ABOUT US

About District 6 Market

WHO WE ARE

District 6 Market is a family-owned greenhouse & outdoor living business located a short drive east of Terre Haute, IN, where top-quality plants and top-notch customer service take the highest priority. We take great pride in growing our plants in our own greenhouses. In doing so, we are able to offer amazing, high-quality plants you will not find anywhere else. Growing them from seed, root, or cutting, you can be sure that we have the expertise you are looking for when you have questions. Trust that we will have accurate, honest answers for your questions!

Our story

A few years out of college and having bought what is now our little farm, Austin & Kristen Witt were settling into the 9-5 lifestyle when the “agricultural itch” began to manifest itself. It started with early 1900’s hay equipment & a 40-year-old John Deere tractor. If you can fix and run an old rusty square baler, you can do anything! Then came the goats, chickens, donkeys, & cows. And of course a garden. A healthy, beautiful weed garden. Wait, there were some veggies in there somewhere! Nestled next to the farm pond, Austin even built a water tower to keep the weeds growing.


Cutting firewood was a hobby, and fixing the antique hay equipment was more of an art than a science. Construction projects were abound, and there weren’t enough hours in the day.  Over the course of 5 years or so, the “agricultural itch” had become more of a slow burn. Impatiently waiting every day to punch that clock so work on the farm could continue into the late evening hours. It’s amazing what you can do with a good headlamp! As our little farm developed, our dreams got bigger, and we were looking for a way to make the farm earn money so we could reach our goals quicker.

Sink or swim!

The year is 2015 and we make a leap to convert the hobby farm to an actual revenue-generating farm.

Lots & lots of blackberries. 5 acres worth. We planted close to 4,000 blackberry plants that year. And not just the plants. The full meal deal. Close to 4 miles of drip irrigation and trellising. Plastic weed barrier. A water treatment building for fertilizer injection. Fence posts, trellises, & high tensile wire galore. In hindsight, it was quite an undertaking. Especially for a couple kids who had no prior exposure to the blackberry industry, or growing anything at that scale. Our life definitely changed in 2015. The farm went from hobby to super-serious. Planting blackberry plants was one thing. Cultivating them was quite another. All the details around pruning, fertilizing, pest control, fungal disease, irrigation, and the FRUIT. How to harvest the fruit, when to harvest the fruit, what to do with the fruit after you harvest. Which fruit is good? Which fruit is bad? How bad is too bad? Which fruit is too small? Can it have some red on it? How about white? Do we need a Food Safety Audit & Certification? Seriously?? Aggghhhh!!!! It was an insane information overload. And LABOR. This was way above & beyond a couple high school kids helping on the weekends. We needed real labor, and lots of it. Now we have this thing called “Payroll.” People are depending on us for their paycheck. They are depending on our blackberries to make a living. Like whoa – this just got serious.


Blackberry life continued for a couple years before we decided “hey, let’s take on some more.” Let’s grow more produce. Growing produce outdoors is an age-old proposition. Time proven, it works. But it can be much more fun indoors! So we built our first greenhouse and filled it with tomato plants. 300 plants, 8 different varieties. And just like that, we were in love with growing in greenhouses. After some time experimenting with various vegetable and flower crops, we decided it was time to up the ante again. How about retail? Retail sounds fun. Running a cash register, meeting all kinds of people from all over the place. Having “business hours” where you have to be open when you say you’ll be open. Sounds great, right??? So, in 2020, we bought a little bean field just outside of Riley and planted our flag. No electricity, no water, no buildings, no greenhouses, no parking lot. Just a bean field. And COVID. Everybody else is shutting down, businesses closing doors, and here we are trying to open up. PERFECT! Because why would we want it to be easy?


We are now entering our 9th blackberry season and our 4th District 6 Market year, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds! Thank you for being a part of our journey!

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