By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer

Down a dusty dirt road and across from a goat farm sits Susan Marsicano’s hydroponic and organic farm. Budding tomato plants sit next to ripe, bright green arugula and collard leaves waiting to be picked and sold.

The 6-acre Kiss-im-mee’s Green Place for Organic Vegetables farm, 4130 Cardinal Lane, is not a U-pick, where patrons go out into the grove or field and choose their vegetables by handpicking. Rather, the plants are picked daily at peak ripening by employees, rinsed and placed in supermarket-type coolers, baskets or bins in the store portion of the farm.

Availability depends on what’s in season and what’s ripe; Marsicano does not run the farm like a supermarket, where the perception is all fruits and vegetables are available year-round.

“It’s seasonal eating,” Marsicano’s business partner Bruce Weaver said.

The farm, open since January, has consistently built up a clientele and now gets up to 120 customers a week. In addition to locally-grown vegetables, the store also sells free-range eggs from a local chicken farmer, goat cheese, goat milk, heavy cream, cow cheese and several varieties of honey.

Marsicano does not grow the plants in the ground. Rather, plants are grown above ground in a nutrient solution in place of soil.

The idea for the farm came from several documentaries on the U.S. food industry and Marsicano’s desire to provide organic, locally-grown food to Central Florida residents. According to Marsicano, only 1 percent of the nation’s farmers feed 99 percent of the people in the U.S.

“It’s disgraceful what this country has done to its food,” Marsicano, a nursery inspector for the Florida Department of Agriculture for 26 years, said. “People know their doctors, their dentists; they need to know their farmers.”

For three years, Marsicano planned every last detail of the farm, visited other Florida farms to get ideas before deciding what to grow. However, she and Weaver were not prepared for one thing.

“I planned for everything in this place except the weather,” Marsicano said. “We’ve had record-breaking cold and record-breaking heat.”

The harsh, unusual weather ruined several crops and Marsicano experimented to see what plants could withstand the heat and cold. She planted four types of basil and only one has tolerated this summer’s heat.

The farm store opened Jan. 16, but freezing temperatures killed almost everything. A reopening on Feb. 6 set the farm off on a better pace.

“We had a short growing season. I know I can have a crop failure on one thing,” said Marsicano. “Now I’m over-planting so we don’t have a customer coming in wanting something we don’t have. We grow everything from A to Z – arugula to zucchini.”

Marsicano said she plans to begin feeding the soil of her crops rather than the plants, moving toward a “beyond organic” concept that uses volcanic ash as fertilizer.

The farm venture, which cost $500,000 to start up, has consumed all of Marsicano’s free time and taken Weaver out of retirement from aviation.

Marsicano wakes before sunrise to water and spray the plants with all-natural pesticides and then works full-time for the Department of Agriculture. The farm is more than a passion; it’s her way of life and she works with her employees to help them lead healthier lives.

Weaver, 68, is a prime example.

Before he started working at the farm, he suffered three heart attacks, had two artery stents and took several pills each day.

“He was a dead man walking,” said employee Janye Monroe.

He began to eat better, take vitamin supplements and got hours of exercise working the land. Now, Weaver is off the medications and works for 12 hours alongside employees decades younger than he is.

One of the reasons he partnered with Marsicano for the farm was to help make himself and others healthier.

“Most everybody who comes here has an attitude to change their lifestyle,” Weaver said.