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Buckland Farm Market focuses on fresh, local products
Karol Bierlein makes it to Buckland Farm Market near New Baltimore two or three times a month.Bierlein likes the service, prices and the food.
"The people here seem to be sincere," said the Orlean woman, who co-owns nearby Sundance Electrical Contractor Inc. "And they produce a pretty good product.
On a recent visit, she filled a bag with loaves of French, banana nut and "very berry" bread and a couple of packages of sausage for her daughter's Thanksgiving Day turkey.
"I like to support local businesses," said Bierlein, who has shopped the market for more than 15 years, first in Prince William County and now at its new location in Fauquier. "And we (Bierlein and her husband David) try to eat as healthy as possible."
Not surprisngly, their interests and those of countless others coincide with Buckland Farm Market's business model.
Market owner Bill Coffey, a burly 63-year-old with powder-white hair and mustache, leans on words like "local," "fresh" and "natural" to explain his mission.
He depends largely on Shenandoah Valley farmers to supply him with fruits and vegetables.
At this time of the year, Coffey gets apples (10 varieties) from Frederick and Loudoun counties and some from Fauquier.
Next year, he plans to supplement regional produce with a garden planted on four acres behind the market at 4484 Lee Highway.
While he buys poultry and pork from the valley and buffalo burgers and steaks from a Madison County operation, Coffey and Bryant Smith, from whom he leases 5 acres, have additional "outlooks for the future of the farm."
They include raising beef cattle at Smith's farm for slaughter and sale at the market.
"And all of this will be naturally grown," Coffee said. "No hormones."
The market offers an array of baked goods, most of which his wife Sherry, 57, produces.
Her repertoire includes pies, doughnuts, cookies, cakes and bread.
Before long, he plans to hire a pastry chef to enhance the selection. (The market employs five full-time and four part-time workers.)
The market's refrigerators, bins and shelves are well-stocked with cheeses, butters, double-yoke eggs, country hams (salt, peppered and sugar cured), slab bacon, cinnamon, blueberry, peach and huckleberry syrups, watermelon and tomato preserves, pickled products, candy and nuts.
The Coffey family opened the market in June 1986 on U.S. 29 in Prince William County, near the Fauquier line.
It enjoyed great success there until October 2007, when the Coffeys' landlord sold the property and the new owner gave them 30 days to vacate.
That led the Coffeys to Fauquier County and to Bryant Smith, who wanted the market to continue and to move to his farm.
It took the Coffeys and Smith almost two often frustrating years to get county government and Virginia Department of Transportation approval for the project.
Coffey put the market's development cost at about $550,000.
Designed to look like a barn, the 6,000-square-foot market provides Coffey more than twice the space he had in Prince William County.
Sheathed in tongue-and-groove, yellow pine boards, the new market building with a green steel roof and a wrap-around porch surpasses the old one in every way, he says.
"It's more modern," he said. "We have heat facilities that we didn't have in the other place. We had little kerosene heaters to take the chill out. We have public restrooms for the handicapped we didn't have at the other place."
His new location also boasts a well that produces 45 gallons per minute.
In contrast, an inadequate well at the Prince William market forced him to bring in water by the barrel, Coffey said.
And the new location has meant more customers, even though the market had been shut for 23 months.
Business has increased "a good 5 percent" compared to the 2007 level, Coffey said.
He attributes a certain amount of that bump to "curiosity about seeing a new place."
But Coffey also believes the market's reputation accounts for the steady flow of customers since the place reopened on Sept. 18.
"There's not a day goes by that three or four people don't say 'Glad to see you're back,'" he says. "We must be doing something right. We made an awful lot of good friends in 22 years."
Jamie Hunter, 49, of Gainesville counts herself among the curious.
Hunter, who manages her own rental properties near Charlottesville, recalled seeing a "coming soon" sign on Lee Highway for the market and wondering when it would open.
"I like that it has more than fresh food," said Hunter, a first time-customer who bought apples, decorations and has her eye on a green-painted rustic bench. "I like the openness. And the workers are nice and friendly. I'm sure I'll be back."
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