Andal found the property in 2017 but spent the next three years writing and negotiating a 10-year lease-to-own agreement (through the Keene-based nonprofit Land for Good) and another couple years working part-time to get the soil and farm infrastructure ready.

In 2022, she opened her business to the public, starting a membership-based produce subscription (a.k.a. Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA), creating a farmstand on her property along 4A that is open May through September, and selling to customers at the Wilmot Farmer’s Market. She grows veggies, fruits, cut flowers, and bedding plants.

The upside: Andal discovered that the farmstand did much better than expected and the town’s 1,400+ residents love her lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, and cucumbers, to name a few. 

“I’ve been blown away by the response,” she said. “I'm the only farm in this town that's doing this commercially.”

The downside: it’s hard to offer a CSA when you don’t have much land because members expect a large variety of produce. So, she’s refocusing on what works and how to make it better on her “postage-stamp of a farm.”

Over the last four years, through the Natural Resources Conservation Service EQIP program, Andal has received grants to purchase two high tunnels, which help her to both extend the growing season by two months and work around challenges like the late spring frost in May 2023. She also received a microloan from the Farm Service Agency for a small high tunnel.

“There are hardly any normal summers anymore,” she said, adding that high tunnels and greenhouses can help control the temperature and conditions for starts and crops.

Andal was on track to add two more high tunnels over the next few years, as well as heaters, as she followed her business plan.

But when the best high tunnel builder in New England announced that they were ending their manufacturing, Andal was suddenly in a bind. The equipment was the least expensive, best quality in the region. She didn’t have the funds to buy more high tunnels outright and the federal government had frozen U.S. Department of Agriculture grants. Lending options for farmers are limited because farming is traditionally a risky business.