LIBERTY TOWNSHIP – At Just Farmin’, Steve and Barbara Willis market natural produce and soy-free eggs. Health-conscious people can eat what they grow and feel safe. They raise lettuces hydroponically. They have 100 Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) customers and farm 48 weeks of the year.

“We started in the backyard and it kept getting bigger,” Steve said. “We rented some land and then we leased some land and then I bought some land but it has taken 13 years to get to this point. I was in manufacturing for 37 years.”

Their backyard garden was basically organic. People would walk past and ask what they were doing, Barbara said. They told them they had two children with allergies. The neighbors asked if they could buy produce from them. That’s how their CSA started. Eight of their customers have been with them for 13 years.

“This is what I enjoy doing,” Steve said. “We are raising technically organic produce but the land has been farmed commercially so you have to have three years of no fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and things like that. We use a tremendous amount of organic amendments.”

Added Barbara: “We’re not growing vegetables, we’re growing soil. We’re making the soil. We’re taking what was done for all these years and we are trying to regenerate the soil back to the way it was.”

They started using hydroponics because the water bill was almost $900 a month. “To grow lettuce outside you need 15.5 gallons of water per head of lettuce. With a hydroponics recirculating system, I only use 5 gallons. The hydroponics is not considered organic because of the nutrients that you have to use.”

They don’t spray any fertilizer or chemical-based products, Steve said. They use Neem oil, some bacterias, and dish soap to control insects. And sometimes nothing works.

“In May we got destroyed by thrips and I wouldn’t spray anything,” Steve said. “We lost over 13 weeks of production and more than $30,000 because I wouldn’t spray. I can’t have kids or grandkids come out here and tell them if they want to eat anything they have to wash it.”

Barbara takes care of the chickens. They are in a tunnel house as the farm is in a fly zone for geese. Because of avian flu, it was recommended that they keep the critters covered.

“I have about 230 chickens,” Barbara said. “They are in a huge tunnel and have plenty of room. Right now, I have about six varieties so we have different colors of eggs.”

Besides eggs, they grow everything but lima beans, Steve said with a chuckle. They grow cucumbers and celery using a Bato bucket system with vermiculite as the growing medium.

“We have a lot of greens, radishes, carrots, turnips, Daikon radishes, kales, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, summer and winter squashes, onions, broccoli, a you-pick flower operation,” Steve said. “We also supply some of the restaurants. We farm year-round. We use the tunnels and the hydroponic house is heated. For everything else, we use cold hardy crops. We don’t stop.

“I grew up in commercial agriculture,” he said. “I know what all those chemicals do. I don’t want them. I don’t need them. There is a place for that but not in our food system.”

Steve was always interested in how his grandma grew vegetables. She had a truck garden. “We didn’t spray,” Steve said.

On the farm they were spraying for everything, he said. And it worked; they got bigger yields. They didn’t realize the soil was being torn up, killing the biological life, and not doing the body any good.

“I kept saying we had to do better than what we were doing,” he said. “I think some of my uncles and cousins are starting to understand. This is the first year they started planting non-GMO corn and they’re starting to do no-till. Some of them are having health issues from all of the chemicals they used.”