HVADC Client: Dirt Dance Farm

Sarah Chien didn't come to agriculture through a family farm or a degree.

She was dancing professionally in New York City when the pandemic canceled two years of gigs. Like a lot of people stuck at home, she started growing vegetables in containers. Unlike most people, she did not stop.

Her first farm was on the rooftop of her Bushwick, Brooklyn apartment. For containers, she used milk crates donated to her by a DJ friend. Her passion for growing vegetables quickly outgrew that rooftop.

Over the next few years, Chien worked her way through apprenticeships and gigs in New York City, then at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, Long Island, and finally at Tributary Farm in High Falls in the Hudson Valley region she'd wanted to reach all along.

Today, she leases a few acres at the Esopus Agricultural Center in Kingston and runs Dirt Dance Farm, a specialty vegetable operation built around Asian crops and community food access.

Along the way, Chien participated in Cornell Cooperative Extension Sullivan County's Beginner Farmer Program, where she learned about business planning and farm management. Through the program, HVADC provided business technical assistance, pairing her with consultant Rose Wilson to help strengthen her business plan and financial strategy.

From the Stage to the Soil

Chien launched her first farm with a business partner in Wawarsing, Ulster County. It didn't last, but it taught her something important.

"I learned how to start a farm and bring it to market," Chien remarked. "So it gave me the confidence to know that I could do it. It's scary to go from farm worker to farm owner."

When it came to naming her new solo venture, she wanted something that captured both halves of her life. Dirt Dance Farm folds movement into farm work. Chien leads Friday qigong sessions on the farm, posts videos of herself dancing in the fields, and occasionally collaborates with visiting artists.

"I'm a dancer, and it's a farm," Chien recalled. "Right now, it's definitely more dirt than dance — and that's the right business choice for me."

These days, Chien is a regular at the Kingston Farmers Market, where she sells every Saturday through November. She supplies Asian vegetables to a growing list of local chefs and small businesses — relationships built largely through cold calls, pop-ups and showing up at restaurants and events around town.

"The Kingston small business community is awesome," Chien said. "A lot of us are running these tiny businesses, and we're all kind of in it together. It's really supportive."

A Business Plan That Opens Doors

Chien calls Dirt Dance "about 90% me," with two part-time workers and occasional volunteers filling out the rest. While she felt confident growing and marketing her produce, she needed help with other sides of the agribusiness.

"I was okay on the narrative," Chien noted. "But doing the financial record-keeping and numbers-based storytelling was harder for me."

Working with Wilson, she put together a business plan and financial projections — documents that paid off almost immediately. When a marketing grant came up, Chien applied from a hospital waiting room while her partner was in a procedure.

"All I had to do was attach the business plan, and I had it," she added. "It made me look really good."

This year, she used the same paperwork to apply for a $15,000 grant, and she's now working with Wilson on loan readiness in case she needs operating capital down the road.

Duane Stanton, HVADC’s Business Services Coordinator, met Chien through a presentation he gave to her Beginner Farmer Program cohort about business planning and HVADC’s assistance initiatives. HVADC contributes to the program by lending business technical assistance consultants such as Wilson.

“When I met Sarah, she already had a strong sense of who she wanted to serve and what she wanted the farm to be,” Stanton said. “Our work helps agribusiness entrepreneurs like Sarah turn that passion into a business that can access funding, manage risk and grow over time. That’s where a solid business plan becomes valuable.”

Growing a Niche

At Dirt Dance, the crop list reflects both Chien's roots and the community she serves: chrysanthemum greens, gai lan (Chinese broccoli) and, new this year, Chinese cauliflower. She also runs what she calls her "Asian Pantry Enterprise," reselling tofu skins, soy sauce, miso and Sichuan peppercorns from other small producers, since the region has no Asian grocery store of its own.

"It's important to me that everybody gets to eat this food," Chien said. "Not just Asian food for Asian people, not just fancy organic food for high-end restaurants, but that everybody gets to eat the food that's grown in our community."

That philosophy carries into her food access work. Her two pantry partnerships — Kingston Emergency Food Collaborative and Fareground Food + Community in Beacon — are funded through the Glynwood Food Sovereignty Fund, which pays for produce in advance. She also donates through FeedHV, a food rescue network administered by HVADC.

Looking Ahead

Chien's next project is turning a surplus of fiery Sichuan peppers into a shelf-stable chili crisp, something she hopes to develop with chef partners this winter. She's also eyeing ginger, lemongrass and other specialty crops for next year's plans. Long-term, she wants to build a small dance floor on the farm and earn enough to support herself and, eventually, one more worker.

"The goal is a sustainable living wage — for me, and hopefully for one other person, too," Chien said.

Five years after those milk crates on a Brooklyn rooftop, Chien has more than a crop plan. Thanks in part to HVADC, she has a business plan, too.

To learn about the HVADC’s business technical assistance for farms, agricultural business and food producers, visit https://www.hvadc.org/agriculture-businesses.