Local Food Hero: Lyle Pinder

A normal Saturday at the Chestertown Farmer’s Market has shoppers heading home, bags and baskets overflowing with all the bounty of the Kent County, Maryland farms, fields, and fisheries. But this spring, the coronavirus closed that market and many others, neatly snipping the supply line from producer to consumer. As a result, Eastern Shore farmers and vendors were awash in a glut of unsold produce and perishables, while their customers—many unable or unwilling to venture into supermarkets during the crisis—were confronted with bare larders.

As one of Maryland’s most rural counties, which feeds much of Delmarva with its farm-fresh produce, meats, and fish, this was an unprecedented problem. But for an enterprising Kent County resident, Lyle Pinder, this was an opportunity for creative innovation. Pinder, a Kent County native who had spent his early career in Brooklyn working in marketing and tech, had recently moved back to Chestertown with his wife and small son when the coronavirus shutdown started. Pinder and his family were regular visitors to the Chestertown Farmer’s Market and soon saw the impact of the market’s closure on the community. What was needed, Pinder thought, was something the market had never really had before—a middleman, a system capable of being the connection between producers and consumers.

In response, Pinder created FarmersWagon.org, an online farm-to-door market that allows shoppers in the Kent and Queen Anne’s County areas to order products from local food producers and have them delivered directly to their door. But FarmersWagon.org is much more than a website—it’s a humming network of volunteer drivers and partner vendors, all of whom Pinder has tirelessly worked to involve with the service.

To get FarmersWagon.org up and running (in the space of a few weeks, no less), Pinder connected with Julia King, the manager of the Chestertown Farmer’s Market and a farmer with King’s Mushrooms. King got Pinder in touch with some of the other market vendors—many of whom had no experience with wholesale—to pitch his idea. For vendors like the Lapp Family Bakery, Langenfelder Pork and Red Acres Lettuce, FarmersWagon.org offered the chance to remain in business by pivoting to an online market without having to build their own website or create a delivery service.

Next, Pinder reached out to the local community to find volunteers willing to spend their Saturday mornings driving to partner vendors, filling orders, and dropping off bags of meat, oysters, bread, eggs, and veggies to local FarmersWagon.org customers. In order to meet Pinder’s stringent guidelines for customer and vendor safety (“healthy people in, healthy people out,” Pinder says), volunteers had to commit to following CDC guidelines of twice-daily temperature checks and symptom reports.

Pinder’s mix of old-school hustling and digital-bridge-building worked. In operation for roughly two months, FarmersWagon.org is currently serving nine different vendors and has a customer base of 20-25 households per weekend. With food security in mind, Pinder has also created a “care package” program for the site, allowing customers to purchase food bundles based on Official USDA Food Plans for families in need. And even as the area’s farmer’s markets begin to reopen, Pinder has expansive plans for the future of his farm-to-door program. Just last week, FamersWagon.org announced a new partnership with the Social Action Committee for Racial Justice (“SACRJ”) and the Kent County Local Management Board to assist with the Feed the Children and Elderly Initiative. Moving forward, FarmersWagon.org will oversee the sourcing and delivery of groceries to over 200 households with senior residents in Kent County.

“We get the rap here on the Shore that we drag our feet and take our time to make change, but when the virus happened, it seemed like overnight, local people and organizations came into action,” Pinder said. “With everything that’s going on in the world, to sit back and do nothing is irresponsible. We all can do something, we all have something valuable to contribute. [FarmersWagon.org] is the most fulfilling work I’ve done so far in my career. For me, it’s been just putting out positive energy without expecting anything else.”

To support FarmersWagon.org or to donate a care package, visit farmerswagon.org or follow them on Facebook