One Farm Market in Logan
Don Harrold, Executive Editor
editor@enterprisepub.com
Amber Muxfeldt and her husband took over One Farm Market in Logan at the beginning of the year, she said in an interview at the store. The market, now working on its sixth year, sells goods from small farms and small businesses, all produced in Iowa or the Omaha-Lincoln metro area, she said.
The store, at 217 E. Seventh St., is not open full time, Muxfeldt said, and it has a back room used for events. Information is available at one-farm.com, by calling 712-592-1309, by emailing onefarmer@one-farm.com or on Instagram at @onefarmiowa.
"One Farm Market is home to over 200 businesses," Muxfeldt said. "It's literally like your next-door neighbor that we're getting our peppers from."
Danelle Meyer started the market, Muxfeldt said, as a local foods pop-up in the building next door, where a boutique now operates, selling produce she grew outside Logan. "She outgrew that space and then transitioned over here," Muxfeldt said.
Meyer is still involved, Muxfeldt said. She helps with ideas for the store and still grows produce for it, including radishes. "Danelle and I talk every single day," Muxfeldt said.
"The heart of the store is locally grown produce," she said. The shelves also hold jams and fudge from a Blair woman, woodworking by Ken Dunham and Kevin Peterson, ground lamb and lamb chops from a family outside Magnolia and soda from the Amana Colonies, she said. Consumable products must come from licensed kitchens.
The store also hosts pop-ups by other vendors. "We're really just a hub for community," Muxfeldt said. She described one of them, a potter who started baking clay as a hobby, bought a small kiln and brought her extra pieces to the store. "And it all started with a hobby that she loved," she said.
The store runs on consignment, though Muxfeldt said the terms are "customized to every scenario." She said produce is sold on a 70/30 split. "The producer receives 70% of the profit and the business receives 30% of the profit," she said. On a $2 soda, she said she believed the producer's share was $1.80 and the store kept 20 cents.
"The markup model is very small for the store, but the producer is seeing 100% of their profit," she said. "They set the prices, and we work from there."
Muxfeldt's interest started in her own garden about five to six years ago, when she began looking into what her family eats and where its food comes from. Grocery store shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic led her to dig deeper. "How am I going to feed my family?" she said. "It's a lot better for you to consume things that haven't traveled thousands and thousands and thousands of miles."
Her family raises cows and chickens, she said, and supplied eggs to Meyer for about 2½ years. Muxfeldt called it "a rewardless kind of job" that paid just enough to keep going. "The eggs that are in our store today, they were picked up and washed and handled by a small local family, and they were probably laid a week or two ago," she said.
Through the egg business, the two built a relationship. "I think Danelle was ready for the next chapter of her life," Muxfeldt said. When they sat down one morning to talk about the market's future, Meyer surprised her. "She just popped it on me, like, 'Do you want to continue this business for me?'"
Muxfeldt said they share the same vision: "The vision of local foods and knowing what you're eating, where it came from." She went on, "Food is more than just something on a plate. It's nourishment. It's connection. It's community. If I cook for you, I love you."
"I don't think I would've purchased an established business if it wasn't profitable," Muxfeldt said. Profit was not why they bought it, she said. "We decided to do it because that's where my heart is."
"I want to do something in life that makes a difference," she said. "I want to make a difference in my community. I want to spread knowledge. So it's not necessarily about making money." She also said, "I want to be in the community that my kids are being raised in."
"We're not rolling in the dough by any means, but we do it because this is something that we believe in and we love," she said.
She said she doesn't expect the business to go under. "I think that Logan and the surrounding communities, they show up for their small businesses," she said. Six years ago, Main Street was empty, with no businesses, she said. Now "you can spend a whole entire Saturday in Logan," starting with coffee and a pastry, visiting the downtown shops and stopping for lunch.
Muxfeldt said younger business owners have helped revitalize the town but that "the elders of the town are where the knowledge sits." She added, "I'm just coming in on the tail end of that."
"I don't always feel confident, if you want me to be honest," she said. "Sometimes I'm just like, 'What in the world am I doing?' But at the same time ... you just have to go for it."
"My doors are open to any small business, anybody that has knowledge that they want to share," Muxfeldt said. "This is not mine. This is the community's. This is Logan's."
Muxfeldt described opening the store. "I could be having the crappiest day ever, and I walk into this space and I turn the lights on and I get the cash register ready," she said. "I feel revitalized every time I come in here."
"It's not because of a product that I offer," she said. "It has to do with the fact that this place feels like home to so many people." On Saturdays with a pop-up and wine sampling, relatives who haven't seen each other in a couple of weeks talk and laugh in the front of the store, she said.
"That's what this place does the best, is it offers community and connection," she said.
Folks in Logan who stop at One Farm Market can load a basket, head home and make their own delicious, locally-sourced ambrosia.
