“I was an analyst for 15 years in corporate finance and building that analyst’s brain allowed me to just think about food in a little bit of a deeper way,” said Aashay Savla, owner-operator of Aash Farms. “As I explored my next move, which was to be in the food space, I explored the deepest way to think food. I thought about a restaurant dining experience or a family’s Community Supported Agriculture box and it was to think about where it was grown, how was it grown. Ultimately, I landed on farming as my next step.”
In 2020, Savla took the leap from a career in corporate finance in Chicago to an incubator farm in King County. His only previous food systems experience was sporadically volunteering on farms and studying alternative farming methods like aquaponics – but his passion for food more than made up for the lack of experience. Four seasons later, Aash Farms is a successful vegetable and herb farm in the Sammamish Valley, aggregation service and a licensed food processor of his own grown produce turned into a line of dried herbs.
“The most present moments that I’ve ever experienced were at the dinner table where we were really forced to put any technology away and engage in the meal,” said Savla. “Not to mention, the meals were so playful in the way that Indians eat with their hands. You don’t even want to touch your phone since your hands are covered in sauce or your saliva or food in some way. It really allowed me to be present with food, with my family, with that moment.
“I had a huge interest and passion in eating and food in general and it was my way back into being present, a concept that has become lost on our society. Whether it’s a full French five course meal or a hot sauce, I have always been present in the experience of eating something delicious.”
Savla started Aash Farms at Viva Farms’ Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture. After completing the program, Aash Farms moved into the incubator program and started to grow. Despite the challenges to starting a new farm business in King County, he was determined to make it work.
“Nothing will crush the soul of a community faster than if their favorite area local restaurant or family member’s restaurant is taken away from them. I think certainty is one of those words that I really want to be a part of communities’ and farmers’ lives because the amount of uncertainty in today’s fast-growing cities really hits the communities the hardest, the small businesses the hardest, and farmers the hardest being both of those,” said Savla. “King County was a choice where I saw restaurants thriving, I saw communities thriving and being able to set the direction for some of their growth. It’s also an area that is rural enough that I can enjoy the peace and beauty of farming and nature. It was also extremely important to be close to a fast-growing city where I could support gentrifying communities through food.”
Savla grows microgreens, vegetables, and herbs using no-till, regenerative practices. “Most of my job is to build life into the soil and the bonus of that is great food,” he explained. He is passionate about the sustainability aspect of growing and the quality of his produce.
“When people say regenerative farming or no-till, why is that better? Why would somebody buy a head of lettuce for $4 or $5 and how does that create certainty in farmers and make the value and hard work of no-till farming real?” said Savla. “Diving into a restaurant’s cooler, putting one conventional lettuce in that cooler for three weeks and putting another one right next to it that’s no-till. Or having chefs taste the flavor of it and seeing the longevity in those commercial coolers of a no-till versus the tilled lettuce. No-till is a clear winner in flavor, quality, nutrient density and shelf life and if you care about the earth, it’s the most legit regenerative farming technique I’ve found. I love showing people why this produce is better.”
“I am on my fourth year here and have continued to innovate the style in which I farm from a biology standpoint and the connection to nature,” said Savla. “I’ve been innovating on the business side as well by building a community and simultaneously creating new ways to sell produce. Also, with my aggregation program continuing to disrupt and innovate for folks on the sell side coming to me to buy their produce. I’m really using my analyst and finance skills on that last part.”
In addition to growing produce, Aash Farms aggregates produce from a group of small farmers for wholesale to restaurants and food access organizations.
By negotiating with produce buyers for many farmers at once, Savla is able to give farmers a guaranteed market for some products ahead of time, allowing them to plan plantings and harvests to maximize sales. Small farmers often cannot fulfill large orders on their own, so by aggregating produce from multiple farms, farmers can focus more on growing rather than direct-to-consumer selling.
“I saw that Aash Farms as a microgreen farm and an outdoor vegetable farm could not compete against the larger distributors. The word replaceable came up a lot,” said Savla. “I turned 38 this week. Being realistic to myself, when farming at this pace eventually becomes back breaking, literally, Aash Farms is not going to outlive me. I really feel that small produce farmers need to band together if we have any chance of surviving against a corporate behemoth, you know, in the way of selling to reliable buyers like food access programs, restaurants and even CSA programs. I knew that was necessary for somebody to step up.
“With my aggregation program, I’m hitting on that point of certainty. I’m doing my best to give farmers certainty on what they should be growing, how much of that thing they should be growing and assuring them there’s going to be a market for those products. I’m slowly creating a high efficiency model, something foreign to most of the small farm world. When farmers pull out something out of the ground, they can plant something right that same day as opposed to pulling out like one-fifth of a bed and then having to wait four more weeks for customers to order that item,” said Savla of the aggregation program.
“We can run a much better program that’s using the land at a much more efficient rate, allowing for more value from the land, more value to the farmer, and more consistent value to the end buyers. It’s a program that’s so intentionally built that hopefully it outlives us and continues providing so much value to the farmers in in the way of certainty. I think that it’s a win for all of us, farmers and buyers.”
For the aggregation program, Savla prioritizes farmers who are not already connected to buyers. By partnering with farmers who find developing sales relationships more difficult, Savla hopes to be able to see more underrepresented small farmers succeed.
“I really opened my eyes to a lot of the underserved farmers that don’t have a college degree or are maybe recently settled into this country. Maybe they don’t speak the best English, or know how to navigate conversations with buyers,” said Savla.
This year, in addition to continuing to manage Aash Farms and the aggregation program, Savla is launching a line of dried seasonings grown on the farm and his own spin on an Indian spice blend which is eaten after meals for digestion and fresh breath, called Naash.
However, Savla does not see much more expansion in the future. He hopes to be able to continue to maintain the work he has begun and continue to support his community.
“As long as people are here to buy my produce, I see my farming, dried spices, and aggregation program sort of continuing in the way of its intention and creating a sustainable business that will hopefully outlive me,” said Savla.
“I have so much energy. I have so much bandwidth because I love what I’m doing so much that I can manage it. A lot of people ask how I do it all. I’m full of so much passion and purpose right now that it creates more bandwidth,” said Savla. “It took me 50 percent of my effort to get into some of the best finance firms in the world. I got into those places with just 50 percent of my effort. Now I’m doing something that I love with 100 percent.”
Try Aash Farms produce at the Delridge Farmers Market this summer.
To learn more about Aash Farms and upcoming farm-to-table events, follow @aashfarms on Instagram.
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