Business Spotlight: Big City Farm

Just northwest of Springfield’s third busiest intersection sits a little patch of dirt along Fassnight Creek. Boxed in by residential neighborhoods on all sides, Dan and Kelly Bigbee have created a fresh food oasis in a sea of asphalt.

A field of sunflowers turn their heads toward the morning sun and a pair of black and white cats – Chaos and Ms. Sparkles – lie among the flats of fresh flowers, lifting their heads only long enough to glance at cars coming down the drive.

It’s Monday morning and Fassnight Creek Farm is closed, but owner and farmer Dan Bigbee greets a steady stream of traffic looking for fresh produce.

“I take the signs down on the days we’re closed, but they still come,” Bigbee says from a bench under the farm’s big shade tree.

The consumer appetite for local foods in insatiable. Overall, local foods generated $11.7 billion in sales in 2014, and it’s expected to climb to $20.2 billion by 2019, according to a survey by market research firm Packaged Facts.

“In the last five years, people have really become aware of their food. They want to look the person in the eye who grew it,” Bigbee says. “I feel like somewhat celebrity these days.”

While annual revenue depends primarily on weather conditions – ranging from $40,000 to $100,000 – the Bigbee’s 15 acres brought in closer to $40,000 last year and Bigbee says it usually leans above $50,000.

“There’s been a change,” Bigbee says. “It’s economics driving things, it’s flavor.”

Humble roots
Fassnight Creek Farm can trace its roots back more than 80 years. The west central acreage was owned by Frank Phipps for 25 years before selling to the couple in 1986, when Dan Bigbee gave the farm its name.

No stranger to the gardening world having started digging dirt with his grandparents as a toddler, Bigbee worked just down Fort Street at Wickman Gardens while studying for his bachelor’s in horticulture from Missouri State University. “I just naturally gravitated over here,” he says. “I thought I was smarter than (Phipps) was. Boy I had a lot to learn about faming.”

Phipps sold Bigbee roughly 7 acres, two homes to live in, and Bigbee purchased another 8 acres about 10 years ago. Through the generosity of neighbors, the farm now stretches beyond its 15-acre tract, with some 6 acres lent in trade for produce.

Bigbee says the whole valley lends itself well to vegetable production. If it can be grown in Missouri, Bigbee has attempted it and tries his best to keep it in stock. Sometimes, that means relying on symbiotic relationships with other farmers – such as E.J. McKenna at McKenna Family Farms in Branson.

“We trade produce often,” McKenna says of Bigbee’s weekly trips to the Bootheel for much sought-after peaches and watermelon. “He has peaches my customers want, and I might have berries his want.”

McKenna estimates the farms sell each other less than $1,000 a week in produce, but he notes it can make the difference.

“Both of us want our customers to come to us first. They count on us to have things in stock,” he said.

Fassnight Creek Farm splits revenue roughly 60/40, leaning on the retail side, with everything sold out of the farm’s barn. Fassnight Creek doesn’t do farmers markets anymore. Bigbee says while lucrative, they turned out to be too much effort. With planting season kicking off in February and harvest usually running through October pumpkins, Bigbee says his most sought after items are peaches, sweet corn, green beans and the ever-popular tomato.

“Sometimes, it seems like we can’t ever keep enough tomatoes in stock,” he says.

Tomatoes sell for $3 a pound inside the barn’s retail shop, where an antique metal cash resister sits next to a Square reader.

Community minded
Since 2014, Fassnight Creek Farm has donated roughly 23,000 pounds of fresh produce to Ozarks Food Harvest, something Community Engagement Coordinator Christy Claybaker says is a windfall for the food bank.

“That’s helped provide 19,105 healthy meals to the community,” she says. “And that’s just to us. I know Dan has worked with other organizations for years.”

Donated through a process called gleaning, after the farmer completes his first or second harvest and fulfills his retails needs, Claybaker says there still is viable produce left on the vine. Ozarks Food Harvest uses volunteers to pick it.

“Say there is a frost coming down, I can’t get out there and pick it all before it’s ruined, but the food bank can make sure it doesn’t go to waste,” Bigbee says. “Without their labor it would be lost, it would go back into the soil.”

Claybaker says Bigbee also was instrumental in helping the food bank start its own garden project.

Bigbee also shares his knowledge with the Springfield Community Garden project, which maintains gardens in Grant Beach and other neighborhoods. Derek Smith, Springfield Community Gardens operations manager and garden educator, now apprentices under Bigbee, lending a hand at the farm and learning about high-yield production.

“There is a real thirst for knowledge in this new generation,” Bigbee says. “This new movement has brought validation to something I’ve loved for 30 years. That’s a cool feeling.”