Heyser Farm survives with some help from the family

Colesville produce stand celebrates 60th year

Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo Rachael Golden⁄The Gazette Holding a paring knife with his eyes trained on the conveyor belt, Michael Heyser sorts through apples on their way to becoming cider, while leading a group of 4-year-olds from St. Andrew Preschool of The Lutheran Church of St. Andrew in Wheaton on a Sept. 23 tour of Heyser Farm in Colesville. Click here to enlarge this photo Photo by Rachael Golden⁄The Gazette Michael Heyser moves a crate while working at the Colesville farm, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Supported by the next-door neighbors and out-of-state regulars, the shop has continued under three generations of Heysers.

These days, Michael Heyser Jr. oversees the day-to-day operations. He is the one to hire new help, assign chores and put muscle and machinery to the family land. However, his immediate family is also deeply involved with the business.

‘‘My father [Michael Heyser Sr.] helps out picking grapes and tending the flowerbeds,” Heyser said. ‘‘My wife, Ande, is involved with the bookkeeping.”

His two children, Daniel and Carla, also help. Despite being only 5, Daniel often leads school tours of the farm, and 2-year-old Carla helps pick tomatoes.

Beyond family, farm help is easy to find. Local high school and college students drop by every summer in search of work, and longtime neighbors also pitch in to support their community farm.

One such neighbor is Mary Lou Mitchell, who has worked with Heyser for 11 years and has known the family for 40 years. The market has drawn repeat customers for almost as long, she said, through a mixture of personal recognition and a friendly atmosphere — as well as good prices. ‘‘People also say our prices are good. When we sell corn on the cob, we’d start out with a full bin of corn in the mornings, and it’s all gone by mid-afternoon.”

Most of the farm’s staff is drawn by the promise of a healthy outdoor job with plenty of exercise, rather than by high wages. Jonathan Pegg, a Wheaton resident, started just a month ago to fill his spare time as he worked on writing a book.

‘‘I just need a part-time job and this is out in the open air,” he said. ‘‘I do two or three days a week for $6.50 an hour — but you make those decisions about what you want: whether to make a ton of money, or to enjoy your work.”

Pegg’s choice could apply to the whole farming industry, especially in Montgomery County. A five-acre plot of land zoned as residential can fetch a high price from developers, more than what a farm could usually yield.

Heyser said the family owns 18 acres in Howard County. ‘‘We used to get a letter a month asking for a sale of that land.” For Montgomery County property, where the family home is located, he has not yet received any offers — to his relief. ‘‘I’m not going to sell this place. I’ll leave it up to my kids — the way I see it, my job is to leave them the choice of whether they want to go into farming.”

Life on the Heyser farm and market is not easy. The farm provides its own harvests of apples, tomatoes, peaches and eggs, but relies on other farms to provide other products. Local farmers supply the vegetables and berries, the pumpkins come from Brookeville and potatoes come from a market in Jessup. The watermelons and corn arrive from growers on the Eastern Shore, and the unpasteurized milk originates from a farm in Pennsylvania.

In the summer, Heyser rises at 3:30 a.m. to get to market before the workday begins, often visiting several in one morning. Then it’s back to the farm for work until bedtime, which he observes strictly at 10 p.m. These days, with the harvest over and the days growing shorter, Heyser can afford to stay in bed until 5:30 a.m.

Financially, farming is risky. A farmer doesn’t just compete against local farms and supermarkets, but also takes into account regional and global changes. Heyser’s rivals include orchards in Washington, California and even China.

‘‘In the last few years, the processing industry has been finished off by Chinese competition,” Heyser said. ‘‘Lots of farmers in the East Coast depend on processing — which produces concentrated juice, pie filling and sliced apples — but prices have dropped from 7 cents a pound to 1.5 cents a pound. ... It’s gone from being a stable and profitable market to being a dismal market.”

To keep his business ahead, Heyser depends on strong sales of his apple cider. He also operates out of his own store, which gives him more direct profits from his produce than most farmers. Even so, it’s a balancing act between making money and keeping customers happy.

‘‘We don’t worry about what the supermarkets are doing,” he said. ‘‘We have a loyal customer base for milk, eggs and apples.”

The farm grows heirloom tomatoes, which are prized for their taste, but which many supermarkets avoid because the species requires much more intensive care in cultivation, which translates to higher expenses. Heyser also cultivates relationships with longtime suppliers, offering them favorable prices during times of glut, and receiving favorable prices in return during the early seasons.

Similarly, with an optimum staff of about 10 farmhands, Heyser recognizes most will join out of love for the farming life. Even at the modest hourly wage of $5.50 for high school students and $6.50 for college students and older, labor costs are by far and away his largest single expense. Several of his relatives drop by to work on the property, some from out of state, and others — like his children — from nearby.

‘‘It’s too early to tell yet ... [but] Daniel’s a natural-born dairy farmer,” he said. ‘‘He’ll get up as early as we do without an alarm clock. His sister is also that way.”

Although most of the Heyser family grew up on the farm, few choose to remain. Heyser’s two sisters left the homestead, and even his father has doubts about the future of the farming life.

‘‘If I’d known then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have gotten [my son] into this mess,” said Michael Heyser Sr., smiling sadly. ‘‘It’s work, work, work — all those years, and when you look into it, with labor costs, you’re only making maybe a couple bucks an hour.”

Although he recently celebrated his 91st birthday, the senior Heyser has the firm handshake of a much younger man — something he attributes to a lifetime of outdoor labor.

‘‘Sometimes, you look at the land and think it might sell for a lot of money, but what would you do with it?” he said. ‘‘The work keeps you healthy, at least.”