Tulip Valley Farms founder Andrew Miller, wearing muddy Carhartt overalls, says with sincerity he is not so much a farmer of flowers as a farmer of feelings and smiles.
“I want people to come out onto our farm and come away with an appreciation for agriculture and the place that it has, both in the present and in the future, for quality of life,” Miller said.
Standing in a field, he described the creative ways he made his property more tourist-friendly, from making wider paths between rows to adding a pen of miniature Scottish Highland cattle for photo opportunities. He also created the county’s only u-pick tulip farm.
“Let’s see if we can’t take this stack of ideas that were not going to be adopted at one farm and try something new,” said Miller, who was ousted from his role in 2021 as CEO of Spinach Bus Ventures, the owner of Tulip Town, after a falling-out with partners.
His removal as CEO, and then being voted out of the company in 2022, preceded a messy, high-profile lawsuit from his former business colleagues. The lawsuit landed days ahead of the April 2023 Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, which brings in robust revenue as hundreds of thousands of tourists descend on local farms.
Tulip Valley Farms is now in competition with Tulip Town, and the two businesses are located across the road from each other.
Miller is now opening up about the lawsuit’s allegations after being sued in March 2023. He was among the original five friends, none with formal farming experience, who formed venture capital group Spinach Bus Ventures and purchased Tulip Town in 2019.
As part of the legal actions, the group also sought a temporary restraining order against Miller and Tulip Valley Farms to prevent the new business from opening in time for the 2023 festival. It would have been detrimental to the startup. But a judge allowed Tulip Valley Farms to open.
Spinach Bus Ventures alleged in court documents that Miller breached his contract, misrepresented himself to suppliers, breached his fiduciary duties, and failed to act in good faith, among other claims.
“Competition from Tulip Valley Farms will cause irreparable harm to Tulip Town,” the complaint stated, arguing that a competing tulip farm next door to Tulip Town would siphon off tourists.
“Tulip Town has already suffered two years of substantially reduced revenues because of the pandemic and Mr. Miller’s gross mismanagement,” it continued.
Miller’s attempt to have the case dismissed in April 2023 failed.
At least three attempts to go to mediation and resolve the legal dispute have failed to bring the parties to the table. Court documents and interviews reveal both parties want compensation.
Spinach Bus Ventures is not the only entity bringing Tulip Valley Farms to court. Skagit County has also cited the company for a number of alleged code violations that the agritourism business is fighting.
Miller, a former intelligence analyst and linguist, denies all allegations against him, saying that what was originally a business decision — his removal from the team — had turned into a character assassination.
“The hardest part, for me, with the reaction from across the street has just been that it’s so inconsistent with my previous experience,” Miller said. “I genuinely like Donnie and Randy and Rachael … to have this kind of response is jarring.”
Five friends build a business
Tom DeGoede, who previously owned Tulip Town with wife Jeannette, was a central figure in the Skagit tulip community, helping to start the annual festival in 1984. He died in June 2019. That same month the family completed the sale of Tulip Town to five born-and-raised locals with a desire to keep the local treasure successful.
The five friends — Rachael Sparwasser, Randy Howard, Donnie Keltz, Angela Speer and Miller — formed Spinach Bus Ventures, named for their teen years, when they turned old enough to take a bus out to the spinach fields to help with the harvest and make some pocket money.
The group graduated from Mount Vernon High School in 1994.
Spinach Bus Ventures provided a feel-good story as people dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. The team pivoted their business to providing video tours of the fields and mailing bouquets to customers — bringing Skagit’s tulip bounty into homes. They gained national media attention from GeekWire to NPR.
“We went out to a happy hour and ended up buying a farm,” Angela Speer told the New York Times in 2020. She left the company in 2022 and did not respond to multiple requests for an interview for this story.
On TODAY, Miller told viewers, “We kind of grew up with this idea that we could kind of do anything if we work together.”
Media accounts and social media posts all told a story of a group of people bound by friendship and trust who were willing to roll up their sleeves and turn a dream into a reality.
Ideas but no capital
When the business started, court documents state that everyone except Miller invested significant capital into Spinach Bus Ventures. Miller was brought on as CEO, the only full-time employee, for a salary of $120,000, plus benefits.
“I showed up with all of the time and all the trust and all the ideas,” Miller told Cascadia Daily News. “Admittedly, I didn’t bring a lot of treasure, in terms of capital.”
Sparwasser, now interim CEO and managing partner, said that there was no denying Miller had lots of ideas but that it was “easy to throw out ideas” without providing numbers and data to support it in a business plan.
“Once you do the math, sometimes a good idea doesn’t mean a good business decision,” Sparwasser told CDN.
In August 2021, Miller said he was offered a “dream job” teaching marketing at Burlington-Edison High School. He brought the idea to the team and, according to court documents, Sparwasser was among the partners who said he needed to stay on as CEO.
The next month he was removed from the position.
“He had ideas about various business initiatives, but the company was disorganized, not executing effectively on its business plans and struggling financially under his leadership,” court documents state. “The SBV businesses experienced substantial losses overall during his tenure as CEO.”
The venture group offered to pay Miller for a year to create a consulting subsidiary for the company.
Over the next 10 months, he generated $17,500 in consulting revenue, according to court documents. Miller was told that if the consulting business didn’t drastically change in the next two months, the company would stop paying him.
His partners also stated in court documents there was evidence Miller was working to help establish a competing tulip farm business. They unanimously voted to remove Miller as a member as of Sept. 30, 2022.
“Andrew, at that time, was the only one of the partners that was getting paid,” Sparwasser said. “He was getting paid very well to do a job that it turns out he wasn’t actually doing and instead he was spending his time and energy setting up a competitor.”
Miller vehemently denies that characterization.
“I wanted to help some friends and also be able to test some more ideas,” Miller said. “U-pick was never going to work across the street because it’s a limited space, and I thought, ‘Man, there’s really an opportunity for u-pick.’”
About seven months later, Tulip Town filed its lawsuit against Miller and Tulip Valley Farms.
‘Mismanagement’ in bulb planting
Miller was blamed for myriad problems in the court complaint.
They include allegations that Miller’s “gross mismanagement” in bulb planting in the fall of 2021 was the cause of 85% crop failure the following spring and that he was in breach of contract by “secretly” setting up a competing tulip farm whose entrance is about 900 feet down Bradshaw Road from Tulip Town.
Miller, who like Sparwasser has a law degree, said the complaint was lawyers doing what lawyers do — throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.
“When you read through this, this is an attack on Andrew Miller,” he said.
He said that he had organized his life around Tulip Town, and even though he was not the CEO or farmer manager at the time bulbs were planted in 2021, he spent “hundreds of hours” trying to figure out how to save the crops.
“There is no doubt in my mind that I did everything that was absolutely possible, and I did it very visibly,” Miller said. “To suggest otherwise is just inconsistent with the facts.”
He also argues that a clause in the Spinach Bus Venture partner’s agreement clearly allowed each of them to pursue other ventures including “participating in businesses that are similar to the business of the company.”
In court documents, Miller pointed out that he also formally founded Tulip Valley Farms with Larry Jensen and Shannon Perkes after being voted out of Spinach Bus Ventures.
He refutes accusations that he was in breach of contract. He said he thought his new farm would be beneficial to everyone either through direct cooperation, or “coopetition” — a healthy mix of cooperation and competition.
He said that he is also seeking clarification about his compensation for being a founding partner of Spinach Bus Ventures, as well as weighing the option of a counter lawsuit for what he said were character attacks.
“It’s just there’s been damage, and I would like to see a repair,” Miller said. “And if I have damaged them, then they can expect a repair attempt for me.”
Sparwasser said she was unable to comment on any potential resolutions.
Other legal challenges
Tulip Valley Farms also faces citations for code violations, ranging from failing to secure a building permit for an “unlawful shipping container structure” to the conversion of agricultural land to non-agriculture land for the development of structures and parking areas.
Miller said he recognizes that he’s pushing boundaries with Tulip Valley Farms and “working outside the box,” which can be difficult when a government is trying to figure out which box the business fits in in terms of regulations.
“It has been an uphill battle,” Miller said. “I literally have had to get off of my tractor to argue with the prosecutor’s office that I’m a farmer.”
While the two-story shipping container structure has been deconstructed and an event tent erected in its place, the civil case is ongoing.
“I don’t think there’s anybody that, county or otherwise, who gets up and says, ‘Hey, I want to put Andrew Miller and Tulip Valley Farms out of business today,’” Miller said.
Speaking of his former friends across the street, Miller said, “I hope that their businesses are wildly successful, ultimately, and that they live healthy, profitable and abundant lives. I really do wish that for them and for everyone.”
Isaac Stone Simonelli is CDN’s enterprise/investigations reporter; reach him at isaacsimonelli@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 127.
