McQuilkin 'swapped frocks for farms'

From the fashion streets of London to the back of a farming truck in Southern Maryland, Susan McQuilkin has spent much of her life advocating for agriculture.

But after 20 years with the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission, McQuilkin retired last week.

The now former marketing executive for SMADC, a division of the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland, started with the company in 2004. But before she supported farmers in Southern Maryland, McQuilkin lived in the United Kingdom and worked in fashion design, manufacturing and promotion.

After receiving a textile design diploma from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, she eventually became the women’s wear marketing executive for the International Wool Secretariat, which was founded to promote the sale of wool on an international scale. Unknowingly, this was only the beginning of McQuilkin’s path to the agriculture industry.

McQuilkin later moved to the United States, married and took a break from working. She did not start her long journey with SMADC until her friend, the executive director of the company at the time, asked if McQuilkin would put her marketing skills back to work.

“I swapped frocks for farms,” the Mechanicsville resident said.

SMADC was formed to administer the Tobacco Buyout in Southern Maryland that started in 2000 to support farmers finding different and feasible types of agriculture in the region as they transitioned away from growing tobacco.

McQuilkin started part-time on April 22, 2004, a date she remembers so well because it was her birthday.

“It was my birthday and I spent it in the back of a truck,” she said. “A farm truck of a very, very wonderful farmer, Brett Grohsgal of Even’ Star Farm, and he was delivering heirloom tomatoes.”

Grohsgal was delivering these tomatoes to his high-end restaurant clients in Washington, D.C.

“My director at the time said, ‘Well there’s no better way to get started than to see how we sell our product and the work that goes into producing all the things that we take for granted,’” McQuilkin said.

She said she did not know much about agriculture before she started the position, but her first day may have been exactly what she needed to jump in.

“It was a very humbling and formative experience, but it was going to give me a taste of what it takes to be a farmer,” she said.

McQuilkin said she has spent the next 20 years trying to make it easier for local farmers to expand their businesses while also promoting these agriculture enterprises to the public. Farmers should not have to spend hours researching how to start something new, she said. They should be in their fields doing what they love.

“Being able to help people in that way has been enormously satisfying to me,” she said.

Shelby Watson-Hampton, the current director of SMADC, said McQuilkin’s work has been instrumental in the success of many rural small businesses. McQuilkin has assisted farmers with navigating regulations, developing marketing strategies and promoting their bounty, and this has made her a pillar of support for the local farming community, Watson-Hampton said.

“For the past two decades Susan McQuilkin has been an unwavering champion for Southern Maryland’s farmers,” Watson-Hampton said. “In our office, she’s also been a mentor beyond compare. Her grace under pressure, unwavering grit, and elegant poise have inspired and guided all of us who’ve had the privilege to work alongside her.”

McQuilkin said her mantra for this business is one she personally follows, but also one that she tries to share with the frustrated farmers who are met with roadblocks.

“Don’t tell me ‘no,’ tell me how,” McQuilkin said. “I want to know how we can get from A to B even if it isn’t a straight line.”

She said one of her most memorable projects was working with Clover Hill Dairy, an Amish-owned and operated cheese dairy in Mechanicsville.

SMADC, with the help of Southern Maryland legislators, was able to help Clover Hill Dairy get approval for a nonstandard/off-the-grid power supply and successfully launch Southern Maryland’s first manufacturer-grade cheese in 2014.

SMADC worked closely with the dairy’s board members to develop their standards of procedure and provide a communications conduit with the Maryland Department of Health, an effort that took four years.

“We tend to forget that it’s the job that [farmers] do 24/7, 365 days a year without many breaks,” she said.

McQuilkin said working in the agriculture industry has made her more appreciative of local farmers and now she has a huge amount of respect for them.

“[The farmers] have to be experts. If not experts, jack of all trades in everything they do,” McQuilkin said. “They have to be courageous. They have to be informed. They’re pretty darn determined. … They’re just intuitively clever and very creative.”

McQuilkin’s last official day in the office was June 28.

“Right now I want to take a deep breath and feel the tea leaves, as we say in the U.K., and then decide where I want to be,” McQuilkin said. “There’s no question that what I’ve done for 20 years is a very visceral part of me, and it would be difficult to remove myself completely from it.”