Jake Slagle of Mud Hollow Farms is a first-generation farmer. Photo credit: Misty Wong

The first few times Bristol farmer Jake Slagle approached area chefs about buying hydroponic lettuce from his new venture, Mud Hollow Farms, he struggled for potential customers to take him seriously.

“As a 26-year-old trying to sell them something, they thought I was a joke,” Slagle says. “The hardest part was just trying to gain people’s trust in what we’re doing and why it’s a viable option.”

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Eventually, his persistence paid off, and he has seen success over the last three years.

“I try to go around to the restaurants I haven’t won over yet every week and say, ‘Hey, try this out. See what you think,’” he says. “If you do that enough, they get behind what you’re doing, and you show them that you care. And I try to keep in touch with people who buy from me, get feedback and improve when they ask.”

See more: Enjoy a Waterfront Meal on the Cumberland River at Riverview Restaurant & Marina

John and Julie Slagle, below, have been supportive of the younger generation’s venture into agriculture, which also includes a CSA, farm store and pizzas served at the family’s Lake View Dock. Photo credit: Misty Wong

New Generation, New Direction

It’s all part of the growing success of the business that Slagle, a first-generation grower, started on part of a 300-acre tract near Lake View Dock, the popular 400-boat marina run by his parents, John and Julie, on South Holston Lake in northeast Tennessee. The mostly wooded land had been used to store boat trailers, never for agricultural purposes.

See more: Why East Tennessee Lakes and Rivers Are Perfect for Fly Fishing

A peer tutor for students with special needs throughout high school, as a teenager Slagle helped build raised beds and a hoop house to give kids with disabilities hands-on gardening experience. In 2017, he began planting tomatoes and other vegetables on his own land, selling them at a stand behind the marina and gifting fresh produce to a handful of families living on the hillside nearby. After earning his horticulture degree from Colorado State University, where he concentrated on hydroponics, in 2021 his hobby “barrel-rolled into a business.”

Photo credit: Misty Wong

Learning by Doing

These days, Slagle, his fiancé Blakesley Bassett, and longtime employee Riley Cosgrove operate two greenhouses year-round with the supervision of Slagle’s loyal Wirehaired Pointing Griffon dogs, Sage and Basil. Starting with annual and perennial flowers, they soon added hydroponic lettuce and now mainly produce a Salanova lettuce mix of red sweet crisp, green sweet crisp, green butter and red butter, and occasionally oakleaf, for school cafeterias, restaurants and the WNC Farmers Market in Asheville, North Carolina.

Photo credit: Misty Wong

“Really, we couldn’t grow enough of our lettuce right now,” Slagle says.

The hydroponic process, which relies on well water, comes with numerous benefits, Slagle says. It’s faster, and it doesn’t require soil amendment.

“We’re growing in just water,” he says. “We test our water every minute of every day to make sure everything is exactly right. We have a lot more control on what our plants are getting and how they’re growing.”

In warm weather, the team, assisted by Slagle’s older brother Joe, tends veggies and fruits, from strawberries and squash to cucumbers and zucchini, on about 50 acres, often learning as they go with “shot in the dark” experimenting.

Riley Cosgrove, Blakesley Bassett and Jake Slagle run Mud Hollow Farms in Bristol and sell their produce at the Slagle family’s marina on South Holston Lake. Photo credit: Misty Wong

“Our soil makeup is not the best,” Slagle admits. “Since I’ve been home from school, it’s been all hands on deck trying to get better drainage and improve the soil quality so we can do more field-grown crops.”

And, Slagle adds, he, Bassett and Cosgrove are young and new to running a farm business. “None of us has ever done this,” he says, “and we try a lot of things that don’t work.”

See more: CSA Signup Season

One aspect that has worked is selling directly to locals through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, which Slagle’s mom, Julie, helps run. Unlike most CSAs, Mud Hollow’s doesn’t require a subscription from its local customers, which eliminates waste, especially in the summer when they’re traveling. Included in the CSA boxes of hydroponic lettuce and other fresh produce are jellies, eggs and other regional products from about 50 other small farmers in the Appalachian region.

Photo credit: Misty Wong

“That’s kind of the heart and soul of our farm,” Slagle says. “We want to help other farms by using the size of ours to sell their products, along with helping our customers get good healthy produce from local people instead of having to buy big-box store stuff.”

The farm also supplies lettuce and tomatoes for the marina restaurant, and sponsors fine dining nights there with a changing, fixed-price menu.

Planting for the Future at Mud Hollow Farms

All the hard work is paying off. In 2022, Mud Hollow was recognized with the Sullivan County Agri-Business Award from the Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers.

Photo credit: Misty Wong

This year, Slagle plans to host more agritourism activities, including a U-pick sunflower field and a cut flower field for bouquets. He and his fiancé will be married on the farm in September and hope to create a wedding venue on a quiet plot with a beautiful creek.

But the thing Slagle is most proud of is Mud Hollow’s budding school partnership. In addition to providing cafeteria produce, Slagle will soon start visiting classrooms to show students firsthand how hydroponic growing works.

See more: Gordonsville Elementary School Students Grow a School Garden

“I love being in touch with the kids and teaching them more about what we’re doing and about farming,” he says. “I remember being in high school and learning about growing produce for the first time, and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever.”

Photo credit: Misty Wong

Slagle says with the average farming age being 57 years old, agriculture has to lower that so that young people are carrying on the tradition of being able to sustain the country and state with locally grown goods.

“Our No. 1 vision as a business is to teach and motivate young people that this is a fun industry to get into,” Slagle says. “You can’t beat working outside with your hands. A lot of days, it’s more of a playground than a workspace.”