When the call came from Augusta Health asking Andrew Crummett if he could supply meat for 100 at-risk seniors as part of a bi-weekly local food delivery program during the COVID-19 pandemic, Andrew didn’t blink. Together with his wife and farming partner Valerie McQueen, they said yes.
“The call also came at a time when meat scarcity and grocery shopping for the elderly were both operating in ‘never seen in our lifetimes’ ways,” says Valerie. Given only two weeks to the first delivery, the couple now smiles and admits “we had no idea how we were going to do it, but of course we said yes.”
Andrew and Valerie have been commercially raising pastured pork, grass fed beef, and free-range eggs for seven years, using an innovative model that allows their customers to spread payments for large, seasonal meat purchases into monthly membership fees that include weekly egg deliveries and check-ins with their farmers. Focused on raising food that can heal both land and bodies while still being economically accessible, the couple is balancing raising three children with growing their farm. Far from looking tired, they collectively glow with enthusiasm and ideas.
But, they are a small family-run farm with limited ability to rapidly scale. “There was no way our family farm could support all of the demand from the hospital’s program,” says Andrew. “I called 50 other farms that week.”
After years of dreaming about building collaborative networks among local farmers, the Augusta Health’s Crop to Community initiative was the couple’s first opportunity to give true shape and form to a cooperative supply chain.
“On a small farm, there’s only so much you can do with scalability,” says Andrew. “It’s very hard to each have the capacity for additional outreach, storage, logistics, etc. We can do this better if we network together. We can do something we could never do alone, by ourselves.”
Enticed by Andrew’s vision, farming peers signed on and soon meat from One Tribe Farms, White Barn Company, and Anathello Acres (among many others) was joining the pork and eggs from Cool Breeze Farm to feed elderly patients. While the program was originally planned for a few weeks, its rapid success resulted in it being extended by multiple months, multiple times. Still running, it may soon become a permanent fixture of the hospital’s local nutritional program.
“It’s brought us a lot of joy and pride,” says Valerie. “It refocused us as a farm with a mission. Often you have that when you start a farm, but the day-to-day demands can sometimes take over. It felt good to be building inspiring community connections.”
At Home in the Mountains
In some ways, the genesis of both their farm and marriage began on the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Prior to meeting Valerie, Andrew grew up in Augusta County and spent a number of years hiking the Appalachian Trail and chasing time in the mountains. After falling off of Crabtree Falls and shattering an ankle, he found himself on the couch armed with a lot of gratitude, a renewed passion for life, and a large stack of farming books. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew my passion was outside, working with nature.”
The pair met on a camping trip along the Skyline Drive, where Andrew admits he picked “the worst hike possible” and Valerie remembers turning an embarrassing “beet red” on the hardest hike she’d ever been on. But a week later they were enjoying dinner together in downtown Staunton. A singer-songwriter working as the Events Coordinator for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Richmond, Valerie soon found herself falling in love with a boy who grew vegetables, tended horses, and dreamed big.
Their marriage began with several years of home-scale gardening combined with in-town jobs, then Valerie proposed raising a few pigs to sell to friends and neighbors. They began with two, then four, and then six. Their official farming career started with a bang, welcoming their first child the same year they left their off-farm jobs for full-time farming. “One of the beautiful things about Augusta County, it has that small town feel,” says Valerie. “People wanting to help and be involved, encouraging us, always having your back.”
Today, every Friday finds these farmers in rotating locations throughout Staunton and Waynesboro, delivering their eggs, roasts, sausages, and pork loins to their ever widening circle of community members.
Growth Grounded in Community
While the pair clearly have differing styles, they are both emphatic that their partnership enriches their marriage and the business. “Running a business as a husband/wife team, you’re wearing so many hats and boundaries can get blurred,” says Valerie. “But there are so many things we can do, because we are a team. We play to our strengths and can do things that would be impossible as an individual person. You have to have a shared vision.”
Andrew admits he is the dreamer, visited by “new ideas every other week.” Valerie prefers some time to think things through, while acknowledging that “the only way to grow is to fail a lot. We’re a good balance – trying new things while being careful.”
10 years into farming and partnership, they are trying to take honest stock of their successes, their mistakes, and above all the need to never go it alone. Andrew’s advice to new farmers is to focus on building their community networks as early as possible. While Cool Breeze Farm may be a decade strong, in many ways Valerie and Andrew are fully “in the middle of it” – of family, of passion, and of reinvention. With a trajectory that began with two lovebirds, grew through community membership support, created three children, and is just beginning to build the kind of networked supply chains they’ve dreamed of from day one, Andrew and Valerie find themselves questioning all assumptions and dreaming big again.
Asked what’s next for Cool Breeze Farms, Andrew smiles wryly and says, “Well, I’ve got a few ideas.”
To learn more about Valerie and Andrew’s projects in Augusta County, visit Cool Breeze Farm for meat and egg updates and VS Music for Valerie’s upcoming singer-songwriter performances.
