Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sam Wickham. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Sam , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Our mission won’t be found on our website, but is often read between the lines of our work. Rich and I decided to pour ourselves into Foxhole in order to create a life for our family which would feed our curiousity of tending the land and our desire to work with our hands, contributing something tangibly good to our community: food. Running Foxhole allows us the freedom to design our lives to be fulfilling and (relatively) balanced, following no corporate structure or rule book. And in doing so, we hope to add something to the greater good which is a little less tangible: good energy and a sense of humanity and connection…maybe a reminder of how simple life can be in an increasingly complex and fast-paced world.

I gravitated toward farming after training in the culinary arts in New York, turning down an opportunity to fill a sous chef position in Las Vegas. Instead, I began an apprenticeship on a farm, feeling a pull toward the earlier stages of food preparation :). Once I became a student of the land, I felt compelled to dedicate myself to learning how to work in tandem with the elements and the soil to grow food. On the farm, I could be free of the competitive and imbalanced nature of kitchen work and plug into a very cathartic and gratifying lifestyle which allows me to coexist with the natural world and to serve something of value to my community. And to this day, this lifestyle offers me a grounding rod in trying times.

Sam , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Having grown up in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio, I was far from being a farm girl. However, growing up as my mother’s daughter, I was introduced to the beauty of serving people food. I fostered a growing interest in cooking and eventually enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America. And so I moved to the Hudson Valley, which is steeped in an observance of sourcing and appreciating local food and farmers. Nearing graduation, it had become very clear to me that I had unlocked an even greater passion: sustainable farming. During a farm apprenticeship a few years later, when I met my now husband, an escapee economics/fine art major/minor and recent graduate I learned that I also very much wanted to live an entrepreneurial existence with him, laying out our own structure for a good life.

Though we both trained with farmers who implemented different philosophies as well as raised various crops and livestock, we narrowed in on what we wanted to grow ourselves. Being in southern Ohio in prime farmland, we decided to focus on growing what grows well on this land: vegetables and herbs, as well as trees, and a whole lot of pasture for our hair sheep. Our menu has been tailored to what our market demands from us and we are well-known for our salad mix, carrots, tomatoes, honeynut squash, microgreens and shoots. We also make time to bake sourdough bread and other scratch-baked goods for our market. We are believers in regenerative principles and focus on feeding the web of life that exists in the soil, which feeds and maintains healthy and resilient plants and crops, rather than directly feeding plants with quick-acting fertilizers which can be destructive to life. Our goal is to contribute to a balanced ecosystem here on the farm which helps our efforts of cultivating healthy crops.

I would say that we are unique in the way that we don’t adopt any one philosophy as our own, understanding that farming is a venture which will never be fully mastered. Much like politics I believe that the dogma of any one farming contingent: organic, biodynamic, conventional, even regenerative is fallible and therefore both Rich and I feel much more comfortable allowing our name and the personal relationship we maintain with our customer base to speak for our integrity and our ideology, not a certification, which is beholden to the government or another entity who changes rules and allows holes to be poked in the original virtues of these doctrines

I am so pleased to have found a way to make a living for our family while fostering this 30-acre farm. The learning curve for living off the land is steep, but we are proof of the notion that if you set out to do something with good intentions, the hunger of a curious student, and some gumption and patience, you can make life what you want it to be.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Direct contact with our community has been so substantial to our growth and our place in the Dayton area. In order to acclimate Foxhole to this city, we prioritized getting ourselves directly in contact with the people we would be serving. To start, we signed up to attend three different local farmers markets in different neighborhoods throughout the city. This allowed people to be introduced to us, to be familiarized with our practices and our products, and to get to know our growing practices and our story. Simultaneously we were lucky enough to get our products on the shelves of the biggest local grocer in town. Despite the fact that we weren’t at the customers’ disposal at the grocery store, our instagram handle was printed on each label, allowing people access to our Instagram page which gives the public regular insight into what we do and who we are.

As an insurance policy and to work with some creative minds around town, we made cold calls at area restaurants which we are fond of or which serve locally-farmed food. In this way, when a person sees our indistinguishable fox label at the grocery store, at market, and then later may see our name on a trusted, fantastic local eatery’s menu, they can really get familiarized with our products.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The COVID era could be described as a time when we tapped into our resilience. Suddenly the world began to break habits and find new routines to adapt to the times. Luckily for us, we had diversified our sales to include retail and wholesale outlets. On the retail side, the open-air farmers markets which we were involved in adopted strategies to help safeguard customers and vendors alike. Foot traffic hardly decreased if at all and we were lucky to maintain stability there. Our wholesale restaurant accounts wavered during this time due to the struggle to fill their tables.

However, we opened up a new account with another local grocer to fill the gaps we were seeing and also added an online shop component to our website for our retail customers. In order to alleviate stress and offer a quick in-and-out shopping option at market, we began to take pre-orders online with pick up at market to avoid lingering time in the booth. I still believe that if not for that time, we wouldn’t have built a reliable enough following in our online shop to make it worth its while. Now that the shop is so heavily trafficked, we keep it open beyond our market season and offer pick up down in the city.

Just as the nature of our work on the farm is largely to react to the elements, the seasons, the insect populations, etc…the nature of our existence as a business is much the same. The pandemic was certainly quite a stimulus to react to, but we found we were scrappy enough to come out on the other side better than before.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://foxholefarmohio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foxholefarmer/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@foxholefarm8703
• Other: https://www.thefoxholejournal.com/

Image Credits
Jess Ames