GREENWICH — B.J.Farms is a huge operation, something you might not realize if you only visit one of his farm stands.
“We have 600 acres but we farm on only 180 acres,” said the farm’s owner Bill Boyce, Jr. in a recent interview at one of his two vast warehouses.
Baskets or bags of just picked summer squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, zuccini, cucumbers, green peppers, sweet corn, pickling cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes were lined up across the floor. He also grows many types of squash, beans, pumpkins and tomatoes.
Boyce employs about twenty people right now, his busiest time, which includes about five pickers and other farmhands, and the several people needed to handle retail at his four farm stands. Those are located at: Rt. 40 and 29 in Greenwich; Rt. 9 at Minogues Beverages in Wilton; West Avenue at Minogues Beverages in Saratoga Springs; and at the plaza in Mechanicville.
His farm also supplies twenty local vendors who show up every morning to buy his produce and then resell it at their own farm stands as well as eleven local Hannaford Supermarkets.
“It takes a lot of people to put something of this magnitude together,” Boyce said. “It’s a lot of work to get there and it needs a team to make it happen. It’s a seven day a week job. There’re no day’s off.”
The size of his operation
is significant.
“There’s not a lot of good size farms around here,” he said. “I have a lot of good customers. There would be a void if we weren’t in business.”
Boyce is only the second generation to farm. For several years, his father worked for the Hand Melon Farm, which is next door. But after 17 years with them, he quit and started his own veggie farm in 1973, but on a much smaller scale, Boyce said. Over the years, they bought more land. When Boyce graduated high school in 1980, he never thought to do anything else but join his father, who still works with him.
“I like what I’m doing. I like to go out and grow things,” he said.
Part of the farm’s success in producing great crops – he rarely gets crop failures. He’s blessed with good soil and he’s vigilant about making sure it gets the right nutrients and water, Boyce said. Even if Mother Nature and the bugs sometime keep him guessing.
“It’s not a turnkey operation,” he said.
Recent concerns about tariffs don’t affect him because he’s a local niche market, but immigration is another matter. Three of his pickers are Mexican.
“Few want to come this far north. It takes six days on the bus to get here,” Boyce said. “They’d rather stay in Texas and be able to go back over the border to Mexico in one day.”
Although summer/early fall is his busiest time, it’s not enough to sustain him for the year. So he’s learned to diversify. One of his jobs is to snowplow the Wilton Mall for the last 18 years.
“To survive you need to do other stuff,” he said. “You need to maintain a cash flow.”
Contact Boyce on Facebook or through his farmstands.
