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Samantha and Dominic Ruibal are a gardening dream team. While he focuses on growing vegetables in the garden outside their Shenandoah Shores home in Warren County, she pickles, preserves and processes the bounty.

Together, they sell Ruibal Family Farm products each Sunday at the Farm to Market on Main Farmer’s Market in Front Royal and operate a small farm stand inside their home. And, they recently began participating in a pair of programs to make fresh, healthy food more accessible for folks with lower incomes.

Dominic, 42, has poured a decade of experience as a vegetable gardener into the enterprise. After working at an organic blueberry farm in Oregon after high school, he did odd jobs on Fauquier County farms for awhile before starting a garden that turned into a side hustle, selling produce to restaurants.His interest in growing produce turned from hobby to “an obsession,” Dominic said, adding that he worked for about four years at a farm in The Plains before becoming head vegetable gardener at another, larger outfit where he grew food for local shops, farmers’ markets and members of a community supported agriculture (CSA) program.

“That was a really strenuous full-time job for me. I was working six days a week for much of the year,” he said, noting that he oversaw 70 outdoor beds, three hoop houses and a full-scale greenhouse. “When I left there, I decided I didn’t want to do it again unless I was doing it for us.”

A forklift operator at Rural King in Front Royal, Dominic uses his employee discount to support the garden, which currently has about 20 beds plus a hoop house with three additional beds.

The couple, who married in 2015, bought their property in 2018 partly because of the opportunity it offered for growing a large garden. That dream of a large garden came to fruition in 2024.

While Dominic worked professionally in the agriculture industry, Samantha, 37, taught herself to preserve produce.

“It became my new favorite hobby. I love to can things,” she said, noting she leaned into her experience as a detail-oriented event planner in the hotel industry, with a background in social media marketing and graphic design, to create the farm’s logo and overall clean presentation.

Samantha left that job during the pandemic in order to stay at home with their daughter, Annabella, who was 2 at the time. She opened and still operates a licensed home daycare center, Small Steps Home Daycare.

Annabella, now 8, loves to help all aspects of the operation. She enjoys picking snow peas to share with her brother, Eddie, 2, and the other children in the daycare as well as helping with the canning process and serving customers at the farmers’ market.

Samantha said she became interested in canning as the garden grew.

“We had so much to work with,” she said, standing in the small farm stand she operates inside the family home. Alongside fresh peas, spring greens and cold pickles, the stand includes jams and jellies, salsas and sauces, and a wide assortment of pickled options — from Brussels sprouts and corn to cauliflower and carrots.

“My kids will eat a whole jar of anything pickled in one sitting. So I make a ton of pickled stuff because it's vegetables and they love it,” said Samantha.

As Samantha’s canning expertise has grown, Dominic has geared the garden “more heavily towards stuff that she can process,” he said, adding that this summer he is ramping up production of tomatoes, cucumbers, and green beans.

“I do a ton of new recipes because I'm always looking for something my family would love,” said Samantha.

To put the farm’s peppers and herbs to good use, for instance, she created pear and fiery peach salsas. She also makes healthy versions of some convenience items. For example, she combines white rice with seasonings to create an easy to make dish without all of the salt and preservatives that are in mass produced packaged foods available at the grocery store.

The farm stand also carries pancake, hot cocoa, brown gravy, soup, cornbread, cookie and pudding mixes made with clean ingredients and no preservatives. Samantha makes all natural cleaning supplies, chili and taco seasonings, Thai chili sauce, lemon sage wine mustard, chimichurri, hummus and applesauce.

“I cannot make enough applesauce to feed my children,” she said with a laugh. “I wanted my kids and everyone else to have access to clean foods — things without all the preservatives, without all the pesticides, just something healthy and homemade that everyone can enjoy.”

The couple recently completed paperwork to be included in the Commonwealth’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides monthly benefits to help lower-income individuals and families.

“Especially in today’s climate, there are a ton of people who need assistance. We wanted to help those families have access to clean food,” said Samantha, noting that the couple served their first SNAP customers on Sunday.

Ruibal Family Farm also recently joined the Virginia Fresh Market Program, which allows SNAP recipients to get 50% off market products, effectively doubling their spending power. The farm will be reimbursed by the program.

“Everyone deserves access to good, clean food and we just wanted to try and help people have access,” Samantha said.

With long days of growing children and vegetables, life is busy, but fulfilling for the couple.

“If you’re going to dedicate your life to something, and destroy your body in the process, you might as well do it for yourself and your own family,” he said. “I’d rather be sore so that we could have this stuff at our stand and so that my daughter can come out here and pick peas in her own yard and learn how to grow stuff.”

Located at 3100 Shenandoah Shores Road, the farm stand is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. You can find their products at the Farm to Market on Main Sundays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. through October.

— Contact Laura Ruby at lruby@nvdaily.com