How to Grow Your Own Berry Farm

It’s early September and Maryann Huff Casciano is getting a little torn up by her black raspberry patch, but not so much by the red raspberries. As owner, designer, planter and grower of all 240 blueberries and 70 raspberries of seven varieties and five huge elderberry bushes at Rockywood Farm in Newton, New Jersey, she is getting them ready for a second successful season in 2021.

She is taking out the old canes and tipping off the exuberant raspberries that are sending out six-foot side branches aiming to root themselves in the dirt, then putting them back inside the neat wire fences where they must grow tidily and lush, and then, finally, digging out the errant babies who have already rooted and broken free. Maryann is solo farmer here.

This year, 2020, was Maryann’s first season at growing and selling her own crop. “The elderberries came in real well. There was a lot of interest in them. I was able to really keep up with demand. I did way better than what I thought I was going to do.”

Rockywood Farm, named by her grandfather, produced chicken, meat and eggs since the 1920s. “I’m third or fourth generation so it’s kind of a responsibility, but it’s a joy for me. I wanted to preserve the family homestead. I would have felt like a quitter if I hadn’t tried,” says Maryann, who uses her grandmother’s tools and her grandfather’s farm name. “It was a challenge. I had the fear of failing but I jumped in. If I didn’t make the effort for this, I would have regretted it. It would have been the easy thing not to do – sell it – put a house or two back here. But would my spirit be happy with that?”

Rockywood now grows certified organic blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, elderberries and garlic. Lavender is a wish in progress. She wanted to do perennial crops and since she grows raspberries at home in Connecticut, she already knew how to grow them. “I thought it would be easy but it’s not. But to come back (to the farm) and hit it hard, it’s really fun. I get such a great sense of accomplishment.”

She joined Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) CT and NJ and contacted a permaculture man from Connecticut who was a friend to the land, she says. “I wanted fresh eyes. I was stuck. He was very helpful. I knew I wanted to grow organic and protect the family homestead. He came in May.

"I decided to do double digging. I had 30 tons of compost delivered. I was the grunt on the ground. He dug and brought peat moss. I shoveled it in. I had all the rows done. I planted all highbush blueberries. Then I laid out raspberry rows, scratched the ground, and put in rye and tillage radishes and added leaves and grass. I put in irrigation last summer."