Marshall’s Farm Market is keeping on

Marshall’s Farm Market is not closing. Such rumors, says Carrie Marshall, who owns and operates the produce stand at 9100 Eden Prairie Road with her husband Greg Wiggins, have been challenging to manage. The market is located on the northwest corner of the Eden Prairie Road (County Road 4) and Pioneer Trail (County Road 1) intersection.

Carrie is one of nine children of George and Mable Marshall, who purchased an Eden Prairie farm in 1953. That 30.5-acre farm property in the city’s southwest corner is currently for sale and is likely to be developed. Marshall points out, however, that she and Wiggins have owned a separate farm in Carver for the past 16 years, and it’s the Carver farm that is currently supplying the produce stand. 

The seasonality of the produce stand has been part of the challenges in combating rumors of its closure, Marshall said.

“It’s been a really hard season growing, and so it’s just taken a lot to keep that going with a different weather, and then it’s just been the extra stress of so many people just hear ‘Marshall farm’ and they think this, and because we’re only open so many months of the year seasonally, they just kind of assumed it was done,” she said. 

History of the produce stand

Carrie Marshall has been working at the produce stand site since she was a preteen, helping out previous owners Harry and Evelyn Rogers. The Rogerses, Marshall said, ran a wholesale business on the site in the mid-20th century, shipping mostly to the Dakotas. While working out of garages located on the property, “They’d be packing and sorting and getting things ready to go, and they’d hear a knock on the door. People just wanted to get a little something,” she said.

Eventually, to reduce interruptions, the Rogerses put an array of produce in a wheelbarrow, parked it under a tree, and let people pay on the honor system. “And that’s how it started,” Marshall said, likely in the 1940s or earlier.

Later, Evelyn Rogers ended up mostly running the produce stand and Harry Rogers mostly working in the fields. The couple was good friends with her parents and grandparents, Marshall said, and she and her siblings helped in the Rogers’ fields when needed. “When Evelyn passed away, it was just crushing for Harry,” Marshall said. 

At that time, the Marshalls were doing a lot of wholesale, selling to vendors like Tait’s SuperValu, Byerly’s and Lunds’ grocery stores, as well as participating in farmer’s markets. What the two families worked out, Carrie Marshall said, was, “‘Harry, you go ahead and you farm and you raise as much or as little as you want, and we’ll farm, and we’ll help you run the market. And if there’s days you feel like, maybe you don’t want to go out and pick tomatoes, we’ll bring our tomatoes up.’ It was just a really, really respectful, really, really good relationship.”

Eventually, according to Marshall, Harry Rogers said, “‘Well, it’s time for you to put your name on the sign.’ And we actually didn’t even want to. It was Rogers Market for all of us forever, but he asked us to, so we did.”

After Harry Rogers passed away in 1992, members of the Marshall family purchased the farm stand property and kept the business going.

‘You can make a whole meal’ from farm stand products

“We do a little bit of everything,” Marshall said. “So it’s kind of like, you know, you can come and you can pretty much make a whole meal when you stop in, because we’ll do the zucchini and the cukes and lettuce and beans, and then we have our own meats, too. We raise our own cattle, and we raise our own pigs and chickens. And then for Thanksgiving, we have turkeys.”

Customers pick up their Thanksgiving turkeys from the farm stand on the Wednesday before the holiday, which is the last day Marshall’s Farm Market is open for its season. Opening day is generally between July 5 and 15, depending on the year’s growing season. 

This year, Wiggins said, has been a tough growing season. “It would rain, then it would dry out for two days and we’d plant, then it would rain,” he said. “Everything’s about two weeks behind,” this year, Marshall said, including the tomatoes that are one of the most popular products.

The market, Marshall said, is known for its tomatoes, its corn, and its peppers. “I like to get kind of nerdy about some of the varieties, so, like the tomatoes, I’ll do some research, and I’ll make sure I have different shapes and different colors, striped ones,” she said. “We do a ton of heirloom peppers. We get seeds from all over the world for that kind of stuff.” 

People from around the world also end up working at the produce stand and in the fields. Through the U.S. Department of Labor’s H-2A program for temporary agricultural employment of foreign workers, Marshall’s Farm Market has had employees from South Africa, Bulgaria, Croatia, Mexico, and Ukraine. Although she describes her own family as “homebodies,” Marshall said customers will often offer to take the foreign employees to events and on excursions. 

It’s helpful to get extra help in the fields seasonally, Wiggins said. According to the Marshall’s Farm Market website, the family is “committed to sustainable farming,” including such practices as limiting pesticides and managing pests ecologically by practices such as crop rotation, cultivation, and hand hoeing; maximizing biodiversity through livestock and crop production; and protecting water quality through managed trickle irrigation.

In regard to customers, Marshall said, “I’ve been here so many years that now I’m seeing some of the kids that used to ride their bikes up, I’m seeing their kids, and it’s really fun.” Honey sticks are popular with young customers, she said, and parents will often buy honey sticks to send in care packages to their college students. “It just makes them feel like a little bit of home,” she said. “That’s my favorite part is that this is very unique. It’s a store, it’s a market, but it’s just a real community thing.” 

Next seasons: celebrations and the future

She also views the annual Halloween celebration as a community event. “We do a different theme every year, and it’s really grown,” Marshall said. This year’s theme will be unveiled at the end of September; the Marshall and Wiggins family builds most of the props for the fall decor at the farm market themselves. 

Last year’s theme was “Ghostbusters.” “Everybody had so much fun. It was like a dance floor over here because we had the music going,” Marshall said. In addition to Halloween-themed decor, during the month of October, Marshall’s Farm Market offers food trucks on weekends, a small corn maze, pumpkin patch, miniature haunted house, and other activities.

After the decorations are put away and the market closes in November, the business switches to delivery, Marshall said. Delivery is available through the website during the stand’s off-season for whatever is still in stock, which might include canned goods, meat, eggs, and potatoes during the winter or lettuce in early spring. 

Marshall said she and Wiggins are in negotiations with her sister Peggy Sailer, who previously ran a spring plant sale on the site associated with her greenhouse business, to take full ownership of the produce stand’s property, which is currently owned by the two families. 

Speaking of the Eden Prairie Marshall farm property, Marshall said, “I’m very sad about the farm, but we hope that we have the community support to keep going.” 

The next generation, she said, would be her daughters. Grace Wiggins, 17, is working at the produce stand’s counter this summer, and older daughter Mary is expected to return from Montana in the fall. 

In the past, Marshall said, “My mom used to do all the bouquets,” and Grace would sit on her lap while she did so. “Well, now my daughter’s doing the bouquets. She wants to do the flower farming. So that’s kind of the next step; we can do a little bit more flowers. So there you go, there’s your next generation.”