When Heather Spinelli was growing up in Center Moriches, local farms were more than just places to buy fresh produce. During lean times, her family relied on a nearby egg farm for inexpensive food — a memory that stayed with her long after the farm disappeared.

Years later, that memory helped inspire FarmScout, an app Ms. Spineli created with her 12-year-old son, Luca, to make it easier for people to find local farms, farm stands, farmers markets, vineyards and agricultural events all in one place.

“I’ll never forget that service that the small farms did for us,” Ms. Spinelli said. “When I was little, we were able to survive because of them.”

The idea of FarmScout came to Ms. Spinelli last summer while she as working and trying to figure out where she could buy fresh fruits and vegetables locally. With only a short lunch break, she didn’t have time to drive around to different farm stands to see what they had in stock.

She mentioned the idea to Luca, who was 11 at the time and had already spent years learning how to code and create games. What started as a simple conversation between mother and son, turned into a working prototype over last school year’s Christmas break.

Luca spent about two months building the prototype, using his coding skills and ChatGPT to help him work through the process. He eventually came up with the name FarmScout, turning his mother’s idea into something that had the potential to develop.

The app features farms nationwide, as farm owners are able to list what their farm sells. For instance, you can search any local farm on the North Fork or in Texas or in Nebraska, and find blueberries, tomatoes, live music, trivia and other upcoming events, all in one place. The app lists distilleries, oyster farms, u-picks and plenty of other options.

“Farmers go in, they find their farm listing and they claim it,” Ms. Spinelli said. They can update it all for free. There are some farmers who don’t have time and don’t want to claim their listing, so I’ve built a way for them to just text me, and I update it for them.”

Luca’s background in coding and creating games has become a hobby. He runs four YouTube channels under his own media and game development brand called Mega Flame Studios with 867 subscribers. The Mega Flames, Peaceful Puzzles, Historic Timelapse’s and MegaHOCKEY: The Podcast are the other four channels he owns, in addition to the FarmScout channel.

Scrap Brawl, a web-game he created is his biggest hit thus far. It gives users the option to play either on desktop or on mobile, reaching as many users as possible. Users choose a paper skin, either plain paper, notebook or cardboard that the cube character will be dressed in, and then the character fights either other users or bots with the goal to survive. It has thousands of combined plays across 15 web platforms since it debuted on July 16.

Luca has also created games on Roblox like Blinding Lights Racing and Block Tycoon. These games have hundreds of plays — Blinding Lights Racing was republished a few weeks ago. Luca has also created an obby game, a donation game and a chess game.

“This is kind of just a hobby right now,” Luca said. “I went from doing Scratch and doing Roblox to doing this. I liked how I was designing [FarmScout] and how when I was building the prototype, the interface worked with all the farms. I like that users were able to search for anything and any farm. I like all the search capabilities, and I like that there are events on there now, so it scales it a lot.”

Once the Cutchogue residents met with a developer, they were able to turn this idea into reality.

The app initially launched a beta version before Memorial Day and received approximately 200 downloads during its first month. After July 4, the mother-son duo launched the updated nationwide version — total downloads are now approaching 1,500. According to Ms. Spinelli, the app includes more than 11,000 farm and farm-related listings across the country, but only available on IOS — the Android version is in development due to excessive requests from Android users.

FarmScout is a “discovery guide,” Ms. Spinelli said. It does not charge farmers sales commissions, booking fees, or listing-management fees.

“One point that is expescially important to me is why the customer subscription matters,” Ms. Spinelli said. “FarmScout annual is $14.99 per year — less than $1.25 per month. That small contribution helps cover technology, data work, maintenance, and daily operation required to keep FarmScout running. Subscription support will also help fund the Android version while allowing standard listings and management tools to remain free for farmers.”

The goal of FarmScout is to help farmers reach customers, not become another bill for them, Ms. Spinelli added.

“The more customers who use FarmScout, the more valuable those free listings become: farmers gain visibility, customers discover their products and events, and people connect with the farms directly,” she added.

To gain maximum outreach, Ms. Spinelli has been driving out to vineyards and farm stands, asking them to display FarmScout download flyers.

But behind FarmScout’s growth is a partnership that begun much closer to home. Luca took an interest in his mother’s idea and made it something tangible, all while Ms. Spinelli had a front-row seat.

“He really takes ownership of everything and he’s so thorough,” Ms. Spinelli said. “When he really gets into something, he finishes it and he wants to do it well and he wants to learn. It just makes me so proud to be his mom.”

The post North Fork mother-son duo launch app to put local farms at users’ fingertips appeared first on The Suffolk Times.

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