More Than Tomatoes: Meet Jimmy of Front 9 Farm
About the Author: Christina Hill
My journey with the market began in 2018, leading weekly cooking demonstrations. Since then, I’ve served as the Marketing & Communications Specialist, taught yoga at the market, and joined the Board of Directors. If you’ve been with us since the Countryside Farmers Market days, there’s a good chance you’ve read some of my work already. I’m thrilled to be in a position where I can continue to share my love for local food with you.
Recently, I spent 30 minutes talking with Jimmy at the Cuyahoga Valley Farmers Market. We talked about how Front 9 Farm came to be, the realities of farming, his passion for tomatoes, and the community that has grown around the market. What follows is a glimpse into that conversation. I hope you enjoy it.
There are two conversations happening at Jimmy’s booth this sunny Saturday morning. One is with me. The other is with just about everyone else.
A customer wants to know which tomatoes are best for salsa. Another asks what’s sweetest this week. Someone else wonders how to cook an unfamiliar vegetable. A fellow vendor stops by to trade okra for poblanos. Before Jimmy finishes answering one question, the next customer is stepping up with a smile, already knowing they’ll leave with not only great produce, but also good advice.
He apologizes for the interruptions. I tell him not to because this is the story.
If you want to understand Front 9 Farm, you don’t start in the greenhouse. You start right here, in the middle of the Cuyahoga Valley Farmers Market, where conversations flow as naturally as the people wandering from booth to booth with reusable bags filling a little heavier after every stop.
Watching Jimmy work, it’s hard to tell where customer service ends and genuine friendship begins. And I’m willing to bet he couldn’t either.
A Farm Born from a Bigger Idea
People often assume farms begin with a love of gardening. Front 9 Farm began with something much bigger.
Jimmy always knew he wanted to farm, but the vision truly took shape after he met his wife, Cassandra. While earning her master’s degree in biomedical engineering, Cassandra found herself thinking beyond the classroom. As Jimmy shared the story with me, he recalled one lecture that changed everything for her. While discussing the billions of dollars spent treating diseases like diabetes, a different thought crossed her mind:
How much of this could be prevented if people simply had better access to healthy food?
That question never really left her.
After graduating, Cassandra took a job with a greenhouse manufacturer, where she and Jimmy helped other people start farms of their own. Together, they eventually realized they didn’t just want to help others grow food—they wanted to build something of their own. They didn’t just want to grow vegetables. They wanted to help people eat differently.
“We wanted to start a business that gets people to eat healthier,” Jimmy told me. “The food tastes better when it’s fresher.”
It’s a simple sentence. But over the next half hour, I realized nearly everything Jimmy shared circled back to that same belief.
Learning Along the Way
Like many dreams, this one started small. Jimmy had the opportunity to purchase ten acres of what had once been a golf course alongside friends who bought the surrounding land. They started growing vegetables, raising chickens, and slowly testing whether farming could become more than a side project.
Eventually, Cassandra left her job. A year later, Jimmy followed. They’ve been farming full-time since 2017, but that doesn’t mean it came easily.
Jimmy laughed while remembering those first years.
“We’d stay up until two in the morning bunching sixty bunches of kale… then we’d take it to the farmers market and sell five.”
It was the kind of lesson no spreadsheet can teach. They knew how to grow food. Learning what customers actually wanted, how much to harvest, which markets made sense, and how to build sustainable systems took years. Like so many worthwhile things, the learning happened by doing.
The Art Behind the Tomato
By midsummer, tomatoes have taken over Jimmy’s booth. Large slicing tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes. Rows in shades of red, orange, yellow, and green. It’s enough to make anyone stop and wonder how one farm can produce so many. But according to Jimmy, the most impressive part isn’t sitting on the table. It’s back at the farm.
He enthusiastically described the process they use to grow tomatoes—a method known as “leaning and lowering.” Each tomato plant is carefully trained to grow as a single stem, with every extra growing tip, or “sucker,” meticulously removed. As the vine reaches the top of the greenhouse, it isn’t cut back. Instead, it’s gently lowered and shifted along its support line, allowing the plant to continue climbing while the older portion of the vine gradually stretches across the greenhouse floor. By the end of the season, a single tomato vine can reach forty to fifty feet long.
It’s a method that requires constant attention, but one Jimmy speaks about with obvious enthusiasm. The technique improves airflow through the plants, reduces disease, and creates a steadier harvest throughout the season instead of overwhelming peaks followed by slower weeks.
Most market-goers will never see those remarkable vines. They’ll simply bite into a tomato that’s exceptionally flavorful and wonder why it tastes different. The answer begins long before harvest—with countless small decisions, careful pruning, and a growing method refined through years of experience.
Listening to Jimmy explain leaning and lowering, it became clear that growing tomatoes isn’t just farming. It’s craftsmanship.
"This too shall pass"
Of everything Jimmy shared that morning, one answer stayed with me the longest. When I asked what keeps him going through the hardest days, he didn’t launch into productivity advice or talk about grit.
Instead, he smiled and said, “This too shall pass.”
He told me about a week when nearly everything seemed to break. Equipment failed. His truck broke down. The golf cart he depends on around the farm stopped working. Temperatures were hitting record highs. It was the kind of week that makes anyone question what they’re doing.
“I’m over this. I want to quit,” he admitted with a laugh. But then he paused.
“It always passes. Usually I’m good the next day. A good shower… and a little perspective.”
As someone who spends a lot of time practicing yoga, I couldn’t help but smile hearing that. Without ever calling it mindfulness, Jimmy was describing exactly that. Acceptance. Perspective. The quiet understanding that even difficult seasons eventually give way to easier ones.
Maybe that’s something farming and yoga have in common. Neither asks us to control every circumstance. Only how we respond to them.
Growing Community
As our conversation continued, I noticed something else. Jimmy rarely talked about himself. When I asked what surprised him most over the years, he didn’t mention accomplishments. He talked about people.
“The customers are just so good,” he said. “They buy what I need to sell.”
It’s a sentence that might not sound extraordinary at first. But the longer I thought about it, the more meaningful it became.
Trust works both ways. Customers trust Jimmy to grow exceptional food. Jimmy trusts his community to support the farm through good seasons, difficult seasons, rainy Saturdays, and everything in between.
That’s what makes a farmers market different from a grocery store. You’re not simply buying food. You’re becoming part of someone else’s story.
Why Saturday matters
Near the end of our conversation, I asked why the Cuyahoga Valley Farmers Market means so much to him. He didn’t hesitate.
“I think it’s the best market in Ohio.”
He talked about the setting in the heart of Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The loyal customers who show up rain or shine. The remarkable community of vendors. The feeling that everyone genuinely wants each other to succeed.
Before I could ask another question, another customer stepped up. They wanted to know which tomatoes to take home. Jimmy reached for his favorite.
“The pink ones,” he said with a grin. “They’re incredibly sweet, but they’ve got this nice savoriness to them.”
Another conversation began. Another customer walked away excited for dinner. And I realized that maybe Front 9 Farm isn’t really in the business of selling tomatoes. It’s in the business of helping people reconnect with where their food comes from and with the people who grow it.
If you’ve made it this far, I have a treat for you. Just in case you’re not yet convinced that Jimmy is capable of doing just about anything, please enjoy So Farm Fresh and Clean – A Market Farmer CSA Rap and his most recent acting debut in a John Deere Commercial, driving the very tractor he uses on a daily basis at his own farm. He looks like a total pro!
Visit Front 9 Farm at The Cuyahoga Valley Farmers Market
You’ll find Jimmy and Front 9 Farm every Saturday at the Cuyahoga Valley Farmers Market, where the tomatoes are colorful, the recipes are always flowing, and every visit feels like catching up with an old friend.
And if you really want to experience tomato season at its peak, don’t miss the Market’s Annual Tomato Tasting Festival on Saturday, August 22. It’s one of the year’s most anticipated events, featuring dozens of heirloom and specialty varieties—including many grown by Front 9 Farm. Whether you’re a lifelong tomato lover or simply curious about what makes locally grown tomatoes so special, it’s a delicious celebration of Ohio’s summer harvest and a perfect excuse to spend a Saturday morning supporting local in the heart of Cuyahoga Valley National Park.