Producing beyond expectations: Cherry Hill Farm attracts long lines at Clemmons Farmers Market seeking homegrown fruit and vegetable favorites

Published 12:10 am Thursday, July 24, 2025

By Jim Buice

For the Clemmons Courier

What started out as more of a garden than a farm has grown far beyond the expectations for Justin and Holly Miller, the owners of Cherry Hill Farm.

In fact, Holly likes to tell the story of the family business going from a 10’ X 10’ tent on the side of the road that led to selling commercially to big-box stores and delivering tractor-trailer loads of produce before finally settling into a highly successful retail operation.

Cherry Hill Farm has a tent — actually two tents — at the Clemmons Farmers Market in the parking lot of the Jerry Long Family YMCA each Saturday morning with a fresh variety of what they’ve grown and swarms of customers stopping by to take home their favorites.

Holly can’t believe what has happened as the owners of a fifth-generation family farm and first-generation produce farmers.

“We bought part of the family farm about 10 years ago,” she said. “I grew up in livestock and started having babies. I wanted them to grow up on a farm. So I started a little roadside stand on the farm in Mocksville. It was just more of a garden to start out with and just grew from there.

“We started growing just a little bit of this, that and the other. Strawberries were our biggest thing. That’s what kind of put us on the map. I didn’t know anything about what I was doing. I did not grow up in produce. My husband was working full-time off the farm, and then he worked with me at night.”

Moving forward to today, the produce stand is open six days a week on the farm, and the Millers go to the Mocksville market every week along with also making the short drive to Clemmons.

“We grow about 20 acres of produce with strawberries, pumpkins, blueberries, blackberries and everything in between,” Holly said. 

On a recent Saturday morning, the sweet corn was a big hit, selling out quickly. Then there were tomatoes and several types of beans along with the first pulling of cantaloupes.

Cherry Hill Farm has developed quite the following at the Clemmons market, which opens at 8:30 a.m. each Saturday running through September.

“The line starts between 8 and 8:15, and we usually don’t stop until at least 11,” Holly said.

So what’s the secret to the success?

“I think it’s because we have such a variety, and we’re very particular about our quality,” Holly said. “When we got started here, we were kind of overlooked so to speak. We just kind of built our market. It’s paid off so far.” 

And it’s not just about the produce. After all, it’s a family farm, and son Malachi, 13, was on hand to help his mom on this day. 

“He is in the band, and they’re going to Disney,” Holly said. “They’re playing in a parade down there, but they have to do fundraising to earn their way. I told him that he needs to learn how to work for what he wants, and I told him if he is working, he can put out a tip jar.”

A few weeks later, Eden, 12, who is also in the band, was there to assist his mom and be able to pay his way for the trip. The Millers also have a 4-year daughter, AnnaBeth.

Holly said that there are three pickers at Cherry Hill Farm and that the kids run the stand as well as her mother-in-law. And Justin, who worked full-time off the farm for the last 17 years before last May, came aboard when Holly said, “It just got to be too big for me to do by myself.”

The Millers live in Advance, and the 66-acre farm, which is like a second home, is 15 minutes down the road on Cherry Hill Road in southern Davie County.

“We’ve got farming in our blood,” she said. “We love it. I always wanted my kids to grow up on a farm. It teaches values that people who don’t grow up on a farm don’t understand. We appreciate the simple things in life.”

Looking back, Holly said she never saw this coming, pointing to several turning points around the days of COVID-19.

“Up until COVID, we had the little roadside stand, but somehow or another, we got into going into big-box stores, and we started sending a tractor-trailer load of hard squash to Walmart every week for several years,” she said.

That all changed early in 2020 when all trucking stopped with the arrival of the pandemic.

“All of the sudden, squash was no longer a priority, but toilet paper was,” Holly said with a laugh.

So the Millers had to pivot, but as Holly said, “It proved to be a blessing in disguise that because of the COVID thing, the wholesale was sold before we ever had it grown. It really helped us build up financially because when someone died unexpectedly in the family, we ended up buying the farm and if that had not happened, we would not have been able to buy it.”

Ironically, the Millers had built their actual store when COVID hit, and they felt like with the growth from the markets they frequent that customers would start coming to them.

“So when COVID hit is when we were first to open, and the first day we had cars lined up down the road waiting 30 to 45 minutes on a bucket of strawberries,” Holly said. “We could not pick fast enough for the amount of people that showed up on our first day. It was amazing. It was a God-thing for sure. And so we just built from there.”

The Millers admitted they were on opposite sides when considering how to proceed going forward with Holly preferring retail and Justin on the wholesale side. They considered trying to split it, but again COVID coming along when it did pushed them in the retail direction.

“And that’s where we’ve stayed, kind of cutting out the middle man,” she said. “We want to grow variety, and we want to grow for our community, we want people to come out to us. And I don’t want to let that go. When one door closes, another door opens.”

That leads to the historic farmhouse, where Justin grew up helping his dad raise beef cattle. It  has been in his family since 1854 and has been a fixer-upper project that will become their residence when it’s finished.

“We’re seeing some light at the end of the tunnel,” Holly said. “We want to keep it as original as possible and working on it as we’ve had time and money. We hope to be there within the next year. We sleep at home (in Advance), but we’re always there. Moving to the farmhouse will be so much easier to be right there at that back door.

“It’s all worked out for a reason. We enjoy what we do. Farming is farming no matter how you slice it when it comes to financially, but we love what we do, and we’re thankful we get to do it every day.”