The accidental farmer p1 - Military Success Stories - Military Times EDGE

What the hell was he doing? Colin Archipley still didn’t know much about farming, but looking out on a sea of wilting lettuce he knew enough. Something had gone terribly wrong.

It had all been so crazy: Trading in his tiny house on Venice Beach, Calif., for this three-acre spot in the country; returning from his third combat tour to discover, almost by accident, a new passion for cultivating. And then his wife, Karen, encouraging him to embark on this insane plan to become a farmer.

He’d never grown anything in his life. What was he thinking?

Still, they made it official when they christened their new property Archi’s Acres. And there was no turning back when he laid down $70,000 for the materials to build a 1,800-square-foot greenhouse and a new soil-free “hydroponic growing system.” It took him five months, but he built it all with his own hands.

A year earlier, when he was a grunt leading Marines in Iraq, he is not sure he could have even spelled hydroponic. Now, here he was trying to grow lettuce out of these tubes that stretched out before him in long, orderly rows.

He had been cutting it close. The mortgage payment was due and other bills were starting to pile up. And now his lettuce was dying.

Plant therapy

At first, Archipley had been a grim reaper.

After leaving the Corps as a sergeant, he found himself haunted by the ghosts of war. He had made plans to join Karen in the real estate business, but he couldn’t bring himself to put on a happy face and sit behind a desk all day.

He and Karen had bought their patch of good earth not far from Camp Pendleton, Calif., just before his last deployment in 2005. They had won the real estate lottery with their little fixer-upper on the beach and Karen wanted to cash in and move to Italy when he got back. Another foreign adventure, however, was the last thing on his mind.

“I just wanted to get back and lead a normal life for a while,” he says. The rolling hills north of San Diego offered a good compromise. The Tuscan vibe spoke to Karen’s Italian roots and Colin figured it was as good a place as any to launch a new career. He never imagined actually farming the land.

But when he came home, the neglected orchard of avocado trees on his property seemed to call to him. Nursing the trees back to health was hard work, but good therapy. It was good to be outside; it was good to work up a sweat. And, as health returned to his trees, it was good to suddenly have a growing source of income.

It wasn’t long before the 200 trees on his property were producing hundreds of pounds of fruit every week. But while money was growing on his trees, profits were getting sucked up by the roots. Avocado trees require deep watering, but water shortages in Southern California make that expensive. Archipley knew that cost was only going to get worse in the coming years.

That’s when he started learning about hydroponics. Hydroponic growers use no soil; their crops get all the nutrients they need with a constant trickle of recirculating fertilized water. The plants grow from the tubes that deliver the water, preventing costly evaporation and cutting water expenses by 90 percent.

Even better, hydroponic systems allow farmers to grow healthier — and more lucrative — organic crops immediately, bypassing the years of work traditional farmers must undergo to certify their soil as pesticide-free.

“I was pretty skeptical at first,” says Archipley, “but Karen was like ‘Why are you asking all these questions? Just go for it.’” So he did.

The pair financed the initial costs through a $100,000 line of credit on equity in their house. A friend provided some pointers on the greenhouse and the hydroponic network, “but mostly I just learned through reading and a lot of trial and error,” Archipley says.

Now, looking out at his field of dying lettuce, he knew there’d been an error.

It didn’t take long to figure out what the problem was. He’d switched to a new, less-expensive fertilizer that gummed up his hydroponic system, killing his entire crop.

“It was a complete loss. We just had to start over.” The $5,000 hit was bad enough, but the hardest part was rebooting their weeks-long process of staggered planting so that they could harvest a regular flow of produce.

Build it and they will come

The good news was that, despite the setback, the food he was growing was, well, good. Before long, a regional buyer for Whole Foods was inspecting Archi’s Acres.

“Tell me what you want me to grow,” Archipley told the rep. “I’ll grow anything.” The buyer suggested basil. It was little trickier to cultivate, but within a few weeks, Archi’s Acres delivered its first shipments of live organic basil to local grocers. And business blossomed. He now delivers to eight grocers and has earned a regular following at local farmers’ markets.

“It was a baptism by fire,” he said. “We’re still learning, but our profitability continues to grow.”

With help from a Department of Agriculture loan, he’s now leasing another three acres of neighboring land and just finished a new greenhouse that will triple his production. As the new space comes online, Archi’s Acres should begin earning about $220,000 a year, up from $30,000 their first year.

Meanwhile, it didn’t take long for Archipley to realize the work that he had found so nourishing might benefit other veterans. Working with local VA officials, he created the Veterans Sustainable Agricultural Training program to help fellow combat vets learn the business. The VA covers insurance and basic payroll expenses while Archipley pays their wages and provides on-the-job training. So far, he’s trained about a dozen vets. Three still work for him, the rest have moved into other jobs in agriculture.

He sees veterans leading a new vanguard in sustainable farming: “We need strong leaders who are able to operate independently. We need guys who are able to put in long, hard days and people who are willing to take a risk. The veteran community is a perfect for what we’re doing here and the future of agricultural business.”