Red Hen Takes Flight
A new app aims to reconnect local farmers and ranchers with consumers, recreating the old market house on mobile phones
After struggling to sell their pasture-raised pork, Virginia farmers Eric Canfield and Lauren Lovejoy launched Red Hen, a mobile app that helps small farms sell directly to local consumers without the hassle of markets or middlemen. Since launching nationwide in April 2025, Red Hen has onboarded over 1,000 farms across all 50 states and is already helping rebuild the broken link between local food producers and the communities they serve.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In late 2024, Eric Canfield was tired. He and his wife, Lauren Lovejoy, had spent years building Blue Horn Farm in the rolling hills of Newport, Virginia, where they raised rare heritage pigs on pasture and grew their own food—but getting their product into the hands of customers? That was another story.
“The market is hard for us to break into,” Eric said in a local interview this spring. “It’s word of mouth. It’s me telling you, ‘Hey, I have really good grass-fed pork, do you want to pick some up?’”
One afternoon, after driving two hours just to meet someone halfway to buy beef, they looked at each other and asked: “Wouldn’t it be great if there was an app for this?” So they built one.
That app is Red Hen, a mobile platform designed to help small farms like theirs sell directly to consumers. Launched nationwide in April 2025, Red Hen already has farmers signed up in all 50 states, over 5,000 consumer downloads, and a simple promise: local food, available for pick-up or delivery, with the tap of a button.
Pecking at the Problem
America’s small family farms are disappearing. An estimated 2,000 acres of farmland are lost every day to closures or consolidation. Many farmers struggle to compete with large distributors, who dominate grocery store shelves and claim the lion’s share of each food dollar. According to the National Farmers’ Union, farmers and ranchers receive only 15.9 cents of every dollar that consumers spend on food, whether at home or away from home.
The traditional options for small-scale farmers—farmers markets, CSAs, local drop-offs—are time-intensive and unpredictable. For those raising animals or tending produce seven days a week, adding part-time marketing, ecommerce, and logistics can be overwhelming. Red Hen cuts through that chaos by offering a digital farmers' market where farmers set their own prices, list their own products, and connect directly with local buyers—all without needing a tech background or a marketing plan.
Red Hen operates much like any other ecommerce platform, but instead of selling a vintage item on eBay or a homemade handicraft on Etsy, farmers list what their farm produces. When consumers open the app, they can browse local farms on a map, search by product, or look up producers by name. Orders can be placed for pickup, local delivery, or—coming soon—nationwide shipping.
For farmers, the appeal is clear:
No upfront fees: Red Hen is free to join and list products.
Fair pay: Instead of middlemen, farmers keep up to 95 cents of every dollar.
Simple setup: A web portal guides producers through creating a profile, uploading photos, and adding inventory.
Red Hen also manages the back-end: secure payments, order notifications, and customer communication. For tech-savvy farmers, onboarding takes about 15 minutes. However, “most farmers don’t have time to build online storefronts, manage payments, or market themselves,” according to Burton. “We’re solving that by building a platform that does that for them so they can focus on what they do best: growing healthy, nutrient-dense food.”
Laying a Foundation
To get Red Hen off the ground, Lovejoy and Canfield didn’t turn to Silicon Valley, a venture capital firm, or investment bank. Instead, they raised money through a community loan campaign on Honeycomb Credit. More than $56,000 was raised from supporters across the country—enough to complete development and launch the app on both iOS and Android in April.
They knew there was demand and they just needed to build the tool. And they were right. More than 300 farms signed up before launch. Today, Red Hen has over 1,000 producers on the platform, with about 250 actively selling products and hundreds more onboarding each week.
One of those early adopters is Mystic Hills Farmstead, a small family ranch in Routt County, Colorado. They raise grass-fed beef and lamb and were among the first in their region to test Red Hen. “It’s just a little different for us, and we’re just trying it out,” said Mikinzie Taylor, who runs the ranch with her husband. “We just wanted to see what would happen if I signed up for it, and if anyone would be using it in the area.”
In Vermont, Hubbard Farm is now using Red Hen to connect with customers who want pasture-raised chicken, pork, and beef. In Virginia, Verdant Acres offers a variety of products, including seasonal vegetables, lamb sausage, and honey. And of course, Blue Horn Farm—Eric and Lauren’s own operation—is now taking orders for pork through the app.
And the team behind Red Hen, well, they’re just getting started. Nationwide shipping is expected to roll out by the end of summer, which is just a few weeks away, meaning a customer in Boston will soon be able to order bison meat from Nebraska, or Florida oranges shipped fresh from a small citrus farm. And while 5,000 downloads is just the beginning, the Red Hen team is confident that a larger wave is on the horizon. Rising consumer interest in local, ethical, and regenerative food is making small-farm shopping more than just a niche.
Red Hen is helping to close the gap between producers and consumers by recentering food systems around relationships, not supply chains. And it makes it possible for the next generation of small farmers to do what they love—without going broke in the process.
“My dream is that when you go into the app, no matter where you are in the United States, you can find some small special farmer close to you,” Lovejoy said.
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