Meet farmers in the Northern Poconos and learn their stories!

In part two of a three part series on farming in the Pocono Mountains, Chris Barrett talks with Stan & Amy Bialecki at Bialecki Farms near Lakewood. From homesteading to hydroponics, Bialecki Farms began with the goal of family self-sustainability and now supplies fresh produce to the local community.

Bialecki Farms is part of the Agrolegacy of the Northern Poconos which is part of an initiative through Wayne Tomorrow. Watch for future segments at farms in Wayne County on Pocono Mountains Magazine in April.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Chris Barrett
We're in a hydroponic farm area. And what are we? What structure are we in right now? Just so I say it right.

Amy Bialeck
This is a hydroponic greenhouse.

Chris Barrett
Hydroponic greenhouse. And it's just fascinating to be here and to see this. One of the things I noticed is both of you really are into self-sustainability and something that's self-sustaining. Stan, what does that mean?

Stan Bieleck
As far as farming is concerned is the first and foremost is to be able to financially sustain yourself. And to do that we utilize the hydroponic methods for. More rapid growth.

Amy Bialeck
We're using a lot less space. The production that you see in here, if you were to do this in the ground, you're using multiple acres of land to produce the same that we have in this one greenhouse. So we're using a lot less land for what we do produce. And then that remaining land is is left to nature is left the way it is. The trees are Intact.

Chris Barrett
and that's really important. So, we talked a little bit before about yields. So how much do you yield in a hydroponic is right way to say it?

Amy Bialeck
Yes

Chris Barrett
Hydroponic farming. How much would?

Stan Bieleck
The yield is 20 times what it would be in conventional farming, out conventional outdoor farming.

Chris Barrett
How's the quality of what's grown hydroponically versus organic or traditional?

Amy Bialeck
I would say a higher quality. I like to say the plants are babied. They're getting everything they need. They're protected from the weather, they're getting all the nutrients that they need. So they literally they're babied for their entire life. So you're getting faster growth and what you're harvesting is a high quality product that's that that's younger.

(Music)

I wake up in the morning and this great blue state.

Chris Barrett
Hi, everybody. This is part two of a three-part series for Pocono Perspectives that we're looking at farming in the Pocono Mountains. And you wouldn't really think Farm exists here, but it's alive and well and it really does. We have great innovative people here doing really innovative things and that's why we wanted to talk about that. So Stan and Amy, your story, too, I think is really interesting. Stan, how did we get here? How are you guys here now?

Stan Bieleck
We started we grew up in New Jersey. We moved out to Pennsylvania when we first got together over.

Amy Bialeck: 20 or 25 years. Now. Yeah,

Stan Bielecki
  Yeah. Because we wanted to have a little bit more of a rural lifestyle. We kind of moved way up the state to buy our first home and then.

Amy Bialeck
We started homesteading and it was producing for ourselves, having a garden.

Stan Bielecki
(Home)

Amy Bialeck
 Having some some chickens for eggs. And that's where the homesteading lifestyle kind of began. And that same mentality kind of leads to, okay, so we're producing for ourselves as far as food wise now, can we produce for ourselves financially off of the land?

Chris Barrett
 Oh, so homesteading is just the first step in producing.

Amy Bialeck
Oh yeah, yeah. Definitely, definitely

Stan Bielecki
A small first step.

Amy Bialeck
(Yeah)

Stan Bielecki
And then and we're in northern Wayne County up in the mountains, and it allowed us to do a lot more homesteading, like.

Amy Bialeck
We have more land available. So when we wanted to have goats or, or a dairy cow or, you know, more space that we could, we could add to that homesteading that we were we were doing.

Stan Bieleck
It was probably like middle of May, we went to one of the mud auctions that they have for the old farm equipment and that kind of thing. And I bought a plow and I hooked it up to my little tractor and we went 40 feet and I just snapped the shank right off of that, right off of that plow.

Amy Bialeck
(Because of The)

Stan Bieleck
 The Rocks.

Amy Bialeck
Wayne County is known for being very the ground is very rocky.

Chris Barrett
So you just kind of think you

Stan Bieleck
(Well)

Chris Barrett
Throw some seeds in the ground.

Amy Bialeck & Stan Bieleck
(Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)

Stan Bieleck
Land, trees. It looks good, you know.

Amy Bialeck
(Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)

Amy Bialeck
So, when you go and break a plow right off the bat, you're like, well, all right, this conventional farming things not not necessarily

Stan Bielecki
(necessarily going to work)

Amy Bialeck
going to work on this land. So, what's what's plan B? What else? What else can we do?

Chris Barrett
So, you found out that traditional farming was going to be a little tougher. Then what you

Stan Bielecki
(Yes)

Chris Barrett
Thought.

Chris Barrett
So, what is your educational background?

Stan Bieleck
Well, I got my GED.

Amy Bialeck
(Got you're GED)

Stan Bielecki
And then I did engineering, like construction engineering inspection for 20 years.

Amy Bialeck
 Not much different than his. I mean, I went to graduated high school, actually went through cosmetology, was going to be a hairstylist, but that didn't work out that way. When we moved out, we got together, moved out to Pennsylvania, and I spent many years just raising our children.

Stan Bielecki
Not just raising the children. Not just no, you were a very she took she was a stay at home mom and homestead wife. She'd be out there with a bucket milking the cow in the snow when it was four degrees. So it's not just.

Amy Bialeck
Yeah, yeah. But that was my concentration.

Stan Bielecki
we were very

Amy Bialeck
That was that was what I wanted to do.

Stan Bieleck
we were very blessed to be able to do that.

Chris Barrett
So, you have some construction back?

Stan Bieleck
Yes.

Chris Barrett
Oh, we have some water happening here.

Amy Bialeck
Yeah. That's the seedlings being watered, being a little aggressive at the moment.

Chris Barrett
Is that automatic?

Amy Bialeck
It is. It's on a timer. It's I think every hour it runs for a few seconds and keeps all those seedlings watered. Oh, that pipe usually is turned down a bit more moved.

Chris Barrett
Well, the building were in right now, you built everything yourself?

Stan Bieleck
Everything

Chris Barrett
So, the construction background. Really helps.

Stan Bieleck
Yeah, construction background. I did like all phases of construction when I was in my younger years. I also did some landscaping, so I knew how to run machinery and stuff like that.

Amy Bialeck
And, and that came in handy a lot with this. So with each green house that we put up or, you know, the hydroponics, he designed all the systems that we have. And, you know, he knows how to do the carpentry, the electrical.

Chris Barrett
That's Great.

Amy Bialeck
So, when it came, we could really do that stuff ourselves.

Chris Barrett
How did you make the connection that hydroponic was the way to go, and how long did it take to get to where we are now?

Amy Bialeck
It sounds silly Internet research. YouTube

Stan Bieleck
But it did take it took us probably five years when we did it. I wanted to be sure that we could make enough money. And you know

Chris Barrett
Did you have other jobs in the meantime?

Amy Bialeck
He did.

Stan Bieleck
I Did

Amy Bialeck
He did. He was working on farm. He worked in Precast.

Stan Bieleck
I was a PennDOT inspector and for various D.O.T's up and down the coast.

Chris Barrett
 So, how long have you, has this just been your sole?

Stan Bieleck
Since 2019.

Amy Bialeck
Three years? Yeah. Three years now?

Stan Bieleck
Yeah. Three years and a few months.

Amy Bialeck
It's been sold from the farm. Yeah.

Chris Barrett
And what's a typical day here?

Amy Bialeck
It depends on the day. I mean, there is a routine, but throughout the week there are certain tasks on a certain day, and my tasks aren't the same as as his. You know, it's farmer's markets or it's Friday. Saturday, Sunday is a farmer's market. So come Monday, Tuesday, there could be various tasks. If there's some weeding in the outside beds or general maintenance that you have to do, but then you have to get into your harvesting your weekly crops.

You're getting ready to to replant like in here, as soon as something gets harvested, we're replanting. So you're getting ready to put those new plants in and then you have to start seeds because you have to keep that rotation going every week. So you're doing that. And he could be doing maintenance on the tomato plant pruning.

Chris Barrett
So, there's a cycle?

Amy Bialeck
(Yeah)

Chris Barrett
of planting per season.

Amy Bialeck
(Oh yeah)

Chris Barrett
there is?

Stan Bieleck
Well, there is somewhat I mean, in here it's every single it's not seasonal. It's every week.

Amy Bialeck
(Every week, yeah)

Stan Bieleck
The crops will, the crop mix changes slightly, but every week. (52 Weeks)

Amy Bialeck
that routine stays the same.

Stan Bieleck
We plant and harvest in here.

Chris Barrett
So you have mustard lettuce, right?

Amy Bialeck
Yeah. Soy, watercress, some herbs.

Stan Bieleck
Swiss chard, lettuces.

Chris Barrett
Like you said, the plants are baby, right?

Amy Bialeck
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Stan Bieleck
And they are very young. They like, lettuce can be very bitter in late summer because it gets it. They the heat makes them grow slower and then they the older they get, the bitter, more bitter they get, the closer they get to go.

Chris Barrett
I have to ask about that because I'm an iceberg shredded lettuce kind of guy.

Amy Bialeck
Oh, you're one of those. My my, my dad's one of those guys, too. No, I get really excited when we have some customers that will come to us market and say, I've never been excited about lettuce before or This is the best lettuce I've ever had. And I love hearing things like that because it's like, who gets excited about lettuce? But they are. They're excited about it because it is it is different.

Chris Barrett
I'm going to show how much I don't know. But all I know is it iceberg lettuce has no nutrients. Pretty much. Right? It's all water.

Amy Bialec
Yeah. Yeah.

Stan Bieleck
Well, I don't know that that's true.

Amy Bialeck
I. Mean, I'm sure there are some, but. Yeah, nothing. It's just what it is. It's water.

Stan Bieleck
I think it's better if you're eating greens than eating cheese puffs. So, iceberg is better than cheese.

Chris Barrett
Oh, I test that quite often with the cheese.

Stan Bieleck
 I think the the biggest thing that that a consumer should know and you want to feed your family the freshest vegetables possible. And that iceberg was picked 14 days ago.

Chris Barrett
in California.

Stan Bieleck
Well, Oregon. But yeah.

Amy Bialeck
  And then shipped across the country.

Stan Bieleck
when we pick for market we're picking on usually Wednesday and our customers are are having it by Friday or Saturday.

Chris Barrett
 so, you guys are at farmer's markets a lot is that right?

Stan Bieleck
That's what we do for

Amy Bialeck
Primarily farmer's markets. We have a website. We can do preorders with our customers. They can even come here to pick up orders. We have a couple of restaurants that that buy from us.

Chris Barrett
Restaurants and resort. do you have you supply those like from.

Amy Bialeck
Just a couple that's that's not the majority of our.

Stan Bieleck
well a Local and then we have started supplying a couple in the city as well in New York City.

Amy Bialeck
And we've been lucky to be a part of the county food pantry. They actually got a grant so that they could buy fresh vegetables from the local farms and provide it to the food pantry families. So we've been lucky to be a part of that, too.

Chris Barrett
So do you guys have you guys have a family. Kids, how old

Amy Bialeck
: three, three kids, 20, 18 and 14

Chris Barrett
How do they like the farm? Are they involved?

Amy Bialeck
Not at all

(Laughs)

Chris Barret
No, no

Amy Bialeck
I think that's the same with any any family run business. Nobody wants to work for their parents. And I don't think that matters what the industry is. That's the same. We even had some years where some of our kids, they actually went to work for other farms who were friends of ours and then other kids came and worked for us. You know, it's not I don't know that it's necessarily the farming aspect, but it's I don't want to work for my Parents.

Chris Barret
And I have a 20 and 22, so I get that, yeah. Are you concerned about where farming is going? Family farm? Because this is a family farm, right?

Stan Bieleck
Oh, absolutely

Chris Barret
So, does that concern you at all?

Amy Bialeck
I'm hopeful for that because I think we see a lot more of it. You see more of the small family farms, more like ours.

Stan Bieleck
Historically, the Poconos were noted for the local small farms that produced for those people coming from the city.

Chris Barret
I never knew that wow that's awesome.

Stan Bieleck
in the in the 1800s, they were your classic market farm based off of the like Paris model or Parisian model.

Amy Bialeck
But then for a time We got away from that.

Stan Bieleck
Yeah, no, we did, because it became cheaper to bring the produce from Lancaster by truck. Once they had trucks and roads, it became cheaper to use a truck, but before then they never did that.

Amy Bialeck
It's nice to see that coming back. It's coming back to the small local family farms to see the restaurants. They're interested in the farm to table. Like you said, they're interested in getting that from the local farm.

Stan Bieleck
well, it's not just locally here, it's not just green washing. It really is. The local restaurants purchase from the local farms. It's really good and as much as they can.

Chris Barret
Does it concern you that it seems like there's a lot of big conglomerate farms out there? Does that Concern you?

Amy Bialeck
I think there's always going to be a space for both.

Chris Barret
Well, we've learned so much today from both of you. And I wanted to just ask, where do you see this farm in five years? What are your hopes and dreams for next five and ten years?

Amy Bialeck
I can't even go that far. And so many people say, what is your five-year plan? And it's like, hold on, let me get to next year, first one year at a time.

Chris Barret
a business is like a child. When you when you have a small child, it's your job to take care of and nurture the child and direct the child and teach the child and get the child going in some direction.

But then later, as the child matures, I see our business is probably a young teenager now and the young teenager. I don't want to tell them what classes to take. I don't want to tell them what direction to go. I don't want to direct the farm in the direction it goes. I want to allow the business to direct me in its needs and allow it to grow.

Amy Bialeck
And at this point it is. And we can see year by year the farm tells us what it needs when we have a shortage of a product, we're selling out well. We need more of that. You know, we can. It shows us where we need to change and where we need to grow.

Chris Barret
Well, I found out so much today speaking of growing homesteading farming here in the early times. So, we're going to look into that kind of stuff. But I really appreciate you guys giving us the time today. There's been a great learning experience. Just another new aspect of the Pocono Mountains. So also, I want to thank all of you for tuning in today, and I hope you've enjoyed speaking with Stan and Amy just like we have. And I'm Chris Barrett for Pocono Perspectives, what you're seeing on the Pocono Television Network. Thanks for watching.