Price Family Farm started this year on a home lot in Greeneville. No inherited operation, no shortcuts. Here’s the season as it actually happened, month by month.
The first plantings arrived bare root: canes and young trees hauled home and staged before they'd even gone in the ground. This was the real starting point, before the paperwork and before the business plan. Just deciding to plant.
The first trays went in under cover while it was still too cold to plant outside, a thick mat of seedling sprouts, the earliest wave of what would become tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and greens once the weather turned.
Rows of trays and pots filled one of the indoor grow tents, stretched to capacity. This was the beginning of the propagation system the farm would depend on all season for a steady supply of starts. (The greenhouse itself came later, this early setup was all grow tent.)
All the building blocks for our plants to grow and thrive.
Trays moved outside to toughen up before transplant. The daily rhythm of carrying starts in and out settled in as the true full-time job of running a farm.
A tray of lettuce and greens filled in fast, the first crop to go from seed to something you could actually eat. A good early sign the whole system worked.
The container system started reading as an actual garden: a staked tomato, herbs, and rows of other potted crops, each one earmarked for something different.
As the greenhouse filled up, trays started spilling out onto the patio, wherever there was open ground and good light, to keep the pipeline of starts moving.
A tiered shelving unit went into rotation outdoors, adding vertical growing space so more trays could sit in full sun without eating up more ground.
Tomato starts moved into their permanent containers, one of the season's main crops, staked and set alongside the peppers, herbs, and squash.
Fabric grow bags spread across the yard added another layer of growing space: flexible, cheap to add, and easy to expand as the season demanded more room.
New trees and shrubs kept going in through early June, filling out the orchard alongside the blueberries and the season's earlier bare-root plantings.
In the span of a week: the Tennessee Department of Agriculture registered Price Family Farm as an official family farm name, the business plan was finalized, and the written statement of active engagement went to the Department of Revenue. The full paper trail is on the Documentation page.
