For Sue Decker, a conversation about custom paper clips proved the tipping point that compelled her to leave the big city and literally go back to the land.
“I was working as a producer at a marketing firm, and my client really wanted to make custom paper clips for an upcoming meeting of CEOs,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘This work is not putting good things back into the world.’”
Sue and her husband, Mark Decker, founded Blue Star Farm in Stuyvesant, New York, in 2009. Located some 130 miles north of New York City in the Hudson Valley, the Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) farm grows more than 130 varieties of vegetables and herbs, which it sells at local farmers’ markets and wholesale. Blue Star sold some 11,000 bags of lettuce mix and 10,800 pounds of peppers–its two top sellers–this year, and currently supplies some 20 wholesale clients.
Returning to roots
Farming and entrepreneurship are part of Sue’s DNA. Her great-grandfather and grandfather were dairy farmers in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where she grew up surrounded by organic gardens and started her own egg business in fifth grade.
