Meet Your Merchant: Locally owned, organically grown

While the spring was rough, the fall has proven to be a boon to Mark O'Farrell's Carson City farm. After all, he's still selling bell peppers in the middle of October.

"This is the latest we've ever had bell peppers," O'Farrell said. "I would never think of having peppers at the end of October in a normal year."

Business seems to be growing for the local farmer who runs Hungry Mother Organics, which now includes a store off U.S. 395 just a few miles south of his farm on the Northern Nevada Correctional Center campus.

The venture started back in April when O'Farrell opened the farm stand inside the former Northern Nevada Nursery owned by Bob Moore, who continues to lease the building and land to O'Farrell (Moore also helps coordinate the store's summer plant selection). The store also employs assistant manager Matt Beaty and Dan O'Farrell, Mark's son.

O'Farrell said he's hoping the business will become not only a place for people to buy fresh produce, but somewhere they can learn to grow their own.

The interior is quaint, filled with the farm's latest bounty: Garlic, chives, onions, and bell peppers.

Also included are potatoes, broccoli, apples, pears, pecans and grapes shipped in from a California organic farmer who takes some of Hungry Mother's produce in return.

He's also carrying oyster mushrooms grown by Nevada's Own in Smith Valley as well as local honey and bottles of Reno's own Mr. G's Hawaii-Style Teriyaki sauce.

The store also offers a variety of items to help people grow their own food, including organic soil amendments to non-chemical pest controls such as a product that unleashes a bacteria that only targets and kills mosquito larvae.

"It's kind of part of the business plan to show people how much they can do and get more people into growing their own," he said.

Out back, O'Farrell has set up a demo garden where the store will host classes on how to construct greenhouses to grow produce. There's also a hoop house - similar to a greenhouse - filled with tomatoes that customers can pick fresh off the vine. They can also pick fresh strawberries, too. He said about a dozen customers regularly pick their own produce.

O'Farrell started in agriculture in the early 1980s while at Chico State University in California. He eventually pursued a master's degree in agricultural education at Virginia Tech and moved to the region in 2000 to work for the University of Nevada, Reno cooperative extension. In 2006, he started Hungry Mother Organics.

Local food and organically grown food, which follows a strict federal guideline, has become more popular in recent years, O'Farrell said, noting "slow food" movement chapters sprouting in Reno.

What's driving it, he said, is people wanting to know where their food came from and who grew it.

Still, making a living as a farmer is tough, he said, but business is looking up.

"It was good for the way the economy has been," O'Farrell said. "But we actually did fairly well. We're very appreciative of how many people in the community who have come out and become regular customers."