The Little Farm Store

Online farmers market brings  food to the people

Your doorbell rings and the dog barks, announcing a visitor. Just beyond the threshold, a friendly “hello” greets you, along with the colorful bounty of straight-from-the-garden vegetables. Bags of produce soon fill your arms and the smell of homemade bread makes you smile. Getting groceries has never been easier.

The idea of the Little Farm Store was born out of a passion for good food. It’s what prompted Ryan Goolsby and his family to move to Missouri from Alaska nine years ago. “I was really wanting to have an orchard and you can grow anything here,” Ryan says.

His family settled on 88 acres near Mansfield and began building a greenhouse and planting fruit trees. They established a microdairy, grew several gardens and added horses, goats and geese to the farm. The next step in establishing a food network business would require the help of their fellow farmers.

“I had this idea for a local grocery delivery for a while,” Ryan says. “Farmers markets can be a really hard way to make money. It can be successful for some people, but it takes so much time. And if I know one thing about farmers, they are always behind and needing more time and wanting to be in their gardens.”

By creating an online farmers market, Ryan now brings the local farms to the customer’s door and saves time for farmers and shoppers alike. The Little Farm Store consists of several farms across the Ozarks. “I’ve never known an area to have so many homesteaders,” Ryan says. “It seems pretty unique.”

Currently, more than 30 vendors list their products for sale on the store’s website. From there, customers browse and buy local products to be delivered to their homes or the nearest drop point.

“We started out with mostly bread, cheeses, sauces and meats,” says Renee Cleveland, Ryan’s partner. “But now it’s grown to include a lot of seasonal produce too.” Depending on the time of year, there is often a smorgasbord of vegetables and fruits, including homegrown tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplants and peaches. A lot of what’s in a usual grocery store is available through the Little Farm Store. There are locally sourced dairy products, coffee, jams and even ice cream. “We also have soaps and lotions; anything you’d expect to find at a farmers market,” Ryan says. And he continues to reach out to more farmers with various products to add to the online store.

Every Monday, Ryan gathers the weekly orders and sends them to the farmers. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays all the food comes to the Little Farm Store headquarters in Seymour. “My supply route starts in Cabool and goes to Fordland and sometimes down to Ava. Some farmers bring me their products, and I go get others,” he explains.

Ryan delivers orders to people’s houses or drop-off locations at businesses in Mountain Grove, Springfield, Hartville, Mansfield, Seymour and Ava. “On Thursdays, I go out on delivery toward Mountain Grove. I head in the opposite direction toward Springfield on Fridays. Then on Saturday, I breathe,” he jokes. It’s not uncommon for him to drive close to 500 miles per week. “It all depends on how many stops, where I’m going and if I forget something.”

Shannon and Jana Lee from Rogersville have been ordering from Ryan for more than a year. Shopping at the Little Farm Store reminds them of their childhoods, where life was farm-to-table all the time. “Finding a source for raw milk where we don’t have to drive very far is great,” Jana says. “My husband’s grandparents had a dairy, and he grew up around their farm.”

“I’m amazed at the way Ryan sources products and connects people,” adds Hannah Townsley, another customer of store and member of Se-Ma-No Electric Cooperative. “I hadn’t had an authentic croissant in ages, not since I lived in French-speaking West Africa. Who would have thought that I’d find them again in Seymour and could get real French pastries delivered to my door?”

As the local food community grows, Ryan has also begun offering the occasional tour of the farms that provide the store products. He wants customers to have a chance to meet the growers behind the food they’re buying. “One thing that’s missing from the online market is interacting with the farmers,” he says. “And, in my experience, farmers love to talk and share what they know.”

Ryan has hosted a few events and tours at his family farm -— Pleasant Valley Farms — which is one of the vendors for the Little Farm Store. He’s also organized tours at other vendors’ homesteads, including a recent event with Air2Ground Farms in Squires, their main pork supplier. The owners, Rich and Shelley McGlamory, spent the afternoon showing the guests their farm, which is home to lambs, cows, chickens and pigs. The walking tour ended with a meal provided straight from their farm.

“We love healthy, nutritious, homegrown food,” Shelley says. “When we retired to Missouri after my husband spent 25 years in the U.S. Air Force, we started growing our own food and a little bit extra for everyone else.” Soon after, they met Ryan at a local farmers market and have been selling their meat through the website ever since.

Ryan sees most of the farmers weekly as he checks in to see what’s available or not. He understands the ebb and flow of seasonal items because he is a gardener himself. Most of what he does on his farm involves permaculture and perennials.

“I call myself a lazy gardener. I want to plant something one time and never have to plant it again,” he says. Today, his orchard contains more than 80 trees bearing apples, pears, plums, nectarines and cherries. He and Renee spend countless hours in the gardens and his parents mostly manage the Jersey herd.

“I’m a firm believer that health will increase with a greater diversity of food,” Ryan says. Through the Little Farm Store and his once-a-week home deliveries, they hope to establish a regional food system that can be viable all year round. “As much as I like avocados and think they’re worth importing, I don’t think we should be importing everything else we can grow here,” Ryan says. “Instead of shipping all of our salads from California, we can promote fresh food right here that will have more nutrition, better flavor and more variety.”

The Little Farm Store is proof a group of farmers working together can make quite a difference. “We want to help people improve the way they eat and think about food,” he says.

To learn more about the Little Farm Store, visit littlefarmstore.com, or contact them at 417-929-1338 or info@littlefarmstore.com.

Kaiser is a freelance writer from Hartville.