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Kim Shaw’s [’88] winding professional journey from English major to farm-to-table entrepreneur.

By Sarah Achenbach ’88

Kim Shaw ’88 made peace with North Carolina’s weather years ago. Worrying about when it would rain, how much it would rain, and how hot it would be used to be a daily worry when tending to Arkansas Travelers and Early Girl tomatoes, and the dozens of other vegetables, herbs, fruits, and flowers she grows on the three-acre farm she and her husband Rohan Gibbs established within Charlotte’s city limits 14 years ago.

Kim Shaw ’88 and husband Rohan Gibbs

“When we’d put down rows of drip tape for irrigation, it was guaranteed to rain,” says Shaw of Small City Farm, their 24/7, year-round, farm-to-table enterprise that supplies several Charlotte restaurants with produce and lush bouquets, wreaths, or garlands she arranges. “We learned that there’s nothing you can do about the weather. You worry less when you prepare more.”

Being a farmer was never part of the plan. After graduating from Hollins in 1988 with a degree in English, Shaw took a position as editor and legislative liaison for the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office in Richmond before moving to Charlotte. After temping for a few years, Shaw, who likes to cook and organize events, took a job at a catering firm.

In 1998, Shaw launched her own wedding planning business, Moonlight & Magnolia, and penned The New Book of Wedding Etiquette: How to Combine the Best Traditions with Today’s Flair (Penguin Random House, 2001). “I loved being a wedding planner and think it’s fun to have things be perfect or have the illusion of being perfect,” she says. [Full disclosure: Shaw was my roommate during our senior year, and I can confirm that she probably is the only wedding planner in the history of the industry to have a passport- sized tattoo of the Doors’ Jim Morrison on her back.]

But running a start-up was far from perfect, and Moonlight & Magnolia folded in 2002. Shaw quickly shifted to a job as an event planner for a catering company, then director of catering for a private club in Charlotte. “I tend to fly by the seat of my pants,” Shaw explains with a deep laugh. “I like to worry about the details later and just forge ahead.”

Further proof: her college search. “Hollins was the only school I applied to. I had no back-up plan. My dad wanted me to go there,” says Shaw, who moved from her native England to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a young girl. “Even as much as I remember not wanting to go there, I remember my first day at Hollins, what I was wearing, and how it felt when we drove through the gates. I knew I was home.”

Having a rewarding career in a field light years away from her major is hardly unique. A 2013 New York Federal Reserve study found that only 27% of college graduates were employed in the field of their major, a percentage verified by Inside Higher Ed two years ago. Shaw doesn’t see it so much as a winding path from writing and editing to farming but a deliberate, new one. “I did so much stuff within my major early on,” she explains. Yes, Hollins’ liberal arts focus certainly helped plant the seeds for lifelong curiosity, but much of her agricultural career was forged by her personality. “I don’t love sitting around talking about doing things,” she says. “I want to do it. Then you can talk about it.”

When she married Gibbs, an Australian transplant, in 1997, they started gardening. For her new catering position, she and the club’s chef, Paul Verica — he now owns Charlotte’s renowned restaurant The Stanley, and just opened Orto, an Italian restaurant — also carved out a small kitchen garden at the club.

“The local farm-to-table movement had just started, and the garden wasn’t part of my job, but I made it part of it,” Shaw recalls. “It became my favorite part. There is something super magical about growing something and having a chef take it and create something incredible. I was learning everything — I was not a good grower at all [then]. We had a fair amount of failure.”

When the 2007 financial downturn eliminated her position, she briefly considered another catering director job, but decided to jump into farming: “A week before I was laid off, I had a conversation with Paul and asked him if we grew more food at our house, would he buy it?” His assurance was all she needed to take the leap.

Within a few months, Shaw was selling beets, kale, chard, and carrots at the Charlotte Regional Farmer’s Market. By 2010, her 20 raised beds in her yard couldn’t keep up with the demand, so she and Gibbs moved Small City Farm to its current seven acres, bought chickens, and started a CSA (community-supported agriculture) membership. With a USDA grant in 2017, they added a 30’x70′ hoop house for year-round growing.

“Every jump in farming is a blind landing,” Shaw says, her accent a charming muddle of English slang and Southern drawl. “As hard as you think farming will be, you end up wishing it was that easy.”

Her days start at 5:30 a.m., often in pajamas and farm boots. During the week, Shaw is the only one tending the crops, picking produce, arranging flowers, handling orders for the food wholesaler, and making deliveries. Gibbs, who works full time as vice president of operations at Hope Haven, a residential facility for those recovering from substance-use disorders, drives the tractor on weekends and handles the mechanical work.

Each January, they start over 3,000 seedlings, and everything requires advance planning. “In September, we’re thinking about December,” Shaw adds. “Last spring, we thought Orto would be opened, so we planted more Roma tomatoes than usual, but because of the pandemic, he couldn’t open it. Even for chefs, it’s hard to make them understand that each tomato plant yields 10 pounds.”

Life took another turn in 2017. While Shaw was pulling a cooler out of her pickup truck for a delivery, a hinge caught her left breast nipple, causing it to bleed. She didn’t give it much thought — injuries are common in farm work. After visits to several doctors and a diagnostic mammogram, a biopsy revealed stage three breast cancer.

Her diagnosis on October 1, 2019, is not lost on Shaw, who is a poet and was editor of Cargoes, then Hollins’ only literary magazine. “How symbolic to be diagnosed on the first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month,” she says. She began chemotherapy soon after, followed by a lumpectomy and radiation (and five blood transfusions).

Shaw found solace in the rinse-and-repeat rhythms of sowing, weeding, watering, and harvesting. “I used to get mad at her, but that’s how she kept herself going,” Gibbs explains. Her friend Verica concurs: “Kim is too feisty, and she wasn’t going to let something like cancer keep her down.”

Her local community and Hollins friends rallied around her. “My Hollins friends were awesome,” says Shaw, who is now cancer free. “I don’t know how other people’s friendships are at other colleges, or if it is only Hollins. I always thought we’d all still know each other this far down the road, but it’s kind of amazing that it came true.” Sewing also bolstered her spirits. At Hollins, the self-taught Shaw sewed custom dresses for students.

Every February, Shaw thinks about quitting. “I always say that I am not doing this anymore,” she admits. “Farming is too hard for too little money. But going back to working in an office, I really can’t see it.”

She’d miss how her hollyhocks take her breath away or shaking dirt off freshly harvested rainbow carrots. Or how her cats and dogs tail her through crop rows while she pulls onions or picks pomegranates. But mostly Shaw would miss the ways Small City Farm brings her closer to the people. “It’s super rewarding to go to a restaurant and know it’s my stuff,” she reflects. “Growing food for people is a very personal thing — farming is a way to be connected with people.”

Learn more at smallcityfarm.com

Follow Small City Farm on Facebook #smallcityfarmer and on Instagram @smallcityfarmer

Sarah Achenbach ’88 is a freelance writer living in Baltimore.