Living the dream

The Bray family builds a farm hub to model their vision for a community that thrives together

Years of dreaming were finally coming true when the Bray family found their farm in Haskell County, Oklahoma. It was 21 ½ acres in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of forest land. There were more coyotes than people. It was perfect.

The solitude rejuvenated Jess Bray’s soul, but her true desire revolved around community. She and her husband, Jon, who met 23 years ago in Nashville, Tennessee, wanted land where they and their family—Abner, now 15; Ari, 9, and Aaron, 5—could work and play together. They also wanted to supply their community with healthy foods and products while supporting others in doing the same.

Today, the Cookson Hills Electric Cooperative members are living out their vision with Blue Mountain Farm.

The market

The Brays arrived in McCurtain, Oklahoma, in November 2022 with a U-Haul full of plants. They overwintered pepper plants and started growing lettuce and herbs in time to sell at pop-up markets in Stigler the following February.

As the Brays prepared for their first spring growing season on the farm, Jess began thinking about farmers markets. She asked on Facebook if anyone in the area was already working to organize one—or if anyone would be interested in helping her get one started.

Someone tagged Jaedyn Drewy, and, as Jess says, “The rest is history.” The pair launched Stigler Farmer’s Market in the spring of 2023 with Drewy taking administrative lead and Jess contributing her experience starting a farmers market in the suburbs of Nashville.

The Stigler Farmer’s Market is still going strong, but the Brays stepped away from selling at it to focus on a different, year-round market: their general store.

The store

Jess knew a sales gap would be coming with colder weather. So, by the close of the farmers market season in October 2023, the Brays were ready to open Blue Mountain Farm General Store.

“I wanted to set up some way for people to keep selling through the winter,” she says.

The family had learned quickly that while fresh produce garnered mixed success at market, customers loved end products. Jess’s line of self-care products, like tallow cream and goat milk soap, were a hit. To her surprise, so was kombucha.

When Jess started bringing a few jars of the fermented tea drink to the farmers market, they sold out in minutes. She had been home-brewing the fizzy, probiotic beverage for six years. She and Jon refined their process for selling at the store. Now, he brews up to 40 gallons per week.

“Our community just loves it,” Jess says. “We grow the herbs that go into the flavors, and my husband hand-makes the flavors. There’s just a lot of care that goes into what we’re doing here.”

The goods

Everything sold at Blue Mountain Farm General Store is locally made using “only the cleanest, best ingredients,” Jess says. That means no synthetic flavorings or dyes, no corn syrup, and emphasis on whole, natural ingredients and materials.

Some products are made by the Brays using ingredients grown on their farm or cultured at home, like the probiotic popsicles originated by Ari Bray, 9. To make his popsicles, Ari needed to start a new probiotic culture, which created the opportunity for his older brother, Abner, to add probiotics to the sodas he makes.

“So now all our beverages are functional, meaning they’re healthy, they’re serving a purpose for your body,” Jess says. “It’s not just soda for drinking soda. It’s going to give you probiotics, prebiotics, reducing inflammation in the body.”

The family also sells their chicken eggs and soon will have a dairy cow producing A2A2 milk, which contains the beta-casein protein some people find more easily digestible.

Other goods are sourced from local vendors, who adhere to the same quality standards.

“My guidelines are extremely stringent,” Jess says, whose commitment to healthy living was sparked by a heart scare in her 20s. “But I have some great vendors who cater to me. We’ve been able to co-create amazing products through it.”

The vendors

Cynthia Anderson, owner of Cyndie’s Kitchen and Custom Creations, is one of Blue Mountain Farm General Store’s dozen-plus vendors. She met Jess through the Stigler Farmer’s Market and reached out when Jess sent out a call for vendors.

“My experience has been amazing,” Anderson says. “Jess has been very communicative. She tells me what she’s looking for and helps me get the product out to the people who are looking for it.”

Anderson’s business started with sewing. She has made harvest aprons, which have pockets for gathering produce or eggs; cotton-fabric sandwich bags; and reusable shopping bags made from repurposed feed bags provided by the Brays. But she also wanted to bake.

After trying a few different products, Anderson and Jess, together, found a hit seller: chewy granola bars.

To meet the store’s standards, Anderson needed to find an alternative to peanut butter. Jess suggested almond or cashew butter, but Anderson had an epiphany: “We have all these pecans,” Anderson says, referring to the four pecan trees in her yard and many more in the community. “Why don’t we use what we have?”

Anderson’s husband, Ivan, and 14-year-old daughter, Lydia, help her gather, sort and shell pecans as well as package and label the bars, which come in flavors like blueberry pecan and pineapple coconut.

“I want to be able to provide healthy and local snacks to people who are looking for them,” says Anderson, mentioning people like her neighbor who is diabetic but says Anderson’s granola bars have little effect on her blood sugar.

It’s hard to find healthy snacks at an affordable price in today’s market, she adds.

“It’s not cheap to make stuff like this, but I do my best to keep costs down,” she says. “Jess helps me do that. She doesn’t charge a monthly fee to the vendors. It’s just a flat percentage, which is wonderful.”

The community

The store is helping the Bray family realize personal dreams. Jess loves seeing her boys engage in their own entrepreneurial pursuits. They get paid for the products they make, and Abner, an avid musician, has earned enough to purchase his own saxophone.

She also appreciates that they are growing up in a rural community.

“It’s been real special for my mama heart because I always wanted this,” Jess says.

Her overall goal, however, has always been to benefit more than just her own family.

Blue Mountain Farm General Store is the culmination of a vision for community Jess wrote in 2012. She filled pages with thoughts on how to build supply hubs, where community members would “begin from the roots again,” making and selling the products needed by the community.

Not only would products be fresher, the local economy would receive a boost. So too, she hoped, would quality of life for everyone.

“It was something I felt God placed in my heart,” she says.

Today, the store is an official “farm hub,” designated by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

The future

In addition to promoting local vendors, Jess has championed the producer-consumer connection through farm-to-fork dinners with farmers and ranchers who grew the food as special guests. This year, the Brays started an educational series “Together We Grow,” in which their vendors teach skills, like beekeeping with Asbury-Owens Honey Farms.

Jess has spent many hours developing the “Roots to Rise,” online course, which is currently in beta testing and set to release this fall by donation through their Blue Mountain Farm YouTube channel. The course is intended to help other small businesses find their way into their community’s supply chain and includes 33 videos edited with photo and video references of the Brays’ journey and how they approached the building of their business.

“I hope it helps a ton of people,” Jess says. “Either way, I feel like I’m doing what’s on my heart to do.”

She is excited to see what’s next for her family and community as others get involved and share ideas about how they can make goods and do business together on a local level.

“If you can cooperate with your community, we feel that’s the way to go,” Jess says.

What Is a Farm Hub?

Blue Mountain Farm General Store is the only registered farm hub in southeast Oklahoma. A farm hub is similar to a farmers market in that it sells products from local vendors, but goods are generally sold on consignment in a store setting with regular hours.

The hub is currently delivery only to make renovations for the licensed manufacturing of its beverages that are taking off swiftly.  The store will be opening for special events once it is complete will be making announcements for these events on Facebook. To shop online for delivery, visit the Facebook page
@bluemountainfarmok.

Find more farm hubs and farmers markets across the state at oklahomaagritourism.com.