When Rick Bernstein took early retirement from his job as portfolio manager at one of Baltimore’s premiere investment firms, he envisioned himself working on a small farm with overflow donated to the needy. “It had started as a weekend thing.  My wife and kids had a great garden and we would take our extra produce down to Daily Bread,” he explains.  “We could never have imagined this.”

This is First Fruits Farm, the 200-acre nonprofit farm in northern Baltimore County that has attracted a faithful workforce of volunteers to join his mission to feed the people.  After a typical 12-hour day, in t-shirt and jeans, he stands by his white pickup beside his fluffy Golden Retriever, overlooking the farm in Freeland, Maryland, at its peak of production. Broad ribbons of cabbage fields, alternate with corn, bursting out of its husks.  Squash and green beans abound.  Greenhouses in back of a pavilion nurture fat red tomatoes.   “15,000 volunteers came out this year. We’re on target to hand out 2 ½ million pounds of food for the year,” Bernstein says.

So how did an investment banker who spent 15 years building portfolios at Brown Advisory settle down as a fulltime farmer and major supplier of food for the hungry in the state of Maryland?  Bernstein says the experience at the investment firm attracting funds for his clients helped him set up the nonprofit. It helped to know the territory when he approached the investors for support.  He knows who, to talk to and how to talk to persuade potential donors to give to First Fruits.

“We said we’d rely on God’s providence,” says Bernstein. Three close friends from his church, then Faith and Life, now known as Hereford United Methodist, offered help in terms of labor, donations and advice throughout its 25 years of operations. “We not only provide food but hope as well,” he adds.

According to him, his switch from building investment portfolios to running a farm is not such a big jump.

From farming to investments to farming

From farming to investment to farming again

Farming is in his blood starting with his Polish great grandfather, a penniless immigrant who settled on a farm in Deerfield, Massachusetts. “He got robbed on the boat coming over.” His great grandfather and his fellow laborers figured out that in order to make it, they should band together and invest in something.  “It was a big onion potato farming area. They put aside some of their pay and invested in onion futures,” explains Bernstein.  A drought hit, onions became scarce, and his great grandfather earned enough to buy his first farm.

Farming for Bernstein has not proved to be a very relaxing retirement, but strikingly successful. A typical work day runs 12 hours or more. But the farm now has seven paid staffers and a flock of volunteers to harvest a record number of fruits and vegetables.

I got green bean duty in my assignment at First Fruits with a group of middle school campers from Towson Recreation Council.

Green bean duty

About 725 pounds of beans are placed in large bins in the pavilion for the students to scoop and bag. Students in groups of four fill the red net bags and throw the bags in crates, that are loaded into a refrigerated truck and transported to food banks and churches.

After two hours, the teenagers had bagged ten bins.

Mark Gardner, First Fruits vice president who works as a volunteer three days a week, cheers the students after they filled the boxes.  “If we finish today, we’ll have 4,500 pounds of string beans. Twelve hundred families will get fresh green beans.  You guys made that possible,” says Gardner.

The middle schoolers applaud and then go off to eat lunch and to their afternoon activity, miniature golf at another attraction in Baltimore County.  Most of the volunteers are enthusiastic. “You feel like you’re really helping,” says one girl in a Harry Potter t-shirt.  “It’s like a bonding. We’re all together working,” comments camper Kathleen Richardson.

These teenagers are just a part of the 60 volunteers who had signed up for First Fruits on a warm summer weekday.  On weekends as many as 300 volunteers work at the farm to help pick and package vegetables and fruits. When school begins, the number of volunteer workers goes down a bit; but then a Facebook notice can spark an influx of volunteers.

Last year, despite Covid restrictions, the farm distributed over 1.1 million pounds of potatoes, 406,160 pounds of corn, 95,033 pounds of cabbage and other produce to food banks, homeless shelters, churches and hungry individuals. First Fruits has delivered as far away as Texas.  The Catholic archbishop got them started in West Virginia.  

“First Fruits Farm’s fresh, nutritious produce has become part of countless meals we’ve served to the homeless, indigent and working poor in Baltimore City,” says Jeff Griffin, Executive Director of the Franciscan Center. “The farm’s staff and volunteers are indispensable partners for us, and a clear sign of the Holy Spirit at work in central Maryland.”

The produce is not all organic but they are reducing chemicals through crop rotation and some innovative practices.

Farm manager Jamison Hunsberger is studying the videos on regenerative farming by Gabe Brown to develop more earth-friendly ways to farm.  There is a mobile chicken coop, for example. Chicken eat insects in one part of the field, and fertilize the soil. Then the coop is hauled to another section of land to repeat the process. Their cattle are moved around too, through the use of portable electric fences, spreading the rich fertilizer across the fields.

Need for food escalates

The demand for food keeps escalating. “Our phone is ringing off the hook,” Bernstein says. “We want to share the wealth with everyone.” Despite the many tons of food donated this year, he feels the need is much greater now due to inflation, Covid and the discontinuation of Covid-related aid. “We continue to have more folks of moderate means seeking help.”

Now Bernstein says he is “retiring” again, or stepping back from the day-to-day operation of First Fruits to go out and raise more money from donors to provide the farm with a stable foundation in the future, when he is fully retired. A health scare (now resolved)  prompted him to think about what will happen when he is gone.

But retirement still seems to be a distant option.  “For years, I have been chief cook and bottlewasher.  We are so busy in the doing. We don’t do a lot of talks, advertisement,” Bernstein stays. Semi-retired, he’ll don his coat and tie and make the case for investment in First Fruits.