We sat down with Chip Paillex, our President and Founder to chat about his experience with their family garden, lessons learned as America’s Grow-a-Row came to fruition, and advice for others passionate about making a difference.
What did you and your daughter, Kyra grow in your garden when you first started?
In the beginning, we grew sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, zucchini, and string beans. A funny story about our first season: a strong storm that came through and blew down our corn stalks… I was so concerned about fixing them, I left work early to replant and repack the stalks to make sure they’d continue to grow!
Can you talk about a moment that really impacted you?
Madelyn Alessandrini, who was the Director of the Flemington Area Food Pantry at the time, published an article looking for nearby farms to ‘grow a row for the hungry’. The first time I brought the excess produce from our garden to the pantry, I was approached by a woman who was on the verge of tears. Have you ever met someone whose face becomes engrained in your memory? Because I’ll never forget when she approached me saying that the pantry has never received fresh produce before and though she was grateful, they had only received boxed and canned goods. She asked me to promise that we’d return with more produce the following week because it would help manage her health conditions, and we have supported the pantry ever since. (If anyone can find a copy of the article from 2002, please send us a photo of it!)
What’s one lesson you’ve learned over the years?
The first volunteer opportunity for the community was in our ¼ acre garden filled with cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant (and more). Families we know would come in, tend to a portion of the garden for the week, and at the end of the week, the next family would care for it. People came together to care for that ¼ acre helped us notice early on that we had the ability to bring our community together and positively impact people in different ways. What started as a father-daughter garden to encourage my daughter, who was just four at the time, to learn about where her food came from and try new produce flourished into an opportunity to provide healthy food on a larger scale. Over time, our garden grew and so did our needs for support (so we began to learn). Once we became a larger farm, Johnson and Johnson sent employees out to volunteer with us, becoming our first ever corporate group to volunteer on our farm. Today, we continue to instill our values of giving back and serving people in need by bringing volunteers together to help others because at the end of each day, it’s not about the pounds of produce, it’s about the people who receive it.
What advice would you give someone who wants to make a difference?
Think about your passion – for us, it was gardening, then think about your purpose – ours was feeding people. Develop your plan and recruit friends, family, neighbors, and your community to support you. Build on your successes and make sure you have enough people to support you as you grow. Make sure you have a greater size support system than you think you need because once it does start to grow, you want to continue the success. Remember: As long as you’re impacting at least one person, you’re still making an impact. Everyone has a passion for something and can leverage that to help other people.
What’s next for Grow-a-Row?
We’re focusing more on our education program for youth and adults from all different backgrounds because everyone has an opportunity to learn about agriculture and healthy eating. We’re doing our best to maximize the resources we have across our four properties in Hunterdon County to expand planting on the open farmland that we have. By being good stewards of the gifts and funds that we have, we’re using them to make sure they’re as impactful as possible to benefit the people we serve. We’re also expanding our gleaning efforts to develop relationships with new farming partners to minimize waste across the state where we can (from a produce standpoint).
What are you most excited about this year?
Every year is the chance to start over with the new season filled with hope and promise, with what starts as an unplowed field and a reset here at the farm. I’m excited to kick off our 3 – 5 year strategic plan because we impacted 133,000 last year, and we’re aiming for 200k by the end of that 5-year period. Our team has grown and become so much more successful with what they do as we invest in farming, talent, development, programming, and more which positively impacts the people receiving our produce. Every day, we can say that we’re serving 24 miles of people with the Jersey-fresh produce grown on our farms, and that’s something we can all be proud of.
