Garver Farm owners to appeal zoning violation

On March 17, owners of Garver Family Farm Market will make their case that the market is a farm at the county’s monthly Board of Zoning Appeals meeting.

“We’re going to argue our case that we are a winery and that we are a farm market and that we are into agricultural education,” owner Michael Garver told Journal-News in November 2025. The hope is to keep the farm market’s agricultural zoning.

Garver said his farm market does meet agricultural standards because more than 50 percent of his gross sales are from agricultural products.

A 2002 Ohio Attorney General opinion stated farm markets carrying other goods or providing other services are exempt from township zoning regulations if 50 percent or more of gross income is from “produce raised on farms owned or operated by the market operator in a normal crop year.”

Butler County’s Rural Zoning Resolution, though, has language for roadside stands, defined as “temporary” structures used for sale of “only agricultural products produced on the premises.”

This resolution, effective from December 2022, applies to Lemon Twp. David Fehr, Butler County director of development, said the building at 6790 Hamilton Lebanon Road “went beyond” a roadside farm stand.

“We saw they had a deli counter, a commercial kitchen and coffee shop,” he said. “Our violation has to do with it going beyond what a typical farm stand or farm market might be.”

Fehr also told the Journal-News the zoning violation has “nothing to do” with the farming of the property or the crops.

“It strictly has to do with that building,” Fehr said.

Garver is a fourth-generation farmer — his daughter, Alayna, being the fifth. The farm itself is 100 years old this year, and the owners farm 1,250 acres of land in three counties. Most is leased from other land owners, though the Garver family owns and farms 178 acres.

The Garver family began the farm market in 1991 with a 650-square-foot open-air building. At the time, it sold exclusively unprocessed, agricultural products

Over the years, Garver has had to adapt to the changing landscape of farming to keep income steady.

“If you don’t make those changes, you’re going to fall to the wayside,” he said.

Because of this, the Garvers decide to expand, culminating in the farm market building at 6790 Hamilton Lebanon Road, which they started planning for in 2020.

Another aspect of the violation has to do with a lack of plans submitted for 6790 Hamilton-Lebanon Road prior to construction of the market building, which opened in May 2024.

Fehr’s office did receive plans April 18, 2022 for an address nearby, on Carson Road.

These plans, reviewed by Journal-News, are visually similar to the building at 6790 Hamilton Lebanon Road but were for a wedding venue, farm market, deli, bakery and winery at 7145 Carson Road.

Garver said he took these plans to the county in 2022, which received a zoning exemption.

“I wanted to be transparent and work with the county,” he said.

This original building was designed to be twice the size of the current building on Hamilton Lebanon Road, but the Carson Road plan was determined not to be viable due to its cost and size.

Garver said his contractor brought updated plans to the county for 6790 Hamilton Lebanon Road in March 2023.

A Butler County employee, who Garver said is no longer working with the county, gave the contractor the go ahead, according to Garver. But the county does not have a record of this updated plan being submitted in March 2023. Garver also does not have record of the plan being submitted.

Building and zoning plans for 6790 Hamilton Lebanon Road were submitted Oct. 7, 2025, according to Fehr.

The Garver family could also ask for a zoning variance, where an exception can be made due to a “hardship situation or something unusual with the property” or update the building to meet commercial zoning standards, which could include a costly fire suppression system.