenhouses specifically for growing flowers and vegetable transplants. They have tomatoes, cucumbers, greens, and other things in those every year plus hanging baskets of flowers.

Everyone in the family puts in an 80-hour week, Tindall said. The four work tightly together to make sure everything is done when and how it should be. Sara and Elizabeth do most of the work with the flowers and, while seasonal, that keeps them hopping.

“We grow approximately 70,000 spring flowers,” Tindall said. “That is split up between potted annuals; we do a couple thousand hanging baskets. The spring flower season is our absolutely busiest time of the year. We also grow strawberries and do pick-your-own strawberries so that kind of bumps into flower season which makes us even busier.”

Facebook provides a big boost to their business. They have 16,000 followers, Tindall said. That’s how they market their products and it is all free. They also have a website and a presence on Instagram. Plus, they send out a monthly newsletter to 3,000 subscribers.

The sisters learned everything from the school of hard-knocks, Sara said. There are few mentors to help with current growing practices, best varieties, things like that. Mistakes were made.

“We have taken it step by step,” Tindall said. “I never dreamed this would grow into what it is. My first year I got so excited over a $30 day. It’s grown into quite a bit more than that and I am grateful.”

With that, Valerie Hart, a regular customer, approached the checkout with a full cart. Why does she come?

“I like everything,” she said. “I come because of the eggs but it is also the produce. It is always fresh. And I like the people. I feel like I’m part of the family.”