Kendra Mills has farm sense. She innately knows when peas are ripe and which strawberries are the sweetest. It might be because she was raised in the fields.
When Kendra was a baby, her parents would put her down in a patch of peas or strawberries and let her gorge herself while they weeded and pruned.
“One day, I thought oh my God, she must have eaten 100 peas. Is she going to be ill?” said her mother, Kristen Kinser. “But she was fine.”
Ms. Mills, 20, is now working those same fields she sat in as a child and running Hillside Farm, the market that opened in West Tisbury this summer. In years past, the small building on State Road was home to the Fiddlehead Farm Stand. But the land has been in Ms. Mills’ family for almost 40 years.
In 1938, Louis Greene took over the three-acre farm that his father had bought in 1915, growing and selling vegetables. Under Mr. Greene, Donald Mills started working the land in 1974, when the three acres had grown into 40. Mr. Mills took over the operation in 1981 after Mr. Greene’s death, operating as Hillside Farm. They turned organic after Kendra was born.
Around 1999, Mr. Mills and Ms. Kinser, who baked bread on the Island, lessened their workload to focus on home schooling Kendra. But their relationship with the land remained close. As a 10 year old, Kendra grew multicolored beets that she gathered in bunches tied with twine and reportedly caught the eye of the CEO of Whole Foods.
This summer, she returned to the Island after graduating from college, and she wanted to bring her father’s farm back. She pulled out Mr. Mills’ old hand-painted signs advertising peas, spinach, scallions, beets, carrots, strawberries.
“We’re growing a lot of the same things he did,” she said. “It’s like the rebirth of my dad’s legacy.”
Mr. Mills died three years ago.
Working with her mother and her boyfriend, Moses Sukin, Kendra Mills has been growing food on a little over three acres. Mr. Sukin is now the farm manager, while Ms. Mills focuses on the managing the stand. Ms. Kinser floats between the two, sharing her expertise. Like her daughter, Ms. Kinser grew up around gardens. Ms. Kinser’s great grandfather was a farmer outside of Florence before moving to the United States, and some of her earliest memories are of following him around the garden and the smell of tomatoes. “Some of the things I know about gardening...I don’t even know how I know,” she said. “When [Moses} is like how do you know when to prune tomatoes, I’m like I don’t know, how do I know that? Some things you just inherently know.”
Along with their own produce, Hillside Farm stocks goods from other Island farms, including North Tabor, Ghost Island, Mermaid and Grey Barn. Other goods come from MV Smokehouse, Island Bee Company and Little Rock Farm.
“We’d like to showcase what the Island has to offer, and also to have some of the products that are available at the farmers’ market, just multiple days of the week,” said Ms. Mills. “Sometimes you can’t get to the farmers’ market on Saturday or Wednesday.”
The rest of their products are selected from retailers in the northeast and beyond.
“Quality products that are carefully made and considered,” she said.
“We’re just doing what three little farmers can do,” added Ms. Kinser.
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