Silver Queen Farm: A passion project decades in the making

Gordie Gallup, owner of Silver Queen Farm in Trumansburg, has decades’ worth of experience in farming, which has been poured into the business that he’s been growing in the community for over 10 years. As he explained, farming is a longtime passion for him, and he’s glad so many community members welcome that passion and come back to Silver Queen year after year.

Gallup was born on his family’s dairy farm, which was later sold when he was 8 years old. In his teenage years and into his 20s, he worked for a variety of farms before detouring into custom-home building.

“Back then, there weren’t farms like the farm I have,” he said. “It really wasn’t a popular thing. And when I was in my early 20s, I couldn’t really see a way where I could afford to get into farming the way most farming was done then. So, I opted to become a custom-home builder instead. So, I kind of took a detour for about 25 years and built a bunch of custom-built homes and ended up out here at the Finger Lakes.”

Then, a piece of land in Trumansburg came up for sale, Gallup said.

“I always had this dream of having a … you-pick farm sort of thing,” he said. “An ideal piece of land came up for sale, and I decided to buy it. Basically, for the next about 10, 12 years, I ran the construction business and put any money I made in the construction business to the farm and developed an irrigation system and cleared some of the land and got some of the equipment together and stuff and started farming on a part-time basis.”

After working out of a tent and farmstands for a little while, Gallup took another big step in 2008, when he decided to build the 8,000-square-foot barn that is still at Silver Queen to this day, serving as an events venue for things like weddings.

“[I] gradually shifted out of the retail farmers market, farmstand kind of thing into wholesale restaurant supply,” he said. “So, today, we supply about 20 farm-to-table restaurants around the Finger Lakes [and] do about 30 barn weddings. And then, I have a big 6-acre you-pick strawberry patch that we do in June.”

Gallup explained that he’s glad to be living out his childhood passion in a way that the whole community can enjoy.

“Ever since I was little kid, I’ve always loved growing stuff,” he said. “The whole thing that happens every spring where you plant seeds and they flourish and turn into this huge crop of stuff — I just remember being thrilled about that when I was a little kid, and I still get that same feeling almost 60 years later. … If you really enjoyed something, the only way you can really enjoy it is you can share it with other people. So, the farm is kind of a way to share my passion with other people.”

He added that he loves “supplying chefs that are really into using local ingredients and having a seasonal menu and seeing them getting excited about what we’ve got.” And seeing residents and visitors flock to the farm every June for strawberry picking is often the highlight of the season.

“I think I make a lot of people happy,” he said. “I know our you-pick strawberry patch is probably one of the biggest ones in the area. And it’s something that less and less people are doing. So, I know I literally make hundreds and hundreds people happy every year when we do that, which is pretty gratifying. And I get a lot of really good feedback and reviews on the wedding venue as well as a lot of people appreciate being able to have an event at a real farm.”

When the pandemic initially shut down much of the county, Gallup was nervous at first, he said.

“All restaurants shut down, and I had literally probably 70 to 80,000 pounds of potatoes and onions and garlic and squash and stuff in storage that I was expecting to sell [to] those restaurants,” he said. “And for the first week or so, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to end up putting all this stuff on the compost pile and not making any money for the next who knows how long.’”

But Gallup decided to pivot and start offering his bulk produce that was in storage to consumers “for the same price as their favorite restaurants were buying it for.”

“And initially, for the first month or so, people were so scared,” he said. “People didn’t know if they were going to be able to leave their houses or go to grocery stores or whatever. So, there was a huge boom [for us]. In the first week, I sold 250 50-pound bags of potatoes to retail customers. In a normal year, … we probably sell maybe 20 or 25 50-pound bags of potatoes in an entire year, and in one week, I sold 200. So, that was kind of a nice surprise.”

Shortly after that, many restaurants that had shut down had reopened for outdoor dining or take-out orders, which meant Gallup was back to selling produce to restaurants. So, while the event venue side of Silver Queen lost 26 weddings in 2020, Gallup said, “The farm revenue from selling produce to restaurants and consumers actually picked up almost all the lost revenue.”

“So, financially, the pandemic for me, it was pretty much just a wash,” he said.

Now, Gallup’s business is back in full swing on everything from the you-pick to wholesale to weddings. What has replaced pandemic-related concerns in Gallup’s mind recently is the ongoing cost increases and supply shortages he and many others are facing.

“We are certainly able to, … at least for the short term, absorb some of these increases in costs and hassles and delays stuff, but I’m a little worried,” he said. “It doesn’t really look like there’s light at the end of the tunnel. … I’m especially worried about more than myself. There’s a lot of people that, before the pandemic started, were just barely making ends meet and were kind of struggling. And I really worry about those people because of the way prices are now.”

For now, Gallup will handle any new challenges as they come up, and in the meantime, he has high hopes for the long-term future of his business. He expressed a desire to get a farm winery brewery license to help further expand his business.

“A long-term plan I’ve tossed around with my two daughters numerous times would be eventually that they may step in and get a farm winery brewery license and take the venue part of the barn to another level because, right now, basically, we just rent the facility and the tables and chairs,” he said. “But with a farm winery brewery license, we could become a farm-to-table Finger Lakes destination wedding type thing and be … certainly more of a whole service and actually provide all the wine and beers consumed on site, which would make it a much more profitable, much bigger business than it is now.”

To learn more about Silver Queen Farm, visit its website at silverqueenfarmny.com.

Trumansburg Connection appears every Wednesday in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.