On a crisp morning in Hillsville, Virginia, a looping road led to Crooked Porch Farm, where Hailey Sowden and her husband, Mike, have carved out a life anchored in the land. The farm’s name hints at its heritage: The porch on the couple’s log cabin, built long before they were born, reminds visitors of how connected we all are to the places that mattered long before us. What matters now is the soil, the seasons, and the shared dream of cultivating something lasting.
Hailey’s farming story began years ago, helping a friend start a farm in North Carolina. She recalled, "I was farming in a leased land situation, and the owners of that property actually bought this property. And so, we ended up here, and we bought it from them a few years later."
Mike’s path was different—construction and underground utilities—but his skills became essential. He started working in the trades when he was 18 and had virtually no farming experience. "Turns out, knowing how to grow vegetables is maybe less than half of what you need to know,” Hailey laughed. “So his skill set has been really complementary."
Life on the farm has unfolded alongside raising two daughters, Susanna—‘Zuzie’—and Mary Frances, known as Frankie. Hailey admitted, "The different stages have brought new challenges. Farming with a baby wasn’t the worst, but when our older daughter turned three, she suddenly no longer enjoyed anything to do with the farm, and that made it a lot harder." Still, they’ve built a rhythm that works.
"For a while, I felt we had no room to breathe because we worked so hard,” Mike shared. “Now that Frankie is in school, and we have employees, I can actually make time to go on a field trip with her or have lunch with Hailey. We have so much more flexibility."
Starting out wasn’t easy. Hailey remembered, "We bought a used tunnel in North Carolina to try to save money. They don't get much snow, so of course it collapsed with our first storm." From that early setback, they learned and grew, literally.
Today, with support from the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s EQIP Program, Crooked Porch Farm has four 200-foot high tunnels and several smaller ones, plus a wood boiler to heat their germination house. Their strategy evolved with experience, pushing field crops as long as possible and using tunnels to extend the season. They’ve grown from seasonal production to year-round, adding raspberries and experimenting with soil health practices. Biofumigation, the practice of using certain cover crops, like mustard, that release natural compounds when incorporated into the soil, is showing promising results. These compounds help suppress soil-borne pests and diseases naturally, reducing reliance on other inputs.
With increased capacity, their markets have grown too. In addition to a longstanding commitment to the Blacksburg, Virginia Farmers Market, they’ve also joined the Cobblestone Market in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, an hour south. And they sell wholesale through the Blue Ridge Farm Collective and LEAP CSA, which serves hundreds of families in Roanoke, Virginia. "For us, joining the collective was an easy yes because we didn’t have the bandwidth to find distributors or wholesale customers," Hailey explained.
Labor has been another learning curve. "We have three full-time employees and one part-time," Hailey said. Iris, their first full-time hire, is returning for her third season. "It makes all the difference just to be able to say, ‘Hey, please go harvest 100 bunches of carrots,’ and know they’ll do it right."
Grants from American Farmland Trust have been invaluable. Hailey said, "We actually got a Brighter Future grant from the American Farmland Trust a couple of years ago. "Later, I took a class on farm management,” she added, “and finances that got me in touch with the other grant opportunities, including the more recent Healthy Soils and Farm Vitality grants offered through the Mid-Atlantic region.” These programs funded essentials like propane heat for tunnels and a stone burier implement that transformed soil prep. "We would not have been able to do what we did this year without it," Hailey emphasized. "This has changed everything. We can now build beds into standing cover crop. So, there’s an incredible labor reduction and hardly any downtime."
Mike laughed, remembering his early days: “I thought the farm looked great with all those beautiful white butterflies everywhere, until Hailey told me they were cabbage moths.” It was a crash course in pest management and a reminder that farming is full of surprises.
Looking ahead, Hailey and Mike dream of more perennial crops and continued improvements. Hailey reflected, "My original vision was very idealistic; we wanted to just be a family farming, all on our own, but we couldn’t make it sustainable. Bringing on more people allows us to grow more, and we have a better life now."
Their story is as much grit as appreciation. As Hailey put it, "We’re so wildly grateful. I can’t believe how much these opportunities have improved our potential." Crooked Porch Farm is a living promise to their daughters and their community. Each season brings new challenges, but also new reasons to hope. For Hailey and Mike, the joy lies in the full circle: doing the work and seeing it nourish others.
