Home is where the heart is, as the old adage goes. Usually one thinks of a farm as always being tied to one place. For farm operators Dylan Disque and Rachel Slaughter, their heart and home, and their farm, have moved with them in their travels.
That’s because Rain Crow Farm is an intensive vegetable and flower production farm, growing on less than an acre.
Dylan and Rachel met in Nashville working on organic vegetable production farms. In 2018, they moved to Johnson City to be closer to Dylan’s family and farm together full time. They farmed in Johnson City, and farmed on leased land in Jonesborough. Rain Crow Farm’s urban farm plots off Myrtle Avenue were quickly growing greens, carrots, beets, radishes, tomatoes, and variety of other vegetables for farmers markets and restaurants. “People stopped by all the time to see what we were up to,” Rachel remembers.
“Many times we would meet new people in the community and they were insistent that we must know Appalachian RC&D Council. So, I signed up for the Winter Field School and graduated in the spring of 2019 with a finished business plan in hand. I used information I learned from this program to apply for cost-share funding programs to help us scale up. Fast forward to 2023, we made a huge leap and received a loan from the Farm Service Agency, a daunting application that was made exponentially easier because of the farm record keeping we learned from Field School.”
And then the incredible happened: customers (who had become their friends as well) offered Dylan and Rachel a farm. The customers were at a point in their lives to downsize, but they wanted their farm to nurture someone else’s farm dreams.
Dylan now farms full-time at their new home in Jonesborough. They have 4 hoophouses and 1/3 acre of beds for intensive production. “It feels like we are in our transition years,” says Dylan. “It was great to establish in an urban area and show how much you can grow. But this farm is exciting because we’d like to get bigger in production, and gain more community, make ways that people can come to the farm to enjoy, farm potlucks, volunteer on the farm.”
When she’s not supporting the farm, Rachel Slaughter is the ARCD Farmland Conservation Director.
Rain Crow Farm in 2025 will market their produce through a multi-week CSA and to restaurants. This year their 10-week CSA is already full. [For a list of CSA farms in the Tricities, see ARCD.org/csas.]
Even though their CSA is full, you can support Rain Crow Farm by dining at restaurants in the area, principally Gourmet & Company (chef Jacob Berry) and Blackthorn Grill (chef James Allen – see Featured Chef recipe).
“I have now 12 years consistently growing vegetables for Markets, in Nashville and the Tricities, and I love how Gourmet and Blackthorn are flexible and appreciate the quality. They’re open to try new things,” says Dylan. “We bring really high quality, clean, produce with the right sizing that chefs want and a price that is fair. We deliver it to the restaurant at its peak fresh and nutrient value. When they try the carrots or arugula or tomatoes, the flavor is so much better than what you get off the distributor’s truck.”
(Another connection to be made: Zane Abplanalp and Amy Wincek were the purchasers of the urban farm plots that were Rain Crow Farm on Myrtle Avenue in Johnson City. They now intensively grow produce as Leftfield Farms, and are the operators of Slowbird Bakery, selling at the Jonesborough Farmers Market. Slowbird is the March 2025 Featured Chef with a recipe of Field Corn Cookies.)
