Our History

When Off The Muck Market founder Carl Chappell started working on a Canastota farm the summer after he graduated from high school, there could have been no way of knowing that he’d end up just down the road from where he started — in the best way possible.

Farming and agriculture are deeply established within Carl’s family line. On both of his parents’ sides, he is a sixth-generation farmer. His father grew up on a homestead about 20 miles west of Syracuse, growing vegetables and raising animals to feed a family of 10. His mother grew up on a multi-generational dairy farm near Cato, NY, waking up early each morning to milk the cows by hand and do chores before heading to school.

“Agriculture was in my blood,” as Carl would come to recall. “I felt a deep connection to the land, a pull to work in agriculture.”

So when Carl took the job on the farm during high school with his future father-in-law, Joe, the long hours and manual labor were both familiar and welcoming. 

The job opportunity came from Carl’s now-wife and Joe’s daughter, Andrea. The two met when they were both attending Canastota High School, and what struck Andrea most about Carl was how interested he was in their family’s muck farm.

So, as Carl searched for a job, Andrea suggested that he work with Joe.

Ever the entrepreneur, Carl had just one caveat for working on the farm. He asked Joe for some land so that he and Andrea could grow their own vegetables to help them pay for college.

Joe and Carl struck a deal, with Joe teaching and advising and Carl and Andrea doing the work of growing, tending, and harvesting.

This was the spark that ignited Carl’s passion for agriculture, and it also provided him with the vast knowledge of farming that he holds today.

Learning and Growing

Working on Joe’s farm was Carl’s seasonal job for all of his four years at SUNY Oswego: Summers were spent out in the fields and winters were for working in the warehouse, packing produce. 

Andrea remembers Carl coming home on the weekends to work long days with Joe and having to rush back to college late on Sunday nights or early Monday mornings.

“He has such a tenacity about him that I have not seen in anyone I know,” said Andrea.

At the same time, the small garden that the couple started had grown to fill several acres. They began selling at small farmers’ markets, first in Canastota and then in Oneida, and eventually selling into the CNY Regional Market for four months out of the year. 

Carl looks back on this as the time that he and Andrea learned plenty of lessons about how to accommodate buyers’ wants and needs as a farmer. It was also when the name “Off The Muck Market'' was born, based on the type of highly fertile soil that was common to Joe’s farm, as is the case for many farmers in Upstate New York. 

Pockets of muck soil dot upstate New York, from Elba, NY in the western part of the state, Oswego and Canastota in CNY, and Orange County, NY, which has the largest concentration of muck soil in the world.

In 2009, Carl graduated from college with a degree in finance. He had built up a small business during his time at Oswego, but decided to go back to Joe’s farm to continue his work there.

He would eventually leave the farm to pursue this small business, but still kept the plot of land with Andrea. At that point, it had grown to 10 acres, and they were selling everything from peppers to tomatoes and sweet corn to lettuces.

With just the two of them, taking care of the garden grew into a large commitment. Still, Carl was determined to keep pushing them out of their comfort zones.

Preparation for the CNY Regional Market in Syracuse every Saturday started at noon on Fridays when Carl would begin picking vegetables. Andrea, a substitute teacher at this point, would get home in the afternoon and immediately start washing and packing the produce. They would finish up by midnight and get to the Market at around 5 a.m. to scout out a space on the B-Line (the best area at the market), which they only got if another farmer didn’t show up.

“We would pick all this stuff and not know if we had a place to sell it,” said Carl.

However, the CNY Regional Market became more than just a way to support their income when Carl proposed to Andrea after seven years together. Now, they would use the money to pay for their wedding.

“It was awfully crazy but extremely rewarding,” said Andrea.

She remembers that, because of their hard work, they were able to have everything they wanted at their wedding. It was a beautiful way to celebrate how hard they had worked together because if they hadn’t gone through the stressful process of preparing for the CNY Regional Market each week, it wouldn’t have been possible.

After the wedding, Carl decided to take a hiatus from farming. For about one year, he focused full-time on his small business. 

It didn’t take long before he was ready to go back.

New Beginnings

Carl and Andrea set up a farm stand in Canastota, but they weren’t able to do as much of the growing as they had before. Instead, they sold produce from Joe’s farm, the Amish and Mennonite communities in the area, and other local growers that they met over the years at the Regional Market.

The farm stand season lasted for five to six months of the year (from May to October) for a total of three years. Each season, the stand became more and more popular, and Carl knew that he was onto something. 

However, as with many successful businesses, it didn’t take long for competition to start popping up in the area. The land that the farm stand sat on in Canastota was eventually sold to another business, providing Carl and Andrea the opportunity to pursue new ventures.

With the closing of the farm stand, Carl decided to close his side business as well and finally go get a "real job". He worked for three and a half years in a tech startup in Syracuse as an early employee and was able to be on the front line of its scaling efforts. It was here that he saw first-hand the power of a subscription-based service.

As Carl continued working full-time at the tech company, he started formulating a way to combine his love of agriculture with the power and scalability of tech and a subscription-based model into a local, farm-to-table grocery-delivery service.

Off The Muck: Open For Business

Off The Muck Market was reborn in February 2018, with the first deliveries in June 2018. Carl was buying produce from local farmers and had one part-time employee to help pack the boxes in the driveway at his home and then assist with deliveries.

He decided to shut down the operation for the winter but soon was drawn back to Off The Muck Market, determined to turn it into a full-time operation. Deliveries started back up in April 2019, now with two employees. Carl was able to get stories with local news outlets to try to get the word out about the business, and orders doubled seemingly overnight.

Off The Muck moved into a dedicated space in North Syracuse in the spring of 2019, but the business truly took off in March 2020. Orders grew exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic as people increasingly relied on delivery services to bring them their groceries.

Back at home, Carl and Andrea had just welcomed their daughter, Ivy, into their family. As the couple navigated being new parents alongside a global pandemic, it was up to Carl to increase his hiring efforts and decide where to move the business in order to accommodate the orders coming in.

It was at this time that Off The Muck moved to its current location in Canastota, back to Carl and Andrea’s hometown. 

“He sacrificed a lot to be able to provide so many people with comfort and food during such a scary time,” said Andrea. “Watching it evolve over the last several years has been completely mind-blowing, but it’s not surprising, because if it were to happen to anyone, it would be Carl.”

The business continues to grow steadily, and we are thrilled to be working with more local vendors and farmers each year.

Off The Muck Market was founded on the belief that everyone should have convenient access to fresh, local produce without having to pay high prices. As we continue to grow, our commitment to you remains the same: fresh, local, delivered.