By Liz Gabriel
Peter Treiber Junior and Peter Treiber Senior started their farm - Treiber Farms - in 2014. Once Peter Senior retired from his career in insurance, he knew he wanted to start a farm. He was a jack of all trades, loved food and his deep curiosity inspired his son to be just as resourceful and creative - both traits that make a great farmer. Along with a solid team, the two Peters have steadily grown their farm on Long Island, in Peconic, NY, on land Indigenous to the Corchaug people. Today, they have a robust wholesale, on-farm retail and value-added product business and a burgeoning farmers market presence. I sat down virtually with Peter Jr on a cold but sunny winter day. He was laughing and slightly out of breath after running with Peaches, the farm dog. Nonetheless, he was spirited and friendly.
TNF: Briefly tell us about your farm.
Peter: We’re out on the North Fork of Long Island and have been here since 2014. We’ve got 59 acres as part of the farm, including the infrastructure of barns and a home, and we farm about 14 acres, including an orchard, vegetables, perennial fruits, herbs, and flowers.
The land we’re on was already in a conservation easement, so it’s protected from development. This was how it was set up when my dad bought it. My grandparents have always lived in this area, and my parents moved out here a while back. After my dad retired, he decided he wanted to farm. He was able to buy the land directly from the owner, and the town of Southold holds the development rights.
I joined Dad on the farm full-time in 2016. Now, we have a tight-knit, small squad of myself, our farm manager Brooke, a new farm hand and another farmhand who has been here a while - so we’re five full-time people, plus a part-time person.
TNF: How did you first get interested in farming? Who inspired you or motivated you to get into the land-based work you do?
Peter: I had volunteered on farms upstate [NY] through a program at my summer camp, Camp Dudley, called Farm to Plate in 2011. I was involved in growing, harvesting and cooking. It was a great lifestyle, and I really enjoyed it. At the time, I was living in Brooklyn, so it took a few years to make the switch happen.
I’m a curious person and like to do and make things, so it was inspiring to think that I could grow my own food. I remember my dad always having an immaculate garden, and when he said he wanted to start a farm, I asked if I could join him. We wanted to feed ourselves and feed people. Dad spent a lot of time speaking to neighbors and had a sense of what he wanted and what they wanted, and it has evolved ever since.
TNF: How do you sell your products?
Peter: In 2017, we started selling wholesale to restaurants. I took our berries to a local chef, Claudia Flemming, and after tasting them, she immediately asked if she could buy all the berries I had that summer. So, from there, I brought everything we had to different chefs in the area. There was already so much on-farm retail in this region that there was an opening to sell wholesale to restaurants. The somewhat high-end community seemed like it would be interested in supporting local food on the menu.
We tried a CSA for two seasons a while back, but it didn’t take hold. I didn’t love the setup and it was really small - people out here are very seasonal and many don’t want to commit to the weekly share. We were still doing our restaurant sales and sold on-farm using some coolers and a pop-up tent and the balance of it all felt disjointed. Maybe if we decided to focus as a CSA farm, it would have been different, but it didn’t work for us. It was important to realize what we didn’t want to do! Now, we have a small self-serve farm store that’s open seven days a week in season with a fridge and freezer and we continue to sell wholesale to a few local restaurants.
We also sell at one farmers market about 45 minutes away in Sag Harbor, which we get to by taking two ferry rides, and are working with the local government to start one here in Greenport because there isn’t one in all of the North Fork area!
TNF: Tell me more about your value-added products, how you got into making and how you sell them?
Peter: Like many farms, we had excess produce, whether it was seconds or otherwise. I didn’t want to compost it, so I learned how to can it from Mary-Ann Birmingham, who used to teach for the Cooperative Extension and kindly taught me in her home kitchen. So, I got into making jams, jellies and sauces, but it’s a whole production to make these on a significant scale. It seemed perfect when I found East End Food Institute takes raw produce and turns it into shelf-stable or refrigerated products. It’s been amazing to work with EEFI. You tell them what you want - they have a scheduled process for a massive list of offerings - then you bring them your product and they deliver it back to you boxed, jarred and labeled. Any ingredients you don’t provide directly they supplement to make the value-added product you want. They regularly make our jams, tomato sauces and pickles. This year, we tried a spiced tomato jam, jarred paste tomatoes, and a cherry tomato confit!
It is a bit of an invoicing dance - East End buys our product wholesale, then they make the product and charge us for the final product with their labor and material - and of course, it gets cheaper as you make larger batches. Still, once you do it a few times and ensure you’re charging what you need for the wholesale and final products, the finances work out.
TNF: What has been your experience with evolving with the markets of your region?
Peter: We planted cover crops for two years, but after that, we just planted, getting trees and brambles in the ground. Looking back, we could have spent more time really preparing the solid, picking varieties for specific reasons (i.e., cider apples), setting up our markets, and addressing infrastructure needs. Everything required different soil types and varying attention and water needs and we didn’t know how to prune the trees correctly early on. So we planted and grew fast and then needed to learn how to care for all these living things.
Meanwhile, we were also doing annuals. Like many, we tried to grow quite a bit and then needed to step back as we realized what we liked, what we were doing well, and what was growing the businesses and what wasn’t. Today, I feel really happy with what and how much we’ve grown. I want to stick with just working on our wholesale and retail and keep getting better at taking care of everything with organic practices. I don’t plan on getting bigger; I just want to do it better.
Now, we can reimagine some of our spaces and spend time making them more efficient. We will plant a new area of asparagus, change how we’re trellising some of our berries, and redesign our market garden. Now that we have a good team, we try to be thoughtful each year and not feel pressured to do more and grow more.
TNF: What is your least favorite chore or farming activity and why?
Peter: Handling a weed whacker. It vibrates your body, and it’s loud. I’ve gotten into scything over the last few years and I love the analog of this and working with my hands. I love removing the motor and gas out of the work.
TNF: We know that land access is the biggest challenge new and young farmers face today, especially for first-generation farmers. What would you recommend to other farmers wanting to acquire or access land?
Peter: I think I’d suggest speaking to older established farmers, conventional or otherwise - the people who are on the land now where you want to be. Those folks have been here for a long time. It felt intimidating to speak to them at first, especially if I knew we had differences in our growing practices, but now I’ve befriended some of them and learned so much. One neighbor in particular has been so kind and helpful. Many people in this older generation of farmers, the baby boomers or even older in some cases, might not have kids or have kids who want to stay on the farm. Have conversations with them, and be curious. I also think a more cooperative approach to farming and farm business is much more of the future we need to look towards. We’re not yet doing it this way here, but I’m curious about how to. It seems like a broken system to all privately own such large tracts of land and to manage them as individuals.
TNF: The Natural Farmer is, in some sense, the public voice of NOFA. How do you see us being meaningful to farmers like you?
Peter: A lot of what you all do - providing resources to farmers through newsletters, periodicals and conferences, and opportunities for farmer meetups and workshops/field days. Opportunities to meet other farmers, especially on somebody else's farm, are so valuable. I’m always really grateful for these. Farming can feel really lonely.
TNF: What two books/blogs/podcasts/resources do you suggest people read about farming or land use?
Peter: The Thriving Farmer podcast is cool. The specific shows are good, but it’s more the threads that come out by listening regularly. The Holistic Orchard by the late Michael Phillips is definitely a top resource. And This Common Ground by Scott Chaskey. I read this before I started to farm and reread it since farming and it was meaningful both times, in different ways.
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