HADLEY — As a child in Mexico, Lesvia Perez accompanied her Guatemalan-born mother on trips back to her native land, where together they sold corn and other Mexican produce at market.
It was a hard life that meant Perez missed out on education, spending only four months in classrooms during her formative years before leaving Mexico for the United States at 18.
Twenty years later, after achieving U.S. citizenship and raising two sons, now 19 and 14, with her husband Baldomero, himself an immigrant from Guatemala, Perez is putting her lifelong experience in farm work into overseeing a recently opened farm store on one of Hadley’s busiest side roads, with support from her longtime employer, local farmer Walter Czajkowski.
“Wally asked me if I wanted to try a (farm)stand,” Perez said one recent morning as she was setting up for the day a little before 9 a.m. “He told me that if it’s working, you can keep doing it, and if its not working you can come back to the farm.”
The Divine Vine, or La Vina Divine in her native Spanish, began life in May at 10 Rocky Hill Road, a long-dormant site that once included a similar farm store and adjacent ice cream parlor. Perez is open every weekday from around 9 a.m. until at least 4:30 p.m.
Inside the vacant garage space, Perez fills several tables with a variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables, some grown at Plainville by her husband, including zucchini and radishes, tomatoes from a hothouse and other items purchased from either Plainville or other area farms, like the native strawberries.
Outside the building, several flowers grown in a local greenhouse are for sale, while other crops, including sunflowers, cabbage, broccoli and eggplant, grow in nearby fields. The number of products will get larger as the spring and summer progress.
Perez, who lives in Turners Falls, has had a long apprenticeship at area farms doing a variety of tasks that began when she met up with a cousin in South Deerfield, who brought her to Massachusetts from Texas, where she first lived after leaving Mexico.
Her first foray as an adult into selling produce directly to consumers is an outgrowth of what she has done in the more than a dozen years doing working for Czajkowski. There, she has taken and filled wholesale orders, done shipping and driven trucks, handled receipts and other accounting work, and helped out in other ways, such as making sure farmworkers who only speak Spanish can understand their instructions.
“This is better for me since I don’t want to be in the fields,” Perez said, observing that she is unlike her husband. “My husband likes to continue to do farm work.”
The wide selection of produce being sold began with asparagus of the season and is continuing with squash, zucchini, bunch beets, lettuce, cauliflower, garlic scape, Yukon potatoes, basil, red onions, cucumbers and rhubarb. “We will bring whatever we have,” Perez said.
Czajkowski said Perez is incredibly capable and has confidence that she will make a go of it in running the farmstore, leasing the space from property owner Shannon Rice-Nichols.
“She’s ready for the next step in her career,” Czajkowski said. “She’s always wanted to do retail.”
He said as people discover the business they will appreciate her knowledge. She also brings advantages, such as being able to converse with customers in both Spanish and English, and can discuss what they may need for preparing Mexican and Latin American cuisine.
Perez said the store takes its name from the text of Psalm 107, verses 37 and 38 in the Bible, which speaks to sowing fields and a fruitful harvest. She hopes that will be case for her.
“We’ll have to see how it will be,” Perez said. “I’m just learning, I’m just starting out, but I do love this space.”
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.