A worker picking strawberries at Agriberry Farm (Photo courtesy Agriberry Farm)
May is a bountiful month for Hanover County purveyors Agriberry Farm. A delicious sign of the season, their berries are ubiquitous around the region, found on restaurant menus, brewed in local craft beers, baked in desserts, stocked at local grocers and on the spread at your friend’s cookout. The farm’s purple pop-up tents are everywhere from church parking lots to area markets, drawing lines of fruit fanatics in search of berries.
In operation for over 15 years, Agriberry is one of a small collective of berry farms in the Richmond region. With its rare fruit-only Community Supported Agriculture business model — where consumers purchase a seasonal share of produce directly from the farm that grows it — Agriberry is aiming to preserve the tradition of fruit farming.
“We’re a multigenerational fruit farming family,” Pierson Geyer says. “My parents started farming fruit in Westmoreland County in the mid ’80s, and they’ve been farming fruit since. There’s a pic of me in The Washington Post, and I’m in a backpack carriage thing, just a happy baby with them out in the field; I’ve been in the field my whole life.”
Photo by Jay Paul
Geyer is currently in a five-year succession plan to take over full ownership of Agriberry from his parents by 2025. His mother, Anne, grew up in the Finger Lakes region of New York and spent summers picking and eating wild black raspberries, while his dad, Chuck, was raised on a dairy farm in upstate New York. The duo met while working at the University of Maryland’s Horticultural Research Farm on a USDA berry production study. Tasked with growing raspberries, they were offered a chance to farm a 60-acre riverfront property with the goal of becoming a profitable berry farm.
“They were given the opportunity to succeed,” Geyer says.
In 2008, the Geyers relocated to Hanover and planted their first local seeds. Since then, they have established themselves as a premier purveyor. Their 25-acre property on River Road is lined with strawberry beds; blueberry bushes; finicky, tender, yet well worth it raspberries; and nectarine and plum trees. They’ve harvested white and doughnut peaches, Japanese-style plums, several varieties of apples, and Concord and muscadine grapes, and there are even whispers of paw paws in the future.
Fruit from the farm rarely goes to waste. In an on-site kitchen, bruised produce is recycled into jars of applesauce, jams and preserves, along with oat bars. Geyer’s sister, Colleen, the owner of River City Bakery, also uses the space as her production kitchen.
Agriberry has honed a unique and successful hybrid style of cultivation. Beyond harvesting on their own property, they collaborate with a network of nearby partner farms, primarily Chesterfield Berry Farm, to supply CSA customers.
“We are dedicated to growing what we sell even if we don’t grow all of what we sell,” Juniper Runion, membership and community engagement coordinator for Agriberry, says. “That is a pretty unconventional and mutually beneficial partnership that we have going on; there’s labor sharing and land sharing and costs of plant and planting. We know the farms we go to, and we drive straight to them.”
For Agriberry, the vision is to create a thriving local fruit ecosystem. “In terms of how many servings of fruit we’ve gotten into the Richmond area, that’s how we’re looking to measure our impact as a company and as a farm,” Runion says. “The average American does not get their recommended two cups of fruit a day, and we’re like, ‘Let’s get it.’”
In 2023, Agriberry Farm grew 360,846 servings of strawberries, 8,106 servings of blueberries, 102,438 servings of raspberries and 184,426 servings of blackberries.
During the slower months, Agriberry relies on its CSA proceeds to provide steady revenue until harvest season. They currently have 650 CSA members in the Richmond area.
“We need that to support full-time workers, and that’s an evolution over the past five years,” Geyer says. “I have been working to create a more full-time work paradigm for the staff.”
Find Agriberry Farm at the Farmers Market at St. Stephen’s, Birdhouse Farmers Market, Lakeside Farmers’ Market and more. (Photo by Jay Paul)
A Virginia Commonwealth University graduate with a master’s degree in education, Geyer’s background aligns organically with the farm’s mission of spreading knowledge. Agriberry works with area high schools and colleges to host student workers and help connect them with local food systems. In addition, they organize hundreds of free educational tours a year.
“That’s a big part of what my mom wanted to do, not only provide fruit to the Richmond area, but exposure to agriculture, for the next generation to learn about fruit farming,” Geyer says.
“That plays into why I wanted to be involved so professionally with fruit farming. I knew the knowledge my parents had from over 30 years was specialized, it was unique, it was powerful, it was beneficial, and I wanted to continue to steward that knowledge,” Geyer adds. “Agriberry will be here for at least another five years, and this is my main thing now. I have no plans on doing anything else.”
Agriberry Around Town
Olivia Wilson, baker
Olive oil chiffon cake with strawberries and rhubarb
Hem and Her pop-up
Strawberry and kampot pepper tart with pandan cream
Very Berry or strawberry cream pie
Benne cake with strawberries
Manakintowne greens salad with strawberry-shiso vinaigrette
Virginia Blackberry, a Belgian-style white ale brewed with blackberries
Reaper’s Blush hot sauce
Focaccia with peaches and prosciutto
