Alex Chapin
Lomax Farm - Aaron Newton
Aaron Newton is a food advocate born and raised in Concord, NC. He works as the Lomax Farm Manager for Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, where he oversees new farmer training and coordinates other participants at the Elma C. Lomax Research and Education Farm. He also serves as an Ambassador for Steward, a business platform helping small-to-mid size sustainable farmers raise financing online through a crowdfunding.
Aaron is the coauthor of A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil from New Society Publishers 2009. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Cabarrus County Farm and Food Council and a past member of the Board of Directors of the Piedmont Farmers Market. He previously served as the Development Coordinator for the Cannon Memorial YMCA Share the Harvest Community Farm. Aaron earned a bachelor's degree in Landscape Architecture from the College of Design at North Carolina State University. Aaron serves on the Executive Steering Committee for the Children WIN - Wellness Initiative Network for Atrium Health Care System Northeast. Aaron runs long distances, practices yoga and rides a bike.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:07 | Introduction |
| 0:01:07 | Blume Project of Harrisburg |
| 0:01:33 | Background information, his college education |
| 0:01:58 | Shift to agriculture, including overseeing Lomax Farms |
| 0:02:27 | 2014, his part in the Carolina Far Steward Association |
| 0:02:36 | Leaving Lomax soon for new position at Steward, a fundraising platform |
| 0:02:59 | Explains what Steward is |
| 0:03:43 | education initiatives at Lomax, the research to be done with Steward |
| 0:05:31 | Charlotte area not ready for urban farming, his reflection on the village of Blume's failure. Problem with zoning and mixed us |
| 0:07:17 | Project's demise |
| 0:08:15 | The demand from the real estate market |
| 0:08:36 | Further explaining why Charlotte is not ready yet |
| 0:09:00 | the expensive cost of farming in Charlotte, the need of acres to survive and high property values |
| 0:10:22 | advantages of the urban farms in Charlotte |
| 0:11:25 | Explanation of what he wanted from the Blume project |
| 0:12:05 | people moving to where the agriculture is |
| 0:13:17 | need new category of zoning to have mixed use |
| 0:14:47 | Detroit as example of urban farming and renewal |
| 0:17:00 | farm training at Lomax. Push for education of farming |
| 0:18:06 | Lack of understand of the general public about agriculture and healthy foods |
| 0:18:53 | 6th grade program, bringing the local schools to see the farm |
| 0:19:49 | use of space as place to learn. Ben Street. |
| 0:20:17 | Health crisis among the young |
| 0:21:11 | seeing over 900 students a year |
| 0:21:47 | involving Davidson college for college-aged students, bring in high schools too |
| 0:22:59 | possible recruitment |
| 0:24:06 | farming as a career |
| 0:25:12 | shifting away from family farms |
| 0:25:43 | systems of farming collaboration, farm infrastructure left behind for others |
| 0:27:09 | Farm as part of community, people cyclically replace |
| 0:27:43 | The loneliness of the job |
| 0:28:09 | Farming conditions do not appeal to the youth |
| 0:28:49 | family farms in decline, and will continue in that trend |
| 0:38:14 | lack of connection to farming, distracted by phone, car, social media |
| 0:31:15 | food commodified |
| 0:32:21 | people running away from screens, looking for authentic experiences |
| 0:33:05 | people going to Lomax |
| 0:33:29 | gardening as a hobby has benefits too |
| 0:34:10 | people want authentic connection to the natural world |
| 0:34:27 | demographics of the people in the farm |
| 0:35:24 | Farming does not make a lot of money, need additional income |
| 0:35:52 | must be willing to work a lot for little, family must be supportive |
| 0:36:23 | some lose interest in farming and get out of it after a while |
| 0:36:46 | General population not helping farms by continuing to buy processed foods |
| 0:37:48 | many reasons for not supporting directly |
| 0:38:04 | value does not equal prince when it comes to food |
| 0:38:31 | cost of cheap food over time, diabetes, health concerns |
| 0:39:06 | true cost of processed foods stripped due to subsidizies |
| 0:40:09 | cost of eating poorly, true cost of it |
| 0:40:44 | people need more education and exposure on the foods they eat |
| 0:41:14 | freshness of foods in stores, bred for longevity |
| 0:42:13 | strawberries use to not always be in stores - seasonal |
| 0:42:46 | cultural shift away from knowing about seasonal foods, don't know any better |
| 0:44:10 | reaching different age groups |
| 0:44:29 | The education of Lomax as part of state curriculum |
| 0:46:15 | closing thoughts |
| 0:46:33 | Charlotte behind Asheville and the Triangle by means of agriculture support |
| 0:47:01 | Nowhere near rockbottom when it comes to obesity and land development, will get worse |
| 0:47:41 | not optimistic, some are trying to address it |
| 0:48:25 | climate change, volatile weather. Will be an issue |
| 0:49:15 | Future will depend on the tolerance of today's youth and if they can influence change |
| 0:49:50 | explanation of Charlotte lagging behind |
| 0:50:22 | Charlotte has never been agriculture oriented |
| 0:52:37 | places like Asheville and the Triangle have more supporters of local agriculture |
| 0:53:37 | Supporters have been a fringe group in Charlotte, not as big |
| 0:53:46 | Hopes people can influence and change the future for the better |
[00:00:08]
>> Aaron: Okay.
>> Mick: Well I'm **** King with the UNCC Charlotte's Queen City Garden Oral Histories of and I have Aaron Newton with me with Lomax Farms. And would you take a second to tell us something about yourself, how you got into this and maybe something about this organization?
[00:00:29]
>> Aaron: Sure. My name is Aaron Newton. I work for Carolina Farms Stewardship Association. We are a 40-year-old nonprofit organization based out of Pittsboro, North Carolina, that's been doing food advocacy, food education and farm services work in the Carolinas, both North and South Carolina for 40 years. I am a native of Concord, got involved with the Elma C Lomax incubator farm in 2009 when it started up.
[00:01:01]
This is our tenth year anniversary. In 2014, the farm formerly run by county government and cooperative extension. In 2014 the farm was, operations of the farm were handed over to Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. So at the time I was working for the county and I sort of came with the farm and transferred employment to the nonprofit to help operate the farm.
[00:01:30]
My background is in landscape architecture, so I turned farm fields into subdivisions for about a decade, and then,
>> Aaron: Briefly attempted to try and design communities differently, to include agriculture, among other components, and,
>> Aaron: So this part of the world wasn't ready for that yet, so I ended up shifting my attention entirely to agriculture.
[00:01:58]
Spent a couple of years growing vegetables commercially.
>> Aaron: Here, actually, and then transitioned into a position as the local food systems program coordinator for Carreras County, which included overseeing the operations here at Lomax Farm. And then as I mentioned, when operational management transferred to Caroline Farm Stewardship Association in 2014 I transferred as well.
[00:02:29]
And I'm actually in the process of phasing my self out, so my employment here will end in May.
>> Mick: Okay.
>> Aaron: And I will move on to other stuff.
>> Mick: Do you have an idea of what that would be?
>> Aaron: Yeah I plan to work and I have already started to work part-time for a company called Steward.
[00:02:46]
>> Mick: Okay.
>> Aaron: Which is a crowd funding platform for loaning money to farmers all across the world, that launched just a few weeks ago. And so I've been working a little for them since last June, and helping set up their platform which went live just a few weeks ago.
[00:03:07]
And we hope to loan $1 billion to farmers over the next ten years, and to create a network not only for connecting investors, large but also small and medium scale investors, with farmers who need access to capital. But also, there are a lot of other plans. First, the network's develop for,
[00:03:35]
>> Aaron: How to better system, how to make more effective the farmers here in the US and abroad.
>> Mick: So more of the teaching element that I see that Lomax has been trying to do, some more education.
>> Aaron: Potentially, I'll give you a couple of examples. When the business, when the corporation was created for Steward, the founder, Dan Miller also created a nonprofit foundation.
[00:04:02]
The Steward foundation is gonna focus initially on research, so farms within the Steward network can apply for a grant of up to $2500 to do on-farm research. And we're not talking about academic research to be published and forgotten. We're talking about applied research to be shared. So you have a great idea as a farmer but to actually get the numbers and get the data, there's a cost, at least in time, which translates to money.
[00:04:32]
So being able to have that offset of cost to be able to put in the effort to record the yield, or the pest load, or the hours worked, or whatever it is, is important, so that is meaningful. So that's an example of Steward thinking about how to use the network of farmers for a greater end.
[00:04:52]
But I think the targets' gonna be established farmers and everyone can always learn more. But I think we're not gonna focus on new and beginning farmers who need a good deal more education and resources. Maybe in the future, but that's the work that I have been doing, and it's very interesting work, and rewarding in some senses, but it also can be frustrating work.
[00:05:19]
And frankly I'd be happy to take a break, and spend a little bit more time working with more established farmers.
>> Mick: Earlier in your statement, you said that this part of the world's not ready for, you mean intermingled urban and farming? Is that what you're talking about earlier?
[00:05:39]
>> Aaron: Absolutely.
>> Mick: May I ask why you think that?
>> Aaron: Because I designed a project like that and it’s actually still up. It has a presence on YouTube. It was called the Village of Blume, B-L-U-M-E. And partners and I developed and designed this community for a parcel of land in Harrisburg, North Carolina, it's between here and Charlotte.
[00:06:05]
And the city of Harrisburg didn't know what to do with it because we said, what we're gonna do ag and residential. We're gonna have a school, we're gonna mix uses even further and have a commercial retail component. We wanna do a complete street concept where you have trails and walk-ride component to the transportation.
[00:06:32]
Active solar, water capture, we're gonna combine all these things, and their heads exploded. Single-use zoning didn't allow for that to happen easily. So they were difficult to work with, and ultimately the project died. But also, frankly some of the neighbors just wanted this particular piece of property to just remain in pasture.
[00:06:57]
They just wanted to look at farmland, or they wanted what they thought would feel rural, which they thought would be one acre lots, which doesn't feel rural. And so, ultimately what's funny is the project was developed under the name Blume. But it's just cookie cutter crab subdivision at one acre a lot.
[00:07:17]
And you could drive through there and,
>> Aaron: It's just a future get up. But the interesting thing is for, that was probably at least 10 years ago. For the first five years I continued to get the occasional email or call from someone who had seen it or heard about it, and thought it might exist and wanted to buy it.
[00:07:41]
So I think there are some people, and we may be closer now, so there were some buyers who were interested in the concept. But if you to talk about that concept to someone in development, you get nothing. They're not interested in trying to work outside the existing single-use zoning framework.
[00:08:02]
And frankly, you can put up,
>> Aaron: Some pretty crappy stuff. The demand is so high with people moving into the area that someone's going to run it by us. So why go to the trouble to do anything special, has been the mentality that I've seen within the development community.
[00:08:22]
I am hoping to do something that does incorporate a lot more aspects of health and wellness, including food production, within community design. But I think if I do that, it's unlikely it will be in the Charlotte area. Just cuz, again, I don't think the development community is ready.
[00:08:39]
And I'm not sure that the general population is.
>> Mick: You're kind of negative on the idea of maybe more urban farms growing up in Charlotte, then? Or do you mean the mixed-use as in, it's really planned out to be that way?
>> Aaron: Yeah, so the general knock on urban farms is that the closer you get to population densities, the more expensive the real estate.
[00:09:07]
And you gotta pay for it somehow. So paying for it with something like agriculture is difficult, where you need typically larger acreages to produce enough money to pay the property taxes. And that's true in Charlotte as it is true anywhere else. Where you see urban agriculture work well is in areas where quite frankly, the property values have dropped.
[00:09:37]
Because something has happened to the urban environment to the extent that no one or much fewer people want to live there, like the demand has dropped off. Detroit is a great example. We walk around downtown Detroit and there's land everywhere, because everyone's moved out of the neighborhoods. Once those neighborhoods repopulate and the demand for those properties goes up, then it's much more lucrative to put a house on it than to put a garden farm on it.
[00:10:06]
So the flip side of that is the closer you can, people eat food so the more people you have, the closer you are to those people. The higher your concentration, your population density, the more customers you have. So being closer to food, to the end user, the end consumer, the eater is best.
[00:10:28]
So yeah, and also, people fall in love with land, so like if you can get a couple of people falling in love with this farm for sure, people would fall in love with their urban farms. And more people are maybe in closer proximity to fall in love with the urban farms, so it's certainly doable within the Charlotte region.
[00:10:46]
But I was speaking more about that mix of use. So can we take a 500-acre farm field and continue active agriculture within that community to serve that population? Then you can start to layer on other uses like education, farmer education, general ag education for the population which desperately needs that, research and experimentation.
[00:11:10]
All of those could happen on part of that 500-acre farm, even if you developed the residential and other components within that 500-acre parcel.
>> Mick: So you're not talking about dividing up the 500 acre, you're talking about having a 500-acre, have different implements within it, but also a community still around it that thrives of this 500 acre?
[00:11:33]
Or are you talking about mixing the 500 acre itself?
>> Aaron: I think you would mix uses within the 500 acre.
>> Mick: Okay. You're always gonna have people coming in from outside-
>> Aaron: Right. And people from out going from within going out. But I think that the greatest advantage to a community like that would be to amenitize the farm and the agricultural activity, right?
[00:11:55]
So imagine a golf course community but with a farm instead of a golf course. Here's Andres Dwayne and you've said golf. Agriculture is the new black. And where agriculture is the new golf is what he said. Which you know, what he meant was let's you know people move to a golf course community so they can play golf.
[00:12:16]
People would move to an agriculturally focused community because they wanted a part of that lifestyle. Whether it was farm living or access to fresh foods or access to activities for their kids on the farm so to speak, yeah. So you'd be using it as a marketing tool as well as a functioning part of the community.
[00:12:35]
>> Mick: And that would take a different community, than a, I guess you mentioned earlier, the urban, where it's more, look at downtown Charlotte. Or uptown Charlotte really, It's mostly for banking and everything else. I guess I could see how it'd be hard to implement a farming community within those city bounds.
[00:12:54]
Why did Harrisburg fail? I know you said it was development and single use, but if it did become a mixed use, do you see it would ever taken up there? Or is it just too far removed from the ideals around here, too?
>> Aaron: They didn't have, it was a square peg and all they had were round holes.
[00:13:16]
>> Mick: Okay.
>> Aaron: Single use zoning didn't let us. If it's agriculture, then it goes in the agricultural zoning area. If it's residential, it goes within the residential zoning area.
>> Mick: You have to get the city basically to rezone that.
>> Aaron: But not only re zone it, but create an entirely new category of zoning.
[00:13:34]
That's one thing-
>> Mick: Category for?
>> Aaron: There's no category for what we're gonna do. Ag and residential and commercial retail with school. There's no, that doesn't exist. You can get into mixed use zoning is what they call it, but at that time, especially there wasn't a framework for it.
[00:13:52]
So anytime you propose something that's completely as there be dragons on the map, it's just like there's nothing, we don't know what that is, that was difficult. There wasn't even that they were adversarial to it, not to the city itself. They just didn't have a way to fit it with in the framework of their land use development plan.
[00:14:12]
What they did have was a residential component. So we could continue ag, they were fine with that. We'll rezone it into residential, which is I guess ultimately what happened. But this is what residential looks like, a house on acre, a house on two acres, or multi-family, multiple units on a compartment condo or stuff.
[00:14:32]
We handle all of that, but if you wanna have this right next to a 50-acre farm field, right next to a shopping center, all within the same parcel [SOUND], that just exploded their heads.
>> Mick: So how did Detroit, because I know they're revitalizing by making more urban gardens, maybe I think communal farms, and stuff like that.
[00:14:52]
Did they create a whole new zoning, or it's just a personal property, garden-wise?
>> Aaron: I don't know what the zoning, planning, and the zoning structure looks like for Detroit. I've been there and walked around downtown I spent a day and a half there just agritourising. But some of these are commercial production scale farms.
[00:15:17]
Either way, gardening is for yourself. Farming is for others. So these are definitely farms, even if they were smaller scale. My guess is that the city tried to promote agricultural use, came in and just said, you're allowed commercial scale production now within this area in addition to residential.
[00:15:41]
So you can build a house here or you can take lot, instead of building a house, and farm there.
>> Mick: And this may touch upon what I read from the site, when you were talking about, do you think this was also from a push towards not only self-sustaining people in these areas that are growing food themselves?
[00:16:00]
But they're also growing healthier foods, organic and they're improving their well being.
>> Mick: I know you guys are trying to do that as well. Can you tell me a little bit more of what Lomax, and I guess the Stewart Association is doing around here with promoting wellness?
>> Aaron: I guess you'd have to be a little more specific.
[00:16:23]
>> Mick: Yeah, sorry about that. I'm talking about educational part of I guess, besides farming that I've seen your farming training, I saw that you guys were doing more about,
>> Mick: Five minutes here, about the well-being of healthier foods. Do you see an improvement on that, as well?
>> Aaron: Well, what I can say is that we've recently changed names even.
[00:16:56]
What we've seen is an add in the number of people who wanna train to grow commercially. But what we've seen simultaneously is more people are interested in general agricultural education. So what I mean by that is, and a lot of it's around kids, okay, in 1950 about a third of the population of the United States grew up on a farm.
[00:17:24]
So one out of three of us just got this agricultural education, just by being born, right? And in our part of our country, that percentage would have even been higher.
>> Aaron: Fast forward for several decades now, that percentage have been less that 2% of the people grow all of the food that we eat in this country.
[00:17:47]
So what we've done is raised a generation of people, more than one, let's say 30 years, the last 30 years or so, the vast majority of the people, almost all Americans, less than 2%, really do not have a good, hands-on understanding about agriculture. Not even like where does the egg come from sort of thing.
[00:18:10]
And so that's a problem, that's coupled with other problems, that's coupled with other unfortunate circumstances to mean a less healthy United States of America. So there's plenty of ways that you can address that issue. But one of them is to help people understand what food looks like, where it comes from, and who does the work.
[00:18:34]
And a lot of people are interested in that for themselves and their families, but especially for their kids and the general public. And so that's what the education part is about. We'll have almost 1,000 six.graders visit us this spring. This is the second year of our pilot program to eventually get every sixth grader in the county out at the farm.
[00:18:55]
And that's a comprehensive program which would include, you know what? The elementary school level, it has a focus on gardens, and high school level has a focus on differentiating interests around food science, so the culinary arts or production or environmental stewardship. So there's many of career tracks there.
[00:19:17]
But at the middle school level, it's about a visit to the county fair with a focus on agriculture and then [INAUDIBLE] here. So that's an example of that student outdoor immersive learning at Lomax. The acronym is SOIL.
>> Mick: Yeah, I did see that.
>> Aaron: So that's happening more and more.
[00:19:33]
>> Mick: Okay.
>> Aaron: And then this is our fourth year as a USDA certified organic farm doing commercial vegetable production research. So that's been an increased focus. So we still have folks who are using this space to get a farm business started. Ben Streep came in and left while you and I were talking.
[00:19:55]
A recent graduate of ours was still using the greenhouse and the cooler. So that's still happening in the background, but meanwhile we were trying to meet a larger demand for people who wanna come and learn more about ag, adults but especially children. So doing more of that and then also doing the research.
[00:20:15]
But the kids stuff is focused a lot on wellness, we see more than a third of the kids in Cabarrus County graduate from high school at an overweight or obese status. So,
>> Aaron: Good luck in life.
>> Mick: [LAUGH]
>> Aaron: If you're already knocking down the door of some sort of dietary disease at 18 years old, and that's a third of our population.
[00:20:42]
So we're not the sole answer to that issue, but it is one of many ways to try and help people at a younger age, young people to think about what they eat. And maybe they're more likely to think about what they eat if they have come into contact with the systems that produce their food and the people who wanna do that work.
[00:21:05]
>> Mick: So what kind of demand do you get from schools? You said 1,000 six graders?
>> Aaron: So yeah, we're working, last year we had about 550. The first year in our pilot program we added a middle school and increased that number to around 900. And then we have been contacted by other private schools in the area.
[00:21:28]
Province A school sent me an email yesterday trying to find time to bring their kids out at some point in the year. So yeah, so there are others. Meanwhile, this will be our second year hosting interns from Davidson College, so also trying to get involved,
>> Aaron: From that elementary, middle school age on up through college age.
[00:21:57]
This year for those 1,000 or so six graders who were coming through the farm we've actually enlisted the help of a local high school. So those kids are designing some of the activities that the sixth graders do while they're here. So the idea is that then as the sixth graders age up into high school they'll be the ones coming back to further program the activities for the next generation of sixth graders.
[00:22:20]
And so you stack that with the elementary school exposure to gardens and some of the other opportunities at the high school level to differentiate into food or environmentally related fields. And you start to reinforce this theme that human life on Earth is based on natural systems. Those natural systems provide the benefits to make our lives possible, including the food that we eat.
[00:22:46]
And that food takes stewardship of the land and those natural resources, and that's the work that farmers do and that's how they grow the food that we all eat.
>> Mick: So you're helping to educate them on also farm living as well, besides healthy living. Would you try and recruit some of them later on, maybe after high school to have like an intern?
[00:23:10]
>> Aaron: I can't even say that this is our new recruitment process, starting in sixth grade. The truth is, very few of them will go on to become farmers. And that's okay, that's fine. But I think the thing that we need more right now than more farmers is a better appreciation for real food and good food.
[00:23:33]
So that's really what I see as the greatest benefit is if these students in the general population at large would come to.
>> Aaron: To put a higher,
>> Aaron: Emphasis on good food, real food, vegetables and quality protein.
>> Mick: Yeah.
>> Aaron: Yeah, that's the ideal outcome. And then if a few of them decide that they wanna do that for themselves, that's great.
[00:24:00]
I think it's unlikely that the model, I think it's unlikely Why would agriculture be any different than most professions? And by that, I mean people these days take on a career path, and they do that work for a while and then they shift and do something else. And I think that's exactly what we're gonna see in agriculture.
[00:24:22]
>> Mick: Cuz I believe someone that wrote on the website came from banking or something like that. Was that Street or was that someone else who came from Charlotte to, said something about he was sitting in front of his computer as a day job and then moved over to farming.
[00:24:38]
So you'll see more of that later on maybe with-
>> Aaron: It sounds like Ben but it wasn't banking, but it was a day job in front of a computer. Yes, so doing something else and then farming. My guess is that he will do farming for awhile and then he will go do something else.
[00:25:00]
For some reason people think, well, once you're a farmer then you're gonna die on a tractor at 90 years old. And your kids, who are also farmers, are gonna run out and jump on the tractor, and continue plowing that road, before they then go and bury your body and finish the fieldwork.
[00:25:15]
And then their kids, your grandkids, are also gonna farm that land, that is not gonna happen. I think, largely, those days are over. So what are the new systems that are gonna take the place of the sort of land ownership for generations kind of model. And that's the work that I think will be interesting to follow for the next few decades, is what are the systems for farming in collaboration with each other?
[00:25:46]
What are the systems that allow people to farm, quote, unquote farm for a little while and then leave that work and go and do something different. We do not have to create a brand new farm with all the infrastructure every time someone wants to farm. And then ten years later when that person moves on, all that effort is wasted and lost.
[00:26:09]
And maybe they can sell that farm, but maybe not. Right, what would a system look like where you, Nathan, could say, I want to farm, receive that training, grow food for a living for five years. Then get an offer to go and follow a journalism career or become a musician, or whatever it is, and then step away from that.
[00:26:32]
>> Aaron: But in leaving, open up a place for someone else who is ready to step into agriculture, to take your place. To use the infrastructure that was left behind. All right, so I think that collaborative farming systems like this could work well in the future as ways for people to engage without the committment of doing it for the rest of their lives.
[00:26:53]
>> Mick: So the farms become the stewards of the land so to speak?
>> Aaron: Yes, yes, and what does that third party look like? So now we go back to our conversation about the community development. So, if you've designed a community with a farm as a part of that community and the community takes ownership of the farm, they can steward the land and the resources, the infrastructure.
[00:27:13]
The people do the physical work, that can change without this massive overhaul and legal, all that ****. We just, as someone leaves, this community that quote, unquote, owns the farm, can replace that person or those people with new people, that can do that work of farming. And then when those people, excuse me.
[00:27:35]
And when those people are done, they also can be replaced by other people who wanna do that work. And also it can be a lonely job to do that work by yourself, where land prices are low enough so you can afford. All right, so now you're way outside of the urban area, much lower densities of population.
[00:27:56]
You're working very often by yourself, or nearly by yourself, all day, day in and day out. Does that sound super appealing to young people? It does not. So what are systems where you can work in coordination, collaboration with others? In close proximity to others and then again when you're ready to step away from that work, you can do it.
[00:28:17]
Go do something else.
>> Mick: So the idea of family farms, do you think is probably gonna be disappearing? Do you think only like, I don't mean strong, but I mean, the very, like the Hall family or the Hodges family farms, I believe Hodges and Belmont? The Hall family just sold off 4 million, I think it was.
[00:28:40]
So do you think the idea of family farms that maybe have been passed down, they're slowly gonna go away because the kids are just interested in something else?
>> Aaron: That's already happened.
>> Mick: Yeah.
>> Aaron: Yeah, so put that one in the books. There will always be-
>> Mick: Family farms so to speak.
[00:28:56]
>> Aaron: Yeah, there will always be exceptions but that number has been declining for decades. And that trend is not gonna turn around. What I'm suggesting is the new farmers, the people who did not grow up on farms, who then want to get into farming are not gonna start legacies of generations to come on their farms, you know?
[00:29:14]
I think Joe Rolland's a great example. So Joe trained here, went and farmed for almost ten years, now he's leaving farming. His daughter's not gonna farm the land that they farmed. His daughter is gonna be able to do something else. So, the Porters, a local family here with a more conventional farm and agritourism business, their kids are staying on the farm to do the wedding stuff and then also to run the calf cow operation and the other stuff that they do.
[00:29:43]
So the Porters are an exception. Will their grandkids stay here in farm? Maybe, and I think that we'll always have a few of those. But I think we will continue to see the trend of family farms, the number of family farms decreasing. And I think the folks who are coming into farming from outside of farming background, are unlikely to stay on land that they purchase for multiple generations.
[00:30:10]
>> Mick: Do you think it's a lack of maybe not heritage, but connection to old, familial careers? The younger generation is just like, well my grandfather was a farmer, I don't wanna do it, I'll just like to be somewhere else or just sell the land? Or do you think that people that are getting into farming have some sort of connection that, this is what people did back then, maybe you wanna try this out for a little while for a career?
[00:30:37]
Or what is drawing some of these people into try farming for ten years so to speak?
>> Aaron: Well, there's few questions there. I think that there is a lack of connection for lots of reasons, the automobile, the television, the cell phone, social media. I mean, there's a number of reasons why most of us are less connected to the real physical world than others in past generations.
[00:31:10]
I think we've commodified food, for sure. We've commodified just about everything else, too. So we've definitely created sort of a throw-away society, where people do not get attached to place or even to things. So that's true. I think what's drawing people to farming is a desire for, well, so very often there's a health and wellness aspect.
[00:31:40]
Whether we're talking about people who wanna eat differently, and who show up here, so to speak, who come to this movement. Because either they're sick or someone close to them is sick. One of our growers here started a career in farming in his late thirties with multiple sclerosis.
[00:31:57]
Dylan's a good example of someone who started because he saw the health benefits of eating this way and wanted to be a part of it.
>> Mick: All right.
>> Aaron: I think that,
>> Aaron: I think that people are running away from the screens. I mean, some people, they sense the artificialness of the connections over social media and the lack of authentic experience online.
[00:32:47]
And that consumer culture is overwhelming, the lack of connection with the natural world and natural systems. Just being **** bored and sitting in front of a computer, and feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. Yeah, those people show up here. What we've tried to do is help them understand that they can engage in food assistance work without becoming a commercial farmer, right?
[00:33:15]
Just cuz you're running away from something doesn't mean you're running to farming. To try and help them understand that, for some people, yes, that's the right thing to do. But hey, gardening has been and continues to be a worthwhile hype. It provides food for you and your family and you get outside and fresh air and some light and learn things, and get to observe the natural world.
[00:33:37]
And there's nothing wrong with that, so promoting gardening, or just becoming an advocate, so beginning to change your eating habits and then therefore your shopping habits. And therefore the people that you're coming in contact with, getting to know the folks who grow your food and then potentially becoming an advocate.
[00:33:58]
For places like these replaces or other people doing these kind of work. And so yeah, so I think that's why the people are showing up here because they want an authentic connection to the natural world, natural system. They don't wanna [INAUDIBLE] screen anymore. So we're trying to help them navigate what might be the best next step for them.
[00:34:22]
>> Mick: And I know Dylan and Ben were somewhat younger. What kind of demographics are we talking about with the people that are coming in or so to speak.
>> Aaron: I mean Dylan's in his mid 40s so he's not younger. He came here in his late 30s, maybe might have even been 40.
[00:34:38]
Ben just turned 30 so Ben's been around the farm in some form or fashion for a while so he was mid 20s. We had a fellow here a few years ago. His name was Cody Hamill. Cody Came here at 20, turned 22 his first year here at the farm.
[00:34:56]
So left UNCC to come and start a farming career. Farmed like gangbusters for two years,
>> Aaron: Then decided he needed to shift, which worked for the sheriff's department. Yeah, I think that was mostly about,
>> Aaron: I don't know what that was about. But I know that a lot of growers, this is not a business where you're gonna make a lot of money.
[00:35:24]
75% of all farmers in the US have all-farm income, right? And this is including the great big farmers. The vast majority of farmers have either other work that they do or someone else in the household that is earning money. With that which they wouldn't be able to continue to support their farming careers, which is unfortunate but that is the system as it exists.
[00:35:48]
So I think that's a big deal. It's like, are you willing to work really hard to net $25 to $30 thousand a year? And if you are, is your wife willing to let you? Are you willing to spend that amount of time, engaged in work as opposed to engaged with your kids, or engaged in some other activity that that you enjoy?
[00:36:19]
And a lot of people are for a little while and then,
>> Aaron: Aren't.
>> Aaron: So I don't and I don't fault them for that but yeah, I think that,
>> Aaron: It is difficult work to continue to do for relatively small amount of money. And the general public hasn't helped in that they continue to eat pretty poorly.
[00:36:49]
And eat a lot of processed food crap, which is mostly commodity and it's mostly corn and soy, processed and either cheap meat or cheese puffs. So as long as we're all drinking coke, eating chicken mcnuggets from McDonald's, eating cheese puffs, then how much support can we actually get for a local vegetable and protein growers?
[00:37:14]
And that's just kind of the way that we are. I don't necessarily fault those people either but,
>> Aaron: They're not creating a market for vegetable growers.
>> Mick: Is it because of the draw to I mean the processed foods definitely are cheaper? Do you think just the pennies that some of these people are just counting to make sure that they have enough food for the week?
[00:37:37]
Or do you think there’s not a draw for let’s go to the farmer’s market on the crack of dawn on a Saturday to do their grocery shopping?
>> Aaron: Like anything else, it’s unlikely there’s a single reason.
>> Mick: Sure.
>> Aaron: Some of the reasons include,
>> Aaron: Well, [LAUGH] one of them is a misunderstanding of the difference.
[00:38:04]
Value and price are not the same and people confuse them. They think they're getting good value from something because it is cheap. In food, it's very often if it is cheap, it is not good for you. So let me put it this way. If you had to pay for a part of your future, diabetes control or diabetes medication every time you drink a Coca-Cola would be more expensive.
[00:38:44]
Right, the average person with diabetes, that costs $14,000 a year. So when you were developing diabetes, which is directly related to your sugar intake, if you had to pay that cost every time you bought something that was high sugar then you probably wouldn't buy it,. If that's your focus is on cost, but we don't.
[00:39:04]
We strip out a lot of the true cost that would be better described as value from food. We do that by subsidizing the production of corn and soy and wheat and rice. But the vast majority of the agricultural portion of The Farm Bill goes to support corn, soy, rice, and wheat production.
[00:39:26]
So we make that production those of that really cheap. Then you have cheap feedstock for processed food. We have, and then there's health care. Right, so there's a reason why the cost of food is a percentage of income or a percentage of our monthly budgets has gone down from roughly 30 some odd percent in the first part of last century to less than 10% now.
[00:39:55]
And then health care has roughly mirrored that change. Where we used to spend less than 10% it's gone up to around a third or, I don't know the numbers these days but, yeah. So,
>> Aaron: The externalities, so the cost of eating poorly in terms of our health, the natural systems, the cost that we are conveying to future generations, none of these are being paid up front at the cash register.
[00:40:27]
We're hiding the true cost of food, so food seems cheaper. But yeah, there's some people who just look at the bottom line.
>> Mick: So it's more education.
>> Aaron: It's more education, and it's exposure. People talk about, I have a 13 and 11 year old daughter, they love vegetables, some more than others.
[00:40:47]
But they both eat beets, and now I'll talk about that with people, and they're like, my kids would never eat beets. And the main reason that I can figure out from most of those conversations is, that kids have never had beets that didn't taste like crap. If you eat canned beets, yeah, canned beets taste like ****.
[00:41:02]
You're not gonna wanna keep eating, yeah, I don't wanna eat canned beets. But if we go and if I pick you beets from here, that I pull them from the ground and you take them home and cook them, they're gonna taste better. So not only is it about freshness, but it's also about the particular beets that we're growing.
[00:41:19]
Are we growing them to be able to last a long time and be shipped for a great distance, or are we growing them because they taste better, right? So we've bred for disease resistance, and we've bred for transportability, and for shelf life. That's why tomatoes taste like crap, or at least the ones you'll get in the grocery store.
[00:41:40]
Cuz they're picked green in Florida and shipped to North Carolina. And they're bred so that they can survive that. So yeah, so I think that's it. I think that's another reason is just taste and quality, which is part of education.
>> Aaron: And also, I think anything that happens for even a reasonable amount of time gets incorporated into our culture.
[00:42:09]
I am 44, I'm just old enough to remember when strawberries weren't in the grocery store all year round, okay? Strawberries, when they came in, and you had them for, I don't know, four to six weeks, maybe longer. And then they kind of went away, and you'd had enough by then that you're like, I got my strawberries in, and I'm good.
[00:42:30]
And then you don't really think about strawberries again until the next year. And food was seasonal, and that has changed, but if you talked about that with someone who is even 25 or 30 years old now, that doesn't translate. So it didn't take that long for that cultural shift, and there are others.
[00:42:49]
So if you grew up eating a certain way, that is now your normal. And if that does not include fresh fruits and vegetables, quality proteins, then you just don't know any other. You don't know what you don't know.
>> Mick: Right.
>> Mick: So what you, I mean.
>> Mick: Are you guys teaching that here, with the kids, about eating healthier or experiencing the farm to see, this is what food actually looks like?
[00:43:24]
Would you advocate for saying that should be part of the state curriculum as well? So I don't know about your generation, but mine had health and gym as three years of our, I think either high school or middle school. And I know they teach you basic food pyramid, but nothing about local or organically grown stuff as well.
[00:43:50]
And do you think you'd be a proponent of that as well, by putting it into state schools to teach them? Cuz obviously, that's where most students are gonna be exposed to it.
>> Aaron: The system I described earlier would fit that.
>> Mick: Fit that.
>> Aaron: Yeah, so how do you approach different age groups?
[00:44:07]
How do you build a continuum of learning from elementary to later in life? But yeah, I think the,
>> Aaron: I think to make that work in today, you have to stack those functions. So in other words, it can't be a standalone curriculum, it has to be embedded within the other stuff that they're learning in school, which works perfectly.
[00:44:39]
If you wanna understand science, we'll do it out here in the field. And you wanna understand physics, or fluid dynamics? We'll do the liquid fertilizer injections through the drip system that we have out there. Look, I'm not just talking about chlorophyll and nutrient uptake. You want to do, man, you want to do the greenhouse and the controlled environments we use, let's talk about air flow, let's talk about tech.
[00:45:11]
It's certainly math if we're talking about production planning, it's all about how many, how far, when, timing. And then translates into harvest, which translates into dollars, there's a ton of math there. So math, science, and communication. If you can't communicate well, you're gonna have difficult time selling your product.
[00:45:33]
So the reading, writing, and arithmetic, you build that in so that you're learning about good food while you're learning about the other stuff. Then, yeah, I think that's where people are successful,
>> Aaron: Quote unquote food in schools. I think they expect the schools to have some sort of other standalone.
[00:45:59]
Food systems curriculum is too much to ask.
>> Mick: Maybe, I don't know. I won't take up too much more of your time.
>> Mick: So in closing, what are your thoughts on the future of farming in the Charlotte Concord Piedmont area? And that's a loaded question, but.
>> Aaron: Charlotte has remained, during the last decade, when I've been involved in this work, and having grown up here and lived here most of my life.
[00:46:29]
Charlotte remains a good decade behind actual the triangle area. I think a lot of that you mentioned earlier in the banking industry. A lot of has been focused on other industries including banking, instead of on a more traditional industry like agriculture, so I think that's part of it.
[00:46:55]
For the future,
>> Aaron: I think we are nowhere near rock bottom. I think we'll see the number of kids graduating from high school in that overweight to obese category increased, at least for the foreseeable future, the near future. I think in terms of land use, for the foreseeable future we are likely to see a continuation of the steady stream of moving here and eating up the farmland for residential and support industries.
[00:47:38]
>> Aaron: Yeah, so that part, I'm not very optimistic about. At a certain point, I think it's entirely possible that the population will be unhealthy enough that, and you already see this in pockets. That certain people, especially influential people and influential groups are starting to take notice and say hey, we're going in the wrong direction.
[00:48:02]
To the extent that those people and those groups can get traction And try and address the situation, I think that remains to be seen on what the time table would be around that, getting any significant traction.
>> Aaron: Climate change is the big question mark. Cuz if we continue to have the volatile weather that I've seen increase in just the ten years that I've been doing this work.
[00:48:33]
Wow, that's gonna make things that much more difficult. It rained, we didn't see three days without rain from September through about two weeks ago, which made things more difficult. But we could deal with the steady increase in moisture maybe, we would just change what we do or change what was possible.
[00:48:55]
But then this year, the result could be hotter and drier conditions and the next year wet again. So that volatility is a wildcard.
>> Aaron: So yes, I think it depends on the tolerance especially of younger people, when they decide that they want to try and fix their health.
[00:49:25]
To the extent to which they understand their reliance on natural systems that need protecting. I think that will be the biggest influencer on if and when we start to see a turn around in some of these indicators. So not super optimistic, but you never know.
>> Mick: One small follow up I just thought about, so you were mentioning that Charlotte's behind Asheville.
[00:49:50]
Do you think it's a change of identity that we used to have as a farming community all the way back towards 17, 1800s, Charlotte was just a farm town?
>> Mick: I don't think we'll ever get it back, do you?
>> Aaron: I don't know if we ever had it.
[00:50:05]
I don't know enough about the history going that far back but it seems to me when one of the two major thoroughfares through your downtown. When it's trade and Tryon Street seems to me that maybe from the very beginning, you were trade and business-oriented, and not agricultural-oriented. And it's not to say that there weren't a lot of farms in the surrounding area, but I'm not sure we ever were focused on agriculture.
[00:50:30]
To your greater point, the surrounding area, I'll just say the metro area. We're 22 miles right now, northeast of downtown Charlotte. To the extent that we have an agricultural heritage as a region, I think that there are times in our history over the last 40 or 50 or 60 years.
[00:50:57]
And this is not unique to Charlotte where we've just focused on other stuff.
>> Aaron: Post World War II boom and suburbanization of the population. We moved away from agriculture and moved away from textiles.
>> Aaron: I don't see us going back to that, I don't even think of that is driving the difference.
[00:51:27]
I just see people in the Asheville area and in the triangle area, and not everybody, the triangle is big and there's plenty of people who give a **** about good food. But to the extent that they have more focus on agriculture in those communities. It is this willingness of the people who are involved to make that a priority in their lives and for some that is growing.
[00:51:57]
For others, it is just eating and doing things differently. You're supporting local farms, going to your farmer's market on Saturday, or getting access to local food in the many other ways that are,
>> both: [CROSSTALK]
>> Mick: CSAs and stuff.
>> Aaron: You drive to Pittsboro, which is a small town in the triangle, and go to Chatham Marketplace and see the food that is available there.
[00:52:27]
And see the community of people who are engaged in making a point to spend more money on food, to support local agriculture. But then to sit and talk and engage with each other as mutual supporters of agriculture. Not even in support of the farmer who's growing their food, but just support of each other.
[00:52:52]
>> Aaron: That sense of community around agriculture and food is what I see has developed there and I don't even really know why. But it has developed to a greater extent in those communities and it hasn't in Charlotte. I wish I could give you a good answer but I can't as to why that hasn't happened.
[00:53:11]
I've sat in a room multiple times with roughly the same 20 people and tried to figure out how to put together a food council, which we have now. Charlotte has one, and we have one here, and how to further the interests. And those people are doing good work but that is still very much a fringe component of our culture.
[00:53:36]
To a much greater extent here in Charlotte, than it is maybe in other areas. And I still do hope, even if I'm somewhat pessimistic, I still hold out hope that those people again will begin to build traction. Others, especially younger folks, will continue to buy in and support that kind of a revitalization of the food economy and in doing so, maybe we do catch up with.
[00:54:04]
Concord just passed Asheville as the 11th largest city in the state of North Carolina, so there's that.
>> both: [LAUGH]
>> Mick: Great, thank you so much for taking your time and doing this. This was great.
>> Aaron: You're welcome, I appreciate the opportunity.
>> Mick: That's all for now.
Off Grid in Color - Chantel Johnson
Chantel Johnson was born in 1987 and initially planned a career in social work, obtaining her Masters of Social Work from the University of Washington. However, after the tragic death of her brother in Chicago due to gun violence, Chantel turned to agriculture and homesteading as a method of healing her grief. With no formal education in agriculture, Chantel learned from those around her, and in 2017 decided that she wanted to supplement her lifestyle by raising livestock. She reached out to the farming community to see if anyone had land they would be willing to offer Chantel so that she could begin her farming career. Luckily, her community were more than willing to support her and she established herself in Salisbury, North Carolina. She called her farm, Off Grid In Color, and began raising pigs, chickens and turkeys, while also creating outreach events for her community. Chantel has a passion for public speaking and has participated in many talks covering her experiences and homesteading. She aims to create a agriculture wellness center for those in need of healing, and also works as a certified doula.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:07 | Interview begins |
| 0:00:35 | Entered into agriculutre in 2016 and defines herself as a homesteader |
| 0:01:18 | Decided to fund her lifestyle by farming livestock |
| 0:01:52 | Livestock she raises |
| 0:02:11 | Discusses the death of her younger brother and how that influenced her to become a homesteader |
| 0:03:46 | The elements that she believed factored into her brothers death |
| 0:05:43 | Typical day on the farm at the height of the season |
| 0:07:47 | Using social media to market her farm |
| 0:08:07 | Discusses amount of animals she raises at one time |
| 0:08:32 | Does a majority of the work on her farm alone and the role of the community in her operations |
| 0:09:02 | BREAK - to let her dog into the house |
| 0:09:22 | How she engages with the community and how they contribute to the farm |
| 0:10:10 | Use of social media and her goal to create an agriculture wellness center |
| 0:11:31 | How she came up with the idea of her "community farm" and the programs she runs to promote this |
| 0:13:31 | Popularity of homesteading |
| 0:14:21 | Previous knowledge of agriculture prior to being introduced to homesteading |
| 0:15:18 | Importance of education in her community outreach |
| 0:17:34 | How she found the land she is currently using for her farm |
| 0:18:12 | Issues she has faced in her farming |
| 0:19:37 | Use of government grants and recently being awarded a Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) grant |
| 0:20:17 | Crowdfunding from the community to help financially support her farm |
| 0:21:58 | How she processes her meat with the help of volunteers |
| 0:22:30 | Discusses her largest expenses in running her farm |
| 0:24:02 | The use of non-GMO feed for her animals and why she does not use organic feed |
| 0:28:45 | How she sells her products to the public |
| 0:29:42 | Selling at the farmers market |
| 0:30:31 | Organizing a farm-to-table dinner |
| 0:31:11 | Difficulties she has faced getting her product to the market |
| 0:32:24 | Urbanization and growth of surrounding areas effects on her farm |
| 0:34:04 | Moving from being a solitary farmer to being more active in her community and in changes in local agriculture |
| 0:35:42 | Ways she deviates from conventional farming methods in her small farm |
| 0:37:03 | Experiences with the volatile weather in Charlotte |
| 0:38:14 | Obstacles faced by black and brown farmers |
| 0:39:09 | Organizations focused on serving minority farmers |
| 0:40:24 | Events she has created that intertwine agriculture and community outreach |
| 0:42:22 | Other farmers and individuals who are utilizing agriculture in their community outreach |
| 0:43:35 | Misconceptions by the public on the prices of her produce |
| 0:45:49 | Misconceptions by the public about homesteading and living off grid |
| 0:47:55 | Affects of larger coporations selling off-season produce on small, independent farming |
| 0:51:33 | Ways farmers can bridge the disconnect between the public and their food |
| 0:52:22 | The physical toll of farming and her plans to sustain her farm long term |
| 0:54:29 | Dealing with the environmental impact of her farming |
| 0:55:02 | Advice for those interested in farming |
| 0:57:34 | End of Interview |
[00:00:07]
>> Laura Burgess: So hello my name is Nora Burgess. And I'm a graduate student at UNC Charlotte. The date is the third of April, 2019. And the time is 11:21 in the morning. I'm here with Chantelle Johnson at Off Grid In Color farm. Hello, Chantelle.
>> Chantelle Johnson: Hi.
>> Laura Burgess: So I'm going to start off with my first question.
[00:00:24]
How long have you been farming?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Good question.
>> Chantelle Johnson: I got into agriculture in general, fall of 2016. And then I kinda classed myself as a homesteader. And the way I like to identify homesteader is someone who lives a lifestyle of self sufficiency that might include raising animals, having a garden, doing food preservation, zero waste reduce, reuse, recycle kind of things, caring about the environment.
[00:01:03]
Kind of doing as much for themselves without the assistance of external resources. And so I did that for about a year until I realized that I needed to find a way to fund my lifestyle. And I decided to fund my lifestyle through a business, cuz that's another part of being self sufficient is how do you generate your own income.
[00:01:26]
And I did that by farming livestock. And so I got into that I would say, 2017. So it's been two years, or three years in general, going on three years in general as far as just being in the agriculture system.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so what kind of livestock do you raise?
[00:01:50]
>> Chantelle Johnson: I currently raise chicken, meat birds, they call them broilers, turkeys, and hogs, pigs. [LAUGH]
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH] Okay, so what influenced you to kind of go into agriculture and become a homesteader?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Back in 2014 my youngest brother was shot several times in Chicago. And he was paralyzed from the neck down.
[00:02:25]
And suffered for 15 months. And in August of 2015 he passed over into another world of existence. And it was in my grief for my brother, I felt that the system played a big role in the death for my brother. Like Chicago is really known, in this day and age right now as being as a city full of violence and things like that.
[00:02:54]
And I think one reason that violence exists in poor communities, particularly poor black communities, is because of lack of resources and opportunities. My brother kinda fell victim to selling drugs and being a gang member and kinda living that lifestyle, which made that choice, that lifestyle an easy choice when you don't have resources and opportunities.
[00:03:16]
And here I am chugging my way through Chicago, leaving poverty, going to these expensive universities, getting these degrees. And my brothers are back home suffering. And I'm trying to figure out why we have the same opportunities, why they having such a hard time? So I got into agriculture because I thought about what were the systems that played into his death?
[00:03:42]
The year he passed away, there was the closing of a number of Chicago public schools. The day he got shot, he was picked up by a police officer because he didn't sign up for a gun possession registry cuz he was in prison a year before at 17. He was young at the time.
[00:04:05]
17 in prison, died at 19. So he was supposed to sign up for a gun registry and he didn't do it. One would think that before you be released for prison that they would sign you up for those things. But instead, they put barriers in place, like you need to get to your parole officer.
[00:04:21]
Knowing you just got out of prison, you probably don't have any way to get there. And so he was picked up, and that's the same day he got shot. Also, he was in a nursing home, just the poor care and things like that when your family, you don't have money.
[00:04:35]
And so I just looked at all these things that played into his death, and I said, you know what? The government and corporations don't give a **** about people, especially brown and black people. Here I am with a quarter million dollar education for my private college I went to my fancy university master's degree and I've got, for what I'm at this really good cushion research job at Durham at the time, and I quit.
[00:05:08]
I got depressed and I met someone who was homesteading, and I just got lost in the woods. And that's how I got into it, just by way of surviving the impacts of gun violence, and trying to find a way to deal with the complexities of that, and just heal my heart.
[00:05:26]
And I just got lost in the woods.
>> Laura Burgess: Wow.
>> Chantelle Johnson: Mm-hm.
>> Laura Burgess: That's amazing. Can you describe a typical day on the farm for you?
>> Chantelle Johnson: A typical day at the farm for me at the height of the season, let's just say, I am up I get up relatively early, but I don't go outside right away like typical farmers.
[00:05:53]
People always ask me, Chantelle, how early do you get up? I get up early, but I'm not outside with the animals early. At the height of the summer I'm up around 6, doing some meditating, some writing, some reading. I'm trying to be out with the animals between 7:30 and 8.
[00:06:08]
I'm typically out singing and talking to the animals cuz I really believe in just caring and nurturing them, and honoring their life because they will be sacrificed for meat. And so I usually start with my meat birds because those are the hardest to do, and moving around pens, and watering, and giving feed, and sometimes I might have to move their fence.
[00:06:35]
I do a pasture rotation here, so that means that I move the animals around the land so they don't destroy the earth, and so they always have access to fresh bugs and grubs and grass and things like that. And then I might run off and hang out with the pigs for a little while.
[00:06:52]
Those are my favorite. Get some rub on them and see them grow bigger and bigger every day, and then I might go collect some eggs. I have eggs, I don't really sell them, but I have them for myself, and for folks who come to the farm and visit, I'll give them eggs.
[00:07:06]
So I always go count them to make sure they're still here cuz they're just kinda out free in the world. [LAUGH] So are raccoons and opossums.
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]
>> Chantelle Johnson: And then if it's turkey season then I go work with them too, and when they're bigger.
>> Chantelle Johnson: [LAUGH] This is my dog.
[00:07:26]
I'm gonna let her stay outside cuz she'll come in and destroy.
>> Laura Burgess: No worries.
>> Chantelle Johnson: So something I'll go out, and I'll go work with the turkeys, and those are probably my second favorite animals cuz they're just so big and so cool and acted pretty intelligent. So that's a pretty typical, just working with animals.
[00:07:43]
And then I spend a lot of time on social media showing people what's going on on the farm, posting about new events. Doing some branding and some marketing and some advertising, going out in a community and doing various events and things like that.
>> Laura Burgess: Brilliant, so how many of these animals do you raise at one time?
[00:08:05]
>> Chantelle Johnson: At one time. I would say at the height, currently right now I only have a couple of pigs and a A handful egg layers but at the height of the season because we're able right now. We'll just get into, at the height of the season at one time I will probably have 200 chickens.
[00:08:20]
60 turkeys, and probably 6 pigs at a time.
>> Laura Burgess: So do you have any help in terms of what label with you. Or is it just you run this?
>> Chantelle Johnson: I do about 90% of the work on my own.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay.
>> Chantelle Johnson: When it comes to getting my animals to the processors, that's when I call in reinforcements to come help me.
[00:08:41]
I don't have any equipment, my farm, I call it a community farm, is I either run it but the community supports it through their labor, time, money and things like that.
>> Laura Burgess: Do you want to take a break for a second?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yes.
>> Laura Burgess: Yeah, okay. Okay, we're back from our pause.
[00:09:06]
And Chantel's dog joined us and so you mentioned that you describe this as a community farm, so do you have volunteers coming in or do you have events with the community, how do you kind of promote that?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yes, I do a combination of all those things, I do a lot of community events.
[00:09:26]
Some are paid some are not where people can either volunteer to help the flow of that event or just come to any of the free events that I have. Also, when there's the hottest season I have people come out and volunteer to help with some. The animals that need to be moved, especially during processing time.
[00:09:49]
>> Laura Burgess: Okay brilliant and I just wondered you use of social media because that's kind of an interesting area that you wouldn't think that farms kind of utilize but things uses kind of a very modern style farm. So how do you use that kind of for your operations and your promoting?
[00:10:07]
>> Chantelle Johnson: Social media for off-breed and color is essential. [LAUGH] This community based farm, if you will, was born out of social media. Just by telling harsh stories like, my gosh, I had to process the bird because it was injured to this is value my strawberry jam to helping women think about their periods.
[00:10:34]
[LAUGH]
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]
>> Chantelle Johnson: I try to cross the gamut, because what I have here, what I'm trying to develop is a Agriculture Wellness Center. And I like to describe to people it's a home sanctuary for health and wellness. And I want people to come here and I want them to feel peace, and that they can find peace here through various ways.
[00:10:53]
So I use social media a lot to kind of push that vision, to push that idea to connect people closer to their meat. So, if people come out and meet your meat. I encourage people to meet their local farmers and stay connected.
>> Laura Burgess: Awesome. So, so you say that this farm, to you and it's purpose is more than just a farm it's like a wellness center.
[00:11:23]
Where do you get the idea and how, what kind of like programs are you running that kind of?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Right. I just wanted to, it was born of the idea of a homestead. Which is a lifestyle self sufficiency. And so I really wanted to keep that concept as I went forward to developing a farm.
[00:11:45]
So the farm is a part of vision as far as having good food. And I do that primarily through raising animals. Using pasture raising tactics. Another thing that I do, I offer Doula services, postpartum and birth Doula services. So, beyond the fact that I want people to eat right and plant good seeds in the world, I want them to also plant good seeds in their wombs.
[00:12:11]
So I help women birth like a boss. [LAUGH] And I also do community outreach. So right now my farm is on the speaking tour, and I'm going around and talking about the story I share earlier with my brother Richie who passed away. So talking about the impacts of gun violence to farming, and how did I get there.
[00:12:29]
And how to help people get through their own pains and traumas and turning this a power for themselves. So I do a lot of community outreach in that and community events from farm to table dinners to doing retreats. I have people coming out here and learning how to homestead.
[00:12:46]
The real Easter egg hunts with kids come out and they gets do a real Easter egg hunt and go get real eggs [LAUGH].
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]
>> Chantelle Johnson: Really trying to take some, cool things that we already doing a community and giving it that self sufficiency twist like they say, so I do a number of things like that.
[00:13:04]
And so those three different components, farm raised goods, Doula services, a community outreach is what I'm using to kind of develop this homestead sanctuary for health and wellness.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so growing expanding on this homestead is that kind of a very popular concept in North Carolina, have you noticed is there other homestead programs are you aware of or something like that?
[00:13:26]
Or is it any way you've experienced it anywhere else that you've lived?
>> Chantelle Johnson: I found homestead here in North Carolina, but homesteading is all across America and the world possibly. It's becoming a more of a trendy thing now, everyone wants to homestead. Now we've got urban homesteads popping up, and rural homesteads popping up.
[00:13:45]
So it's definitely something that's going on really big right now. It's not really big and popular in brown and black communities, and I think as a black woman I'm trying to tap into that. And show people that anyone, everyone can homestead.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so I wanna talk very truthfully about how you came into homesteading?
[00:14:07]
So did you have any interest in agriculture prior to meeting your ex-partner who kind of introduced you to homesteading? Did you have any ideas about agriculture?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Up to the point before my brother was shot and eventually died and before meeting my partner, beyond just trying to eat healthy, that was the extent of my desire of wanting to be in agriculture.
[00:14:36]
If it wasn't for that situation with my brother and then me meeting my ex-partner I don't think I would have been, I don't think I would be a farmer now and homesteader right now
>> Laura Burgess: Really, okay and so do you use that the fact that create kind of a lot of people who are in that traditional agriculture there's a kind of born into this like multi generational farming, and do you kind of utilize this your own experiences with not kind of growing up around agriculture to shape what you're doing here?
[00:15:08]
Because like education, for example, like is that a big part? I mean, you say you do a lot of outreach in the community is education of the part of that for you?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Huge part of them, I'm going to some schools this week, I'm going to a Environmental class, they're talking about home setting.
[00:15:24]
Cuz we think about the environment, homesteading fits right into that we try to think about how do you be self-sufficient and how do you do that in conjunction with the earth? It's all about science. And career day, one of my biggest things about just farming in general is that 1% of the American population when it comes to occupation, 1% of the occupations are farmers, just 1%.
[00:15:50]
And if you wanna break down to how many of those are folks of color, it's even smaller and black people, smaller and black women, even smaller. [LAUGH] And black women who are livestock farmers even smaller. And so I think education is a huge part of it and one talk I did in Minnesota the professor said I'd like to think What you're doing is a reversal migration.
[00:16:14]
If you think about history and think about the Great Migration from the south, black people from the south going to the north and west in a time of industrialization. And finding jobs and trying to run away from racism and finding it in a new way in the cities.
[00:16:29]
And a lot of people, those things that they learned from slavery and Jim Crow, farming was a huge part of it. But with the Great Migration, we lost a lot of land and things like that, right? And now I'm returning back to the South. Up to this point, before this, I didn't know anything about farming.
[00:16:47]
I got my master's degree in social work. I was trained to be a social worker. To go out and influence policies and help social work organizations run more smoothly. I never thought that I would use that degree for farming, doing social farming and things like that. And it's been difficult not having land of my own, even currently I don't have land of my own, but I know the importance and value of having land.
[00:17:15]
And that's something that I would like to own soon one day so I can be able to pass that along to my nieces and nephews and children one day.
>> Laura Burgess: So you said that the land that you're using isn't, you don't own it. So how did you kind of come to use this parcel of land?
[00:17:34]
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah, I was looking for land to use, pretty much, and just the community came forth, and someone said, hey, I have some land that you can farm on. And I think that's one amazing way that you can enter into the agriculture field is just by asking. Lots of farmers want help, [LAUGH].
[00:17:52]
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]
>> Chantelle Johnson: So one way to get into it is find a farmer who wants help and helping them achieve their goals and being honest about what you want so you can achieve your own too.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay then, so what are some of the challenges, or strengths, that you found farming in the greater Charlotte or the Piedmont area?
[00:18:11]
>> Chantelle Johnson: Some of the biggest challenges I have is just land opportunity and access. That's just huge, just being able to find and afford land has been a big issue. Farming without equipment has been, I don't own a trailer, I don't own a truck, and somehow I'm able to raise all these animals.
[00:18:31]
[LAUGH] That means I have good community building but it still makes it hard to do things on my own accord with air quotes around that. When you don't have your own things you gotta kind of wait on people to help you out. So just having access to land, opportunity, and equipment that's needed, and sometimes cash flow can be an issue.
[00:18:56]
I'm choosing not to really tap into a lot of government assistance and loans and things. Because I think one issue that farmers have is debt, and that's something that I want to avoid. Which means that growth is slow for me, and I'm okay with that. [LAUGH]
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH] Fair enough.
[00:19:16]
So talking about kind of how you mitigate the losses, so for your cash flow, and you say that you don't use any government kind of resources, like loans. What are your kind of takes on these grants that are available? Or is there any community support that has helped subsidize your?
[00:19:37]
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yes, I do apply to some grants. I am a recent recipient of the RAFI Grant, which is funds that come from the Tobacco Trust, just awarded that. And those funds will be used specifically for my poultry operation to do added value poultry. So instead of having chicken breasts, and chicken wings, and whole birds, I will also have chicken sausage and ground chicken [LAUGH] and things like that.
[00:20:02]
So I do at times if I feel like the grant is something that's not imposing on my liberties [LAUGH] I will apply for it. But for things that I need, I crowdfund them from the community.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay.
>> Chantelle Johnson: So I do a fundraiser, or I do an event, or things like that.
[00:20:22]
And I always try to offer something that the community gets in exchange for whatever it is that I'm asking for.
>> Laura Burgess: Can you give me an example of?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yes, I had a number of pigs that needed to be processed and I did not have enough money to get them processed.
[00:20:43]
And I also didn't have enough money to store the meat. So I needed, I think approximately $2,000 to get the hogs processed and to get freezers and things like and needed somewhere to store [LAUGH] the freezers. So I gave people a number of ways that they could participate.
[00:21:02]
One was through this program called Credibles, which people pretty much it's paying for your food, you get credit for your food. So say you get $600, you'll get your $600 back in food plus a $100. So I had a number of people sign up for that kinda program.
[00:21:22]
They pick how much money they wanted to donate, and then that dictated how much they got back in food plus some. So some folks did that or I offered discounts to them on some of the food programs. They're like, I have a chicken CSA, if you donate this amount of money, then I'll discount this amount on your turkey or on your future pork, or things like that.
[00:21:44]
So doing more bartering and things like that. If you give this, then I will give that, kind of things.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay then, so how do you process the meats, how do you do it if you don't have the equipment?
>> Chantelle Johnson: I borrow a truck and a trailer or have someone who has a truck and a trailer to take my animals to the processors.
[00:22:05]
So I have someone who will help me take my pigs to the butcher and then to the poultry processor, too. I know how to process poultry. [LAUGH] But I don't have the equipment yet. I do now have the funds to buy the equipment. I'm excited about that.
>> Laura Burgess: So what are some of your largest expenses kind of running this farm?
[00:22:28]
>> Chantelle Johnson: The largest expenses are probably the animal feed for the hogs. I spend lots of money on feed for the hogs, they eat a lot. I think it costs me about right now $1,000 to raise a hog from start to finish.
>> Laura Burgess: So is there a specific reason, just cuz of the pure amount, or is there, do you special feed, like are you farming organically, or-
[00:22:51]
>> Chantelle Johnson: So I use non-GMO feed, I think the reason why that number sounds scary to people is cuz I also track my time. A lot of farmers don't track their time, so my time is billed into that $1,000. It's not all feed or all animal, it's also my time in labor.
[00:23:06]
I gotta make some money somehow and I charge myself $25 an hour. So anytime I go out there and interact with the animals, it's $25 and hour for me to do that. And that number is built in, my time and labor, the cost of the non-GMO feed which I use which is a bit of a specialty.
[00:23:23]
I could use conventional feed but I'm promoting that the feed is non-GMO so that costs a little bit more. So the animal, the specialty feed, my time and labor, and the cost of getting the animal processed, too. So that's gas in that $1,000. That's paying someone to take my hogs is in $1,000.
[00:23:43]
Getting the animal processed is in that $1,000. So that $1,000 is accounting for a lot, and that's what it takes for one pig, at least right now.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so your use of non-GMO feed, what is your take on kind of the attitude towards non-GMO versus GMO?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah, so I think there's three levels of feed that you can use for your animals.
[00:24:07]
There's conventional, there's non-GMO, and then there's organic. GMO means that the seed has been modified. And the way the crop is grown, part of using pesticides and things like that. Non-GMO means that the seed was not genetically modified. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the farmer didn't use pesticides and things to grow that crop.
[00:24:31]
And then organic means it's a not genetically modified seed and that the farmer took some special time to not use those more harmful chemicals to spray. They still spray, people.
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]
>> Chantelle Johnson: They just have some that's just maybe not as harmful. And so I chose to go with the middle ground, because I do think about the cost as far as actual money spent on a product.
[00:24:59]
And so I could have used organic, and my pork chops would not be $10 a pound, they'd probably be 12. Right so thinking about that, and then my bottom line too. So I choose the [INAUDIBLE] because I thought I do wanna think about what I'm putting in my animals.
[00:25:15]
But just like if you have kids or some like that, you make concessions. Like I would love to have apples, but I can afford applesauce right now.
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]
>> Chantelle Johnson: So, that's kind of the road that I took.
>> Laura Burgess: Yeah, when you kind of expand more and gain more income, do you think you will then go on and kind of start doing organic or is that not something that interests you?
[00:25:37]
>> Chantelle Johnson: It's not something that interests me because what is organic really? We have organic Doritos. So If we have organic Doritos, does it really matter if I'm using organic feed for my animals?
>> Laura Burgess: Yeah.
>> Chantelle Johnson: So that's not something that's really important to me unless I was trying to become an organic farm and do those kinds of things.
[00:25:56]
Which I have some issues with that, too.
>> Laura Burgess: Could you expand on why?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah, so organic farming is difficult for a small farmers or even me. I consider myself to be a tiny farmer. I'm not out here with a hundred hogs or a thousand chickens and like 200 turkeys.
[00:26:16]
That sounds like a lot, but that's not a lot for a small farmer. And me, I just got a couple of, like, the most I might raise this year in hogs is probably ten hogs. I probably won't raise more than 400 chickens and probably 60 turkeys. That's a really tiny farm.
[00:26:30]
I can't even get, at my feed mill in order to get the discount on the hog feed, which is $11 a bag for a 50 pound bag. But if I want to get it $10 a bag, I would have to buy 40 bags of feed at a time.
[00:26:46]
I don't need that, [LAUGH] and plus I don't have that amount of money at a time to just throw on hog feed.
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]
>> Chantelle Johnson: So, if you think about it like that, then I definitely can't afford an organic certification that costs, I don't know, thousands of dollars.
[00:27:04]
And then, they want a percentage of your organic sales, right? So not only are you paying to get the cert, which also can take a number of years for you to get your cert, it costs thousand of dollars and every year, they want a percentage of your organic sales.
[00:27:23]
No, I'm not doing that. And at this stage it's not worth it because I'm not producing, I'm not a high producing farm. I focus more on quality and education. And so it just doesn't make sense for me to get something like that.
>> Laura Burgess: That makes complete sense. Do you have anyone that comes to you and asks if your hogs or your meat is organic?
[00:27:45]
>> Chantelle Johnson: All the time, all the time.
>> Laura Burgess: What do they do when you say, do you explain to them?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Just like I just told you.
>> Laura Burgess: Yeah.
>> Chantelle Johnson: And then they are like that makes sense. Because a lot of people don't think about what does it mean to be organic.
[00:27:55]
Right, then you tell them the steps you have to take to be organic. And then you talk about, you give them real numbers. I tell people I'm very free with how much it costs me to run things because I want people to know that the true cost of small or tiny farming, and what that means.
[00:28:12]
And why Walmart can sell you a whole chicken for 92 cents a pound and why I can't. And why you should question that 92 cents a pound chicken as well. And then when you put in those kind of perspectives, there's people like, that makes sense. Can we get one of your $6 a pound chickens please?
[00:28:35]
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH] Yeah, so selling your products, like how do you do it and to who?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yes, I primarily sell right now through the Salisbury Rural Farmer's Market. But I try to really push more wholesale buys from individual customers. I really try to get people to buy in bulk to save more and also it helps me with cash flow.
[00:29:01]
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH] Of course.
>> Chantelle Johnson: So I sell the farmers market and I sell individually to customers and then I might do special events where I go and take meat to special events. And then when I have events on the farm I sell products there too. So those are the three main streams.
[00:29:15]
>> Laura Burgess: So who do you kind like, is it just individuals, like who do you target for like wholesale? Like do you do it to any restaurants or anything like that?
>> Chantelle Johnson: I don't really work with restaurants or store, anything like that. You know it would be nice, but that's not, I really just like to sell directly to customers.
[00:29:34]
>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so what have been your experiences of selling your product at the farmer's market that you use?
>> Chantelle Johnson: It's been great. I was really well received from the community. Honestly, I think cuz I was just a different face. Honestly I think it was because I was just a black woman and people thought that to be fascinating.
[00:29:53]
It took a lot of people to realize that it was actually my farm. People was asking me who farms it, is this? Or, shocked about that. But I think I've been really well received and really well supported by a community and I've been told a number of times how good my meat is.
[00:30:10]
>> Laura Burgess: That's great. So,
>> Laura Burgess: You talk about this farm to table that you do in some of your events. I mean, you don't, you say you don't sell to restaurants, so how do you do that with your events?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah, so, a couple times a year, usually to honor the winter or summer solstice, I do, like, a farm-to-table dinner.
[00:30:36]
I supply the meat. And then I work with local farmers to get the produce and things like that. And it's just a party. We just come out here and people are just paying for an experience to be on the farm and just have a farm to table meal.
[00:30:47]
I promoted on social media like I do everything.
>> Laura Burgess: Mm-hmm.
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah, people just come out. Just have a good time.
>> Laura Burgess: Ooh goodness.
>> Chantelle Johnson: [LAUGH]
>> Laura Burgess: So
>> Laura Burgess: What difficulties have you experienced kind of producing and getting your products to the market? If you have experienced any difficulties, I mean, other than-
[00:31:07]
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah, like right now, the farmer's market starts April 14th in Salisbury, and all I have right now is pork. I have chicken, chicks come in April 16th, but they won't be available for purchase until June. And a reason for that is just not having the funds at the time to buy the chicks when I needed them to have it.
[00:31:27]
Not being able to store enough in my freezers. I could have raised 200 at the end of last year, put them in the freezer and had it ready for this year. But just not having that cash flow and a capacity to do that. So just those things, always worried about if I have enough product.
[00:31:43]
Being able to get the product ready and staff of people so people don't forget that I sell meat. So I'm always running against you know how you know how can i keep the meat going with with what I have.
>> Laura Burgess: So your experiences within the kind of this location, how has its proximity to uptown Charlotte or other cities kind of impacted your farm?
[00:32:09]
Do you think kind of the grown urbanization of like this area Is contributing positively to your operations or is it kind of a negative impact?
>> Chantelle Johnson: That's a great question. I have mixed feelings about it. So Salisbury is what, maybe 35 minutes north of just the very beginning of Charlotte.
[00:32:32]
So it's an easy drive. Salisbury is situated right snugly in between Charlotte, Gainsborough and western Salem. So we have the ability to kind of tap into some really awesome urban settings. Also Charlotte is expanding greatly. Either pushing people out who can't afford to live there or bringing people in who can and now it's like want to be like in a cool city in the South kinda thing.
[00:32:59]
And there's also a lot of development happening in Salisbury there because of it. Which means I'm happy for one because it means more customers for me, more people interested in the local food movement. Also scary cuz that means the land is being developed and not being reserved. So I have mixed feelings about it.
[00:33:16]
[LAUGH] You know in some respects as a business owner, as someone who's like looking at trends. I'm like I think Salisbury's gonna increase its population by like 25% over the next five to ten years. That's amazing. Like yes. But it's like, where are these people gonna live? Like right now, I live in Salisbury on the city limits, right?
[00:33:35]
So I have the ability to farm the way they do. But if they decide that this would be more Salisbury Central, what about my farm, right? So I have those things on my mind all the time.
>> Laura Burgess: Yeah, so is there any kind of local cooperative opportunities with other farms that you are involved with, or that you're aware of?
[00:34:03]
>> Chantelle Johnson: So when I first got started, I kinda stuck to myself. I just wanted to just heal my soul and just raise good food. But I realized that I had a bigger voice, I had a bigger purpose than just that. And so I've been trying to connect with more farmers, and not just any farmers but more black and brown farmers, I feel like that's really important to me.
[00:34:27]
And now Salisbury is in the process of developing a food council policy which I think is dope and I'm a part of that planning committee for that. To be a part of just really bringing together the various food groups in the county. So we can have a hub and really support each other around the work we do.
[00:34:45]
So I'm super excited about having a food policy council. I been trying to get myself into more conferences and things like that. Because everything I learned was self taught through someone else, YouTube or just working with other farmers. And now I'm kinda in a point where I really wanna just learn more a little bit more traditionally.
[00:35:05]
So go on some more farms, farmer conferences and workshops that really tighten up my skills, I've been doing that lot too. So those are different ways that are kinda connect with other farmers and getting more connected with the agriculture system here.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so you are trying to kinda gain some of these more traditional skills to kinda, as you say, tighten up your operations here.
[00:35:32]
Are there any ways that you are aware you deviate from those traditional ways that you think work better or work better for you?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Well, when it comes to traditional farming, hogs are raised in the building, right? My hogs are raised outside. [LAUGH] Which means that my hogs are more susceptible to, maybe, the inclement weather, like the hurricane that happened here last year.
[00:35:59]
My chickens are more susceptible to getting sick, and things like that. So, when it comes to conventional farming versus how I raise my animals, there's a huge difference! It would be really difficult to raise animals I raise at the capacity that we produce meat in this country. It would be almost impossible.
[00:36:20]
Because people like meat, and they want it quick and they want it cheap. So that comes at a price. Now do I think that we can raise more animals to feed our country this way? Yeah, we totally can. That means people have to eat less meat though. They'd have to be okay with that.
[00:36:35]
Pay a little bit more for it. So I do think that I do deviate from some of the conventional farmers so far as raising my animals outdoor and maybe spend a little bit more on my feed.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so you mentioned the weather. So how have you been kind of dealing with this kind of very temperamental weather that kind of the area is experiencing?
[00:37:02]
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah, when a hurricane happened last September people called Chantal, are you okay, are your animals safe, what are you gonna do? I was like, first of all calm down, I'm not on the coast. That was a good thing. And two, because I am a tiny farm and I believe in the power of quality over quantity, [LAUGH] my animals are fine.
[00:37:24]
The pigs knew exactly what to do better than I knew what to do with them, cuz they didn't have to compete a lot for resources.
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]
>> Chantelle Johnson: [LAUGH] And things like that. So I think because I don't raise a lot of animals at once, that when those kind of things happen, I'm able to do something about it.
[00:37:40]
Even if I wanted to process them I could without freaking out about it.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay.
>> Chantelle Johnson: So that's how I dealt with that.
>> Laura Burgess: So I'm just gonna kind of rope back cuz you mentioned that kind of when we were talking about kinda cooperatives, you wanted to kind of connect more with brown and black farmers.
[00:37:58]
So could you speak to a little bit of their experiences, or what you've experienced as well, in this industry or in this area?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Well black farmers tend to have a more difficult time getting loans and things like that and more when it comes to getting loans. Just in general in his country, black and brown people are more likely to be denied a loan than white folks.
[00:38:25]
And so just hearing those stories, the challenges that they have getting equipment and land and just the things that they need. Once again, I'm not on those scales because I did some things that I heard. And just learning from some of their challenges and how they try, how they get around it or how they work to get some of the things that they have done.
[00:38:48]
Did I answer your question?
>> Laura Burgess: Yes, That's fine. Cuz
>> Laura Burgess: Okay so, you said you kind of connect. Is there any kind of like official kind of cooperatives or kind of like committees or something that are within the kinda brown and communities?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah.
>> Laura Burgess: For agriculture?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yes so there's couple of different like organisations and agencies that I know.
[00:39:13]
Even within the Rafi Grant, told you about, there is a particular person who works directly with minority farmers. There is a minority conference called BUZZ, which is black urban farmers and growers that goes around the country. Last year it was here, in North Carolina, in Durham. And then there's a number, like there's black associations, in general, throughout the country that you could be a part of.
[00:39:37]
There's like a black sustainability summit that I was a part of a couple of years ago. So there's definitely a lot of associations, organizations and conferences is devoted to like black and brown minority farmers that I've been trying to connect with. Just to really see and learn from them, see what they do and how we can work together to overcome some challenges that we face.
[00:39:57]
>> Laura Burgess: Great, great. So I wanted to kind of expand on like your community outreach. Could you give me more kind of examples of how you integrate agriculture with this kind of like community I was I said, I got to sell their saw this Community Focus that you have.
[00:40:21]
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah, I think agriculture is such a broad term term that can fit in such a number of different ways. What I try to do is all the time remind people to be self-sufficient. By doing for themselves, and then I also stress the importance of generating your own income.
[00:40:42]
So like I said, right now, I'm doing this this speaking tour, I'm also organizing for June 10th. It's like a celebration of like the emancipation of slaves from slavery, I'm organizing, I'm putting together a tent and a movie. We'll have people come out to the farm and we're gonna do a movie screening of this film called Mudbound.
[00:41:03]
And Mudbound is a Netflix original movie that kind of talks about a black man and white man who both fall in the war and came back to their homes and were farming together. And kinda like talk about some of the ratio implications to that. So almost anything I do, if I'm trying to talk about race, I'm talking about farming.
[00:41:22]
If I'm talking about my babies, I'm talking about agriculture. If I'm talking about careers, I'm talking about agriculture, so almost anything, everything I do, I try to attach food agriculture to it. Cuz to me food is everything and it is in everything that we do. So I always try to find creative ways to address whatever issue I'm trying to address or something I'm trying to promote.
[00:41:44]
Like even yesterday, I did a post about positive periods on my Instagram and even that. I even said, sometimes what makes our periods painful, is the food we consume, right? If we eat too much sugar, you might get cramps, right? So how can you eat more fruits and vegetables, so you can have a more positive period experience [LAUGH]
[00:42:07]
>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]
>> Chantelle Johnson: So those are some various ways how I use community outreach and agriculture education to spread that message.
>> Laura Burgess: Do you see anybody else doing that in the area or anyone that you know intertwining agriculture with outreach?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yeah, I see a lot on my Instagram, people doing workshops or doing their own conferences.
[00:42:29]
Sometimes I even see, I follow a lot of doula people and I see them trying to address food insecurity issues, even in doula work. How do we help mamas eat better? How do we connect more farmers to the communitie, and things like that. Urban farmers are actually doing, in my opinion a really good job of educating people around that because they have a greater population that they can tap into, that they can persuade.
[00:42:55]
More than I do, like Salisbury is 30,000 people, Chicago is 2.7 million people. [LAUGH] So I definitely see, because I follow a particular kind of farming. I don't follow a lot of conventional farmers, I follow homesteaders and a lot of homes that is really try to drive home that message around education and practice and really teaching people the importance of agriculture and sustainable living.
[00:43:18]
>> Laura Burgess: Mm-hm, so what kind of aspects of farming do you see the community misunderstand or don't consider? Is part of homesteading or large agriculture?
>> Chantelle Johnson: When it comes to farming, I think what people miss is the price, I spent a lot of time in a farmer's market. In a farmer's market educating people about the price of my food.
[00:43:43]
And why, like I said, my chicken is $6 a pound and for a whole bird in Walmart is $0.92 a pound. So I spend a lot of time educating around. When you have a poultry house that's as big as from this end of my property to the next.
[00:44:02]
Almost a football sized field with 10,000 birds in it, and you can, when you scale up, you can reduce you can decrease costs, right? But you provide to fee, you can reduce costs when you genetically modify a bird you can reduce, it can reduce costs. And so, those type of ways, you do it like that, you can have a $0.92 chicken.
[00:44:25]
[LAUGH] I'm never going to forget the first year I had turkeys, this lady said, $7 a pound for a turkey? I can go to Simply Good and get a turkey for $40, yeah, I was happy that she said she was gonna go to Simply Good. Simply Good is like our local like health food store here in town, super cool.
[00:44:45]
And she was willing to spend $40 on a turkey opposed to the $20 she would've probably spent at Walmart. Okay, I appreciate that. [LAUGH] Step up, [LAUGH] but still she never asks about, okay can you explain to me more about the cost of your product and how do you raise them?
[00:45:04]
How did you get to that price, cuz I'm very, very open. That costs me $40 to raise a turkey, so I'm damn sure not about to sell no turkey for $40, it costs me $40 to raise it. So once again, that $40 includes my time and labor, what would cost to the process them, all sum up.
[00:45:20]
And if it cost me $40 to raise it tell the people, if it cost me $40 to raise it, what do you think I should get in return?
>> Chantelle Johnson: What should I get in return, if it cost me $40 to raise it? What should I get in return?
[00:45:33]
Should I get my $40 back plus 10? Should I just get my $40 back? Cuz if that's the case, I'm not gonna do it [LAUGH] and things like that. So I think when it comes to the price of food and when it comes to homesteading especially when I'm pushing this whole off grid thing, right.
[00:45:52]
Now, I live off grid-ish, and what I mean by that is, I manage my own power system. So I use solar panel for my energy and my lights, but I'm still plugged in to my landowners, their well. So and that's powered by traditional electricity. And sometimes when people think about people living off grid they think about Someone lives in a cave disconnected from the world.
[00:46:17]
And some people have an issue with that. If you're off grid, then you shouldn't use propane, you should use a stick in the woods. Now, come on now, so I get it on both ends. I get people who think I'm in a cave and people who think well you're not true to being off grid.
[00:46:33]
Those people I don't focus on, because you don't understand my life. [LAUGH] And that doesn't mean you can't tap into technologies, it's just how you use those technologies. And so, when people come to the farm, that's why I invite people to the farm all the time, when people come into the tiny house, first thing they say is that's not too bad!
[00:46:51]
>> Chantelle Johnson: It's actually pretty big, is this all your stuff? This is it, and I still feel like you got too much stuff in here. [LAUGH] So those are some of the misconceptions that I run into when it comes to just homesteading, living off-grid, and when it comes to people buying food from me, from the farmer's market and things like that.
[00:47:12]
>> Laura Burgess: So how do you feel about, I mean price is important, I mean, farmers need to live. I think it's kind of been a common trend is that agriculture won't make you a rich man or rich woman. So do you think they, in big companies such as things like Walmart and all these larger, do you think they're kind of, how do you think they're affecting the kind of agricultural at the kind of this level, or maybe even at kind of larger, maybe more sort of conventional, but do you see them negatively affecting your operations?
[00:47:53]
>> Chantelle Johnson: Yes and no, we are both, I used to say we're not a competition, but in some respects I'm in competition with Walmart and the like. Even Whole Foods, Whole Foods not selling at $0.92 a pound, but they might sell it for 3 or 4 a pound. Or still less than mine [LAUGH] but Yes, as far as they're producing in my opinion products.
[00:48:23]
Whether there is fruits and vegetables, and we eat this. This is not quality. They encouraging people to eat out of season. They got watermelons. Watermelons right now in April and watermelons are gonna season until July. And I think when you eat at a season, you don't give things your body needs during that time of the year.
[00:48:44]
That's what your body needs and I want to ask not what it means in the summertime is the reason why we consume certain fruits and vegetables and certain times of the year. So I think it's giving people false ideas they can have mangoes anytime without understanding where a mango comes from and what does it mean to have a mango in December.
[00:49:01]
Even when it comes to vegans, you want to have your quinoa. What does it mean to be able get quinoa any time of year when there are people in Ecuador who are having a hard time farming to meet the needs of these boogie eaters in the US. Or when it comes to eating strawberries, the Mexicans are out there picking your strawberries.
[00:49:20]
There's no machine out there picking strawberries, you have to hand pick those. So, when it comes to things like that, when it comes to environment, when it comes to real people in agriculture field it makes people disconnected, they don't know what it takes to pick a strawberry. They don't know what it takes to raise a chicken, even if you commission a farmer and poultry house, that farmer doesn't make as much, the money not in raising the animal.
[00:49:49]
The money is not in raising the animals, the money is in selling the animals. Or even that poultry farmer who has that big **** poultry house with all that fancy equipment is a contracted to Tyson meat, right. And if that person doesn't produce a good product that farmer can be out of business, right.
[00:50:06]
If they don't get to the ways they want or if the flock gets sick. Don't let your flock get sick. It's over for that farmer. He or she might not be able to get a contract with anyone. So when it comes to these big corporations and food, they just make people so disconnected because people only think they get the food from the grocery store.
[00:50:26]
They don't think about the farmer, they don't think about the cost of getting that food, and what does it mean. So and for me that means that I have to spend a lot of time educating. This conversation that we're having I have all of the time, especially at the beginning of the farmer's market season.
[00:50:41]
When there's new people trying to try something new. Why this need, why this? Why buy from the farmer's market? Why buy local? So when it comes to that definitely it makes it difficult. But when people do come in me that means that they're thinking a little bit there differently right, and now I have opportunity to persuade a customer to meats differently, right?
[00:51:05]
What meat meaning, like M-E-A-T. [LAUGH] So, yeah, those are my thoughts on it.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so you highlight this kind of disconnect between the general public and their food. Do you, I mean education, I know it's a big part of that and as you've been speaking, was huge part of it.
[00:51:24]
Do you think there's any other things that either the agricultural community or people at the other end can do to kind of bridge this disconnect?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Invite people to your farm. [LAUGH] Invite people to be a participant in the food system. Beyond being a consumer, what other ways can we invite people to be a part of the agriculture system?
[00:51:45]
Can I come and volunteer, can I come and look at some spreadsheets and numbers? Can I come and be a part of the market and the advertising? How can we get it? How can we reach degree and master's in school and elementary schools the things like that? I think is we need to find different ways for people to participate beyond just consuming and just doing just verbal educational things and things like that.
[00:52:10]
People need to get hands on, get their hands dirty. [LAUGH]
>> Laura Burgess: So, how do you sustain something like this in the long run?
>> Chantelle Johnson: I'm thinking about that a lot, I'm 31 years old still young, but these needs will not be young forever. So even when I first got into homesteading I remember when I was 100% off grid, I had jumped down to the creek.
[00:52:33]
It was five feet down to put water in the bucket to give to the pigs and I remember the pain I felt doing that. One reason why farming isn't attractive to people is because it's back breaking labor, it's a reason why we have immigrants. In the fields picking strawberries, okay?
[00:52:57]
It's because it's really hard work, and so one way that I'm thinking about sustaining this work is building a sustainable community, like my dream would be to have a community fund forty acres. Where I have about ten to 12 people on that land given a certain acreage doing certain kind of agricultural work, that those different agricultural enterprises will sustain the land.
[00:53:28]
Also because I'm not a very high producing farm, I have to generate income other ways. That's where these events come in. The speaking tour come in. So I think, when I'm talking about sustainability in agriculture, I think you have to diversify where you're income's, where your income comes from and the different products and services that you offer.
[00:53:50]
Because as much as I would love to just raise pigs. [LAUGH] Just like a cold can wipe out a flood. A cold could wipe out your herd or your pigs. So I think it's important in any business that you have. You should always think about sustainability and how can the How can a business sustain itself on multiple operations and not just one alone?
[00:54:13]
>> Laura Burgess: In what ways do you kind of sustain the environment? Cuz I know that's kind of a big talking point at the moment. Kind of internationally, nationally. How is that spoken about or dealt with in your experiences?
>> Chantelle Johnson: The way I deal with it is not racing around animals, being mindful about my water usage, trying to do a good job of managing the animals around the land, so not leaving them in one spot at a time, so they're spreading their nitrogen throughout the farm and not in one spot.
[00:54:48]
So those are the different ways that I try to just take care of the environment with the work that I do.
>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so what advice would you give to someone who wanted to get into homesteading or kind of get into agriculture?
>> Chantelle Johnson: Just do it, and I know it's easier said than done.
[00:55:04]
People come up to me and they have all the excuses in the world. I've got debt, I've got kids, I've got a husband, I've got a wife, I've got this, I've got that. And I just roll my eyes.
>> Chantelle Johnson: Because [LAUGH] all of that is just fear based.
[00:55:21]
It's just excuses because we have come to accept the conveniences as they are. We like them, don't get me wrong, I like having a dishwasher sometimes, but sometimes I wish I had a little bit more space. But I wouldn't give up my life for the world.
>> Laura Burgess: Those stinkbugs.
[00:55:39]
>> Chantelle Johnson: I wouldn't give up my life for anything right now. And I work really hard to maintain the level of liberation that I had. So the best thing I see is to just do it and to start small. So if you wanna start home studying but you live in that high-rise in Manhattan, just get you some pots and plant some herbs, start right there.
[00:56:02]
If you have ten acres and it's just sitting there, go out and plow a row and put some carrots in it. Or invite some friends out and have a brainstorming session around a bonfire. There's so many different ways that you can enter the agriculture system. And it doesn't have to be buying land, right away.
[00:56:22]
And I'm a perfect example, I still don't own no land but I'm still able to raise up 200 chickens, 60 turkeys, and nine hogs. And no equipment. And by myself. So if I can do it, anybody can do it. So you just got do it. You gonna pick on what you want, with what outcome you want.
[00:56:41]
Here we go, here is the secret. One you have to have vision. Have to believe that there is something you wanna do, you have to be able to see it. Two you need to build a squad. That's your community, those are the people who are gonna hold you accountable, those are gonna be the core people that support you.
[00:56:58]
Then you just got to do it. Just got to do it.
>> Chantelle Johnson: Whoever is listening, I want you to know that you are beautiful and you're amazing.
[00:57:24]
You have everything within yourself that you need to follow your dreams.
>> Laura Burgess: I think that's a great way to end the interview. Thank you so much.
>> Chantelle Johnson: [LAUGH] Thank you.
Society of St. Andrew - Jean Siers
Jean Siers is the Charlotte Regional Gleaning Coordinator for the Society of St. Andrews. She has been in her position since 2012. The Society of St. Andrews works to bring people together harvesting and sharing healthy food, reduce food waste, and help to build communities by feeding neighbors in need. In this interview, Jean shares her experiences with gleaning, what types of things she gleans, how she gets the produce to people in need and to agencies, and where she hopes the organization can grow. Jean reflects on Charlotte’s food shed, the food deserts of Charlotte, and how organizations can better work together to eliminate hunger in Charlotte.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:17 | Introduction/ Biography of Jean |
| 0:00:52 | Day to Day |
| 0:02:18 | Day of Gleaning |
| 0:04:57 | Building Relationships |
| 0:06:37 | How to Glean |
| 0:08:37 | Volunteer Supervisors |
| 0:09:09 | How find who needsproduce and get to the people that need it |
| 0:10:45 | Food Needs for People in Charlotte |
| 0:12:11 | Farmer Benefit through Gleaning |
| 0:13:41 | Amount of produce able to glean last year |
| 0:15:27 | Farm Waste/Stringent Regulations on Food |
| 0:17:06 | Changes in Farmers/Farming |
| 0:19:02 | Characteristics of Farms that work with |
| 0:19:52 | Strengths and Challenges in Charlotte Farming- Ex. Barbee Farms |
| 0:22:17 | Weather affecting Gleaning |
| 0:23:22 | Strengths and Challenges of Gleaning in Charlotte |
| 0:24:42 | Steps to get gleaned food to agency/people |
| 0:27:07 | Improving getting food to hungry people |
| 0:28:23 | Funding |
| 0:29:08 | How to get better at getting product to people, growing organization |
| 0:30:45 | How closely tied to Society of Saint Andrews "corporate" |
| 0:32:16 | Vacations/Dealing with Responsibility and Burn-out of position |
| 0:35:55 | No government support/ don't really work with government |
| 0:36:47 | Connection to Organizations/ Farming Associations |
| 0:38:07 | Advice to other organizations trying to feed people |
| 0:40:02 | Seniors don't get food on weekends |
| 0:41:07 | Need there 24/7 but nonprofits can't be there 24/7 |
| 0:42:29 | Don't pay farmers to glean |
| 0:43:27 | Gleaning meat products |
| 0:44:27 | Gleaning Live Tilapia |
| 0:46:12 | Connecting Live Tilapia with Refugee Community |
| 0:49:07 | Greater Charlotte Foodshed and Food Deserts |
| 0:51:33 | What things have other communities done that we could implement |
| 0:54:25 | Hope for the Future of Society of St. Andrews in the next 5-10 years |
| 0:55:37 | Characteristics of Volunteers |
| 0:57:17 | Biggest problem managing volunteer was distribution |
| 0:58:51 | Needs in Volunteer Base |
| 1:00:37 | Misconceptions of Gleaning/ Serving the People they Do |
[00:00:08]
>> Victoria Lance: So I am Victoria Lance and I'm interviewing [INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE] off Park Road on March 27 of 2019. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, Jean?
>> Jean Sears: Sure. I am born and raised in northern Minnesota but I've lived in Charlotte for about 30 years, a little bit more.
[00:00:28]
And always been really active and involved in the community in a lot of ways. So we raised our son, he was long gone, and I was looking for a way to give back to the community, and got involved with the sight of St. Andrew. And I've been working for them for the last six years as the Charlotte area community coordinator.
[00:00:48]
>> Victoria Lance: So tell me a little bit about your day to day. What does being a community coordinator mean and how do you do it?
>> Jean Sears: It's different every day which is one thing that I love about it. Usually in the summer time, a day can start like this, a farmer will call me and say we finished cleaning out three acres of tomatoes and there's still lots left.
[00:01:12]
If you can get a group out here before Saturday, when we pull up the sticks and plow up the tomatoes, we can have as many as you want. So I will send out an email to, I have a database and about 2,000 volunteers. I send out an email through contact to those volunteers.
[00:01:30]
Looking for folks that can come help glean and also bring trucks, or SUVs, or some other vehicle that can help distribute. So over the next two or three days, those people respond. And out of those 2,000 volunteers, I'll usually get maybe 15 or 20 who will be able to come on a specific day at a specific time.
[00:01:51]
And our locations are usually within an hour of Charlotte. So sometimes that limits who can come as well, it's just too far for some folks. So I spend that time keeping track of who is coming. And then I send them all of the information that they need so that they'll be safe in the field.
[00:02:10]
I can keep track of who's gonna be there, and where that food is going. And then on the day of the gleaning you get up bright and early, you drive to the field. Everybody shows up at the same time, we all go to the field together, and we go through field picking whatever it is, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, and wiggling for about two hours, and then there's vehicles waiting.
[00:02:30]
We load those vehicles with the produce, and it goes directly from the fields to the agencies that we're supporting, and the neighborhoods. So it's not really farm-to-table for folks that wouldn't have access to that food otherwise. So that's one thing that I do burn a week. We're also very busy doing what we call salvage gleanings, and those are when a farmer or a distributor has food that's already harvested and often bought stuff and ready to market, and they just can't sell it for some reason.
[00:03:02]
It could be an 800-pound bin of zucchini that are 10 inches long and they can only market what are seven and nine inches long. So the rest would get thrown out. So if they have something that's perfectly edible and no place to sell it, they'll call me and I'll send folks out to get it.
[00:03:19]
And that's, so again that's where the relationship building comes in. Who's got a truck and who's in that area, and who can use 800 pounds of zucchini, and so I'm busy doing that. I'm busy trying to build relationships with farmers and spread the word about what we do and why we do it.
[00:03:39]
Work with them safely. Farmers are under a lot of constraints timewise. We try to be really cognizant of that, so that we're not taking them away from the work that they have to do. So we work with it their schedule as much as we can, and we try to always show up and leave when we say we're going to show up and leave.
[00:04:00]
And we try to let them know that we're going to respect their farm because that's their livelihood. So, and we'll be safe in the fields which is very important to them because there's liability issues that they need to be reassured that we're covering that for them. So there's a lot of relationship building that goes on in my job.
[00:04:19]
I actually spend a lot of time going to schools and churches and talking to folks about food waste and hunger, because people just don't really realize what a huge issue both components of what I do are.
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah.
>> Jean Sears: It's public relations, it's relationship building, it's actually physically working in the fields, distributing food.
[00:04:44]
So a day can be really interesting in my world, yes it can.
>> Victoria Lance: So how do you meet the farmers and kind of start building those relationships?
>> Jean Sears: We do it different ways. I inherited luckily a lot of farmers when I took the job, and they've been very supportive.
[00:05:02]
I would go to farmer's markets and just visit with the farmers that I'm buying from, and let them who I am and what I do. My volunteers are often my best ambassadors, and they'll do the same thing if they're out on the country driving by a farm stand.
[00:05:19]
They'll just stop and visit, buy a dozen ears of corn, and then say why did you do with the corn that you can't sell? And we've got that way. Word of mouth from the other farmers has gotten they found farmers find us through other farmers. So they'll ask what do you do with the corn you can't sell?
[00:05:40]
And he'll say, I call Jean Syers at Sights of Saint Andrew, and then they'll call me. And also farmers find us through social media. I had one farmer say he had grapes, it was the end of the new pick season for his muscadines, and he went online, looked us up.
[00:06:02]
And he was a little uncertain, and so he looked us up on Facebook and said everyone just looks so happy, I thought, how could this be a bad thing?
>> Victoria Lance: [LAUGH]
>> Jean Sears: And so he called us and he harvested probably about 1000 pounds of grapes at his farm.
[00:06:17]
So it's a matter of me going out and looking for them, and them coming and looking for me. And my volunteers being really good representatives for me as well, yeah.
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah, so how do you, cuz the farmers have already taken a lot of the marketable produce. How do you teach people how to pick what people can use and what do you leave behind?
[00:06:40]
>> Jean Sears: Great question. We do a little tutorial at the beginning of every gleaning and show people what we're picking and how to pick it. And my farmers are for the most part really good, and they won't tell me they've got a field of something that's basically gonna end up inedible for us.
[00:06:59]
So we show them how to pick them, what's an ear of corn that's a good ear of corn. We show them how to pick tomatoes, and take the little top off, that little stem cap, cuz if you put that in a box with a bunch of other tomatoes with the little cap it's gonna poke a hole in it and get the rest of them bad.
[00:07:16]
So we talk them through that. We let them know that, number one, folks will eat green tomatoes as fried green tomatoes or they'll make relish or chow chow. And most green tomatoes will eventually ripen, so it's okay to pick green tomatoes. So we do a little tutorial at the beginning of every gleaning, and just talk people through kind of a food safety of it, how to pick what's good.
[00:07:40]
Because a lot of people really wanna save everything. And number one, if you save a tomato that has a bad spot on it, it's gonna make its neighbors sad in about two days. That whole box is gonna go squishy. So we have to talk them through that, that it's okay to leave stuff behind.
[00:08:00]
And also we wanna preserve as much as possible the dignity of the people that That we're taking food to, and you don't do that by showing up with a box of half rotten tomatoes or corn that's got worms in it. We do that every time we go out to [INAUDIBLE] that's just basically.
[00:08:20]
Now I have volunteers that work with me on a regular basis, supervisors, and so they'll go out in the field as well and talk to people as they're gleaning, do you have any questions? What do you need? And just work with them that way. So that's kinda what we try to do.
[00:08:37]
>> Victoria Lance: How many supervisors do you have working right now?
>> Jean Sears: I'm really lucky I have about 20.
>> Victoria Lance: Okay, yeah.
>> Jean Sears: And some of them can help me once or twice a season. Some of them help me a couple of times a month during the busy time of the year.
[00:08:50]
So they're wonderful volunteers, and really kind of a core group. Most of them distribute, [COUGH] excuse me. Most of them distribute as well, so, and not only come and help me run the gleanings, but load their cars and trucks, and take it [CROSSTALK] too. So they're very dedicated folks.
[00:09:08]
>> Victoria Lance: So you do gleaning, and then immediately you take it to Loaves & Fishes, or the neighborhood people, things like that, the Bowl. How do you make those connections to find who needs it and get it to them?
>> Jean Sears: Again, I rely a lot on my volunteers, they’re usually very well-connected in their communities, and then I'm also active in that world.
[00:09:35]
So when Elisha Brewett started The Bulb I thought she's going directly to neighborhoods with all this food. So for instance we get muscadine grapes, a lot of muscadine grapes in the fall. But agencies like Friendship Raisin have taken, they have seeds in them and they can't send the products up to their customers with seeds in them.
[00:10:01]
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah.
>> Jean Sears: So then we start running into this wall of, well, if I can't send it to soup kitchens because it's too difficult for them to process, and I can't send it to places like that. So Alicia was a fantastic contact. So I called her and I had met her a couple different things.
[00:10:18]
I didn't know her really but I'd met her. So I called her and said would your folks love muscadines? And she said they would love muscadines. So it's just a matter of kind of keeping those conversations going, those links open and just listening for where people might need things.
[00:10:39]
>> Victoria Lance: So what do you see as some of the biggest needs for people in Charlotte, food-wise?
>> Jean Sears: Food-wise? I think access is huge, that folks who are living in lower-income neighborhoods have access to kind of corner stores, which all have big signs on the window that's say we accept snap benefits.
[00:11:02]
But those stores really don't sell fresh food and I don't think there's really much debate that fresh produce is better for you than processed foods. But those folks in those neighborhood have limited access to that. And Charlotte really struggles with its transit system, making it easy for people to get from those neighborhoods easily to where they could buy better food.
[00:11:33]
So I think access, and that's just, grocery stores don't locate in those neighborhoods. People don't have access to transportation to get to better food, and it's really expensive for the most part. Fresh produce is more expensive than junk food. So it's an access issue. Distance and money and [INAUDIBLE].
[00:12:05]
>> Victoria Lance: So going back to farmers a little bit, how did they benefit from [INAUDIBLE].
>> Jean Sears: They benefit most through just good will, and I hope good karma. There used to be a gleaning tax credit in North Carolina which was a pretty good deal for the farmers. That they would receive basically 10% of the value of the [INAUDIBLE] produce as a tax credit.
[00:12:33]
And probably 20,
>> Jean Sears: I started 2012, 2013 to 2014, the North Carolina legislature took away the delinquent tax credit in their tax of them all. So they still get a small tax credit from the federal government, and I think South Carolina might still have a gleaning tax credit.
[00:12:56]
But the monetary benefit for them it's not great anymore, which is a shame, because they operate on very fine margins. So I think really, they do it because the farmers don't raise food to waste it. And the ones that we work with have a really strong belief that if there's hungry people in the community and they've fed everybody that they can feed, that are gonna pay them for it, they might as well let somebody else have that food.
[00:13:29]
So at this point, you just have to rely on their goodwill, for the most part.
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah, so how much produce and stuff do you tend to be able to glean, and get to those consumers in a given month, or year?
>> Jean Sears: Last year, in Charlotte, and I know this cuz I just updated my PowerPoint presentation, we did 650,000 gallons of produce in just our area.
[00:13:55]
And in North Carolina it's 5.6 million
>> Victoria Lance: Wow.
>> Jean Sears: Which is a lot of food. And that includes both what we do in the fields, what we do salvage, and what we call large loads. Where we'll get an entire 40,000 pound tractor trailer load of potatoes from warehouses down east that can't sell them, they're seconds, or whatever.
[00:14:18]
And, a church will sponsor that, or a school or whoever community. And was sponsored by helping offset our translocation costs. We'll bring that truck load of produce to that agency, to that school or church or whatever it is. Drop off 40,000 pounds of food and they have volunteers bag up and divvy it out in the community.
[00:14:40]
So it's a combination of large loads, salvage and [INAUDIBLE]. And then just what we go into the fields and glean, and that's a pretty amazing number. We'll go into a tomato field with 20 to 30 volunteers, and in a couple of hours we can pull out 3,000 pounds of tomatoes.
[00:14:59]
It's really amazing, you know? And it's not like we're skilled workers, you know? We're really lame for the most part, you know? We're not, we don't know what we're doing. And we don't do it efficiently. But that just gives you a small idea then of how much is out there if we're able to save that.
[00:15:20]
Much a couple of hours.
>> Victoria Lance: I read an article recently that said that farms waste more than you could possibly imagine. I think they said most, usually 30% of everything that farms produce is nice, but they were saying 30% is really the market.
>> Jean Sears: Yeah, and it's not I mean, it's not on the farmers.
[00:15:46]
It's that we have such stringent regulations mo what can be hard with Ed, there's a really great pop. Recent study about just in North Carolina, the produce that's wasted at the farm level and I think it was cabbage, I mean, it's like if there was 275 pounds of cabbage per acre that was marketable, there was 3,000 pounds per acre that wasn't marketable.
[00:16:14]
>> Victoria Lance: Isn't that crazy?
>> Jean Sears: It was just crazy, and that's because maybe the heads had split, or whatever and then there's another level of that was inedible. So it's not like they're counting food that no one should be eating, there's a lot of it that's inedible for whatever reason.
[00:16:32]
But yeah, it's an amazing amount of food that's wasted at the farm level and the farmers, it's not like they wanna waste that food. It's just it doesn't pay them to pay their workers to spend the time picking fruit that they can't sell. That's just crazy economics, so it's not like the farmers are planting that, thinking this will be great to just discount they can only sell so much because it's gotta be quick and easy.
[00:17:03]
>> Victoria Lance: Have you seen any changes in the people involved in agriculture or the crops or livestock that are raised throughout your time in living in Charlotte?
>> Jean Sears: Since I've only been doing it for about six years, probably not, I think there's more I think there's more smaller farms I've seen and that's maybe just who's calling me.
[00:17:28]
But I think statistically, you can look at the growth of smaller farms and organic farms and so there's more of that going on, and I've been encouraged because I've seen a lot of younger farmers. And I don't know, I know they say the average age of a farmer in the United States is 56 or 60, or something, which I don't think is old but others might.
[00:17:55]
But I work with a lot of farmers that are probably in their 30s which is encouraging to me. There may be second or third generation on the farm and taking over and what I see them doing is really working hard to diversify what they're raising. So, Barbee Farms that we work with up in Cabarrus County, they just plant this incredible range of produce and as soon as they're finished with something they're plowing it up and they're putting something else into that.
[00:18:33]
So that they can always be offering this variety to people because this is what we demand is a lot of variety. And so I think the farmers have gotten more marketing, and have had to get more marketing savvy that way and I don't know how much that's changed since I've been doing it, but I think that's really a trend with the farmers.
[00:18:58]
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah, I completely agree with that. How big are the farms that you usually glean from, like acreage wise, in units?
>> Jean Sears: Yeah, well I don't know [LAUGH] I think Barbee Farms is maybe under 100 acres, I work with a farm in Union County, and I don't know how much land they own, but I know they farm hundreds of acres.
[00:19:23]
And then I've worked with the little organic farm, we were gleaning is maybe three acres so Ii's just really wide, it's kind of whoever calls us.
>> Victoria Lance: So what do you think some of the strengths or challenges of farming in the Charlotte area, that you've seen?
>> Jean Sears: There's so much development pressure, and I keep mentioning Barbee Farms cuz we do work with them so closely, but there's a great story, and you can probably find it online.
[00:20:02]
When they were realigning Pitts School Road in Cabarrus County And the NCDOT was going to realign it directly through their farm, which is a Century Farm, meaning it's been in the family for over 100 years. And it was going to cut off like with their houses and their processing areas here and the fields are here, the road was going to come right through the middle of it.
[00:20:25]
Meaning that they couldn't get the food and it's a busy road, so they wouldn't be able to get their tractors across the road and all their processing equipment. So that was several years ago, long before I started, but there was a woman who was in my position, Marilyn Marks and she started a petition and a movement to save their farm because people just don't see that as a valuable asset to the community.
[00:20:59]
It's just like well it's just land, what difference does it make but that's land that's feeding us and they were successful and stopped the road realignment move over to the side enough that it preserved their farm. But you know, not every farmer is that lucky and I think just the taxes, as houses start the spring up around you, the taxes go up for you.
[00:21:27]
It's harder for you to get from field to field because you're in the way of a million cars trying to get to their houses. So the development pressure is a huge, huge problem for the farmers in an urban area and if you wanna start farming, the land prices are just going to be prohibitive.
[00:21:48]
So, I think the development pressure is probably one of the largest thing, largest problems and it's just tough being a farmer. I think the weather is more precarious now then it used to be, the extreme highs and lows and crazy wets that we get and rain, so I think that's been a huge pressure on them as well.
[00:22:14]
>> Victoria Lance: So does the weather affect you all in any way?
>> Jean Sears: Yeah, yeah I have to tell people, a lot of folks will sign up for gleaning, like they'll wanna bring their school group out or their church group or whatever and so they want us to glean on a specific date.
[00:22:30]
And I always tell them it's dependent on crop availability and weather, because we can't go into the fields if it's wet or muddy, or whatever. So that affects us, and sometimes well crops will just get wiped out when the hurricanes, the zucchini and the yellow squash that we salvage glean in Union County.
[00:22:53]
When those hurricanes come through in the fall, it'll just, when those winds are starting, it just pick up the plants and twists them up right out of the ground, because the plants are so big, or the water will wash them out. So If they have nothing to sell, we've got nothing to glean, so yeah, so we're very weather dependent as well yeah.
[00:23:19]
>> Victoria Lance: So what do you think some of the strengths and challenges of gleaning, and then distributing in Charlotte or Lure are?
>> Jean Sears: Strengths are that we're a big population center and, so it's usually pretty easy to find places that can absorb the produce and give it out to people.
[00:23:44]
So, that's a really helpful thing, I've got a lot of great volunteers and great connections with agencies. The challenge for us is reaching those outlying areas just because many don't when there's that much distance involved. It doesn't mean that there aren't hungry people there, it means that I don't have volunteers that are driving to Alexander.
[00:24:07]
County or and it's much more difficult to build the relationships that you have to build to know when agencies are open. When they can accept food, how much they can accept. It's a pretty intricate amount of stuff that you have to work through to get a load of food to somebody.
[00:24:27]
So the biggest challenge for us is that our area is so large to the extent of the counties, that it's tough to reach those outlying areas. That are just as in need of the food as Charlotte is.
>> Victoria Lance: So what are some of the steps that it takes to go clean this food I have to struggle to pay Loaves and Fishes?
[00:24:51]
Can you take it? How do you take it?
>> Jean Sears: Agencies like Loaves and Fishes, I'll call them. You say, I've got to say the farmer calls me and he says, I have 800 pounds of zucchini, you can pick up a bin. Then I'll call Loaves & Fishes and they have great staff there.
[00:25:13]
And I'll say, if I can get a driver that can go out and pick it up, what days and times work for you? Because their schedule is really busy, they're always sending trucks at pantries. So there's not always somebody there to offload, the food for us. So there's kind of a puzzle pieces together to when somebody going to be there can I get a driver at the right time to go pick up the food and get it to lots of fisher.
[00:25:44]
Which is under a time frame. So it's just a matter of logistics and sometimes it works and sometimes I just have to call them and say, my driver could get it to you Tuesday, but not Wednesday, and there's nobody there Tuesday to accept it so I'll just have to send it somewhere else.
[00:26:02]
That's just how it goes. And I try to keep track of, as much as possible, when agencies are open and when they can accept food. So that I'm not calling them and offering them things that they can't take. Cuz that's just teasing them. [INAUDIBLE] If you were open, you could have this.
[00:26:21]
Yeah, and so you do that. It's the same process for everybody. It's less complicated when it's a sweet lady from Rowan County putting 200 pounds of tomatoes in her car that she's taking to elderly folks in the church. I don't have to have anything to do with that.
[00:26:41]
I know Ms. Hanny's got it covered, and she'll make sure those tomatoes get to people who need them. But so that kind of grassroots stuff is much easier for me, it's harder for them, cuz they're the ones doing the work, going door-to-door. But, working with the agencies, yeah, you really have to work with them, their time constraints and their manpower constraints and volunteer constraints as well.
[00:27:04]
>> Victoria Lance: So what are the some of the ways that you see that are there any breaks in that system, and how do you see maybe fixing some of those? What do you think we can do to improve getting the food to the hungry?
>> Jean Sears: There's a lot of discussion, and I think it will be fruitful, that all the agencies dealing with hunger in Charlotte.
[00:27:26]
And there's a lot of us, we just need to be more collaborative and more collegial, and Charlotte Food Policy Council is doing work around that. And we're all trying to meet, and talk about ways that we can work together. So that we're not duplicating what everybody is doing, and we know that we're getting the food to the people that need it the most.
[00:27:50]
So, I truly think there will be some forward motion on that. It's not like we're all cut-throat and trying to elbow each other out of the way. It happens often that grant money is involved, that everybody needs to protect a certain amount of their turf, or feels like they do.
[00:28:11]
And so I'm really encouraged that the conversations towards more collaboration are moving forward. I think that's gonna be huge.
>> Victoria Lance: So speaking of grants, you guys how are you funded? Do you get grants?
>> Jean Sears: Yeah kind of a combination of individual donors, faith communities, and then grants, so it's a three [INAUDIBLE].
[00:28:37]
And then the bulk of what the value of what we I mean of comes from the donated produce, but, yeah, so for our bottom line Individual donors, churches, faith communities, and grants.
>> Victoria Lance: So what do you think is the best way to get this product on? And the produce and stuff onto the tables of the consumers and other people who need it.
[00:29:14]
Where can we grow? Could we, like farmers' markets, or?
>> Jean Sears: We do connect with farmers' markets. I have some pretty dedicated gleamers that go to the farmers' markets every Saturday when the farmers markets are getting to shut down and gather produce. Yeah, I mean, I think there's some easy ways we could grow and there's some talk of shrinking our territories and hiring more of us because there's up to a certain point.
[00:29:44]
I work 30 hours a week, but most people in my position work 15, you can only move so much food in 15 hours a week. So there's some conversation around shrinking our territories and automatically goes up to Alexander County and Hickory. I don't get up there very often and there's lots of food up there and there's lots of hungry people up there.
[00:30:06]
So if we could put a coordinator in Hickory, hang out then obviously I could focus more here and that person would focus there. So I think if for us to save more food than we're saving and we're saving a lot of food already but to save more, we're gonna have to kind of rethink the model a little bit and get more people involved and more hours.
[00:30:35]
I mean, it's just it's all you can do. Hopefully, grants will support that because, obviously, the food is out there.
>> Victoria Lance: So how closely do you work with the Big Island people, and the Society of Saint Andrew people on kind of a regular basis?
>> Jean Sears: Big Island, not much at all, I don't really have very much contact with them.
[00:31:01]
I work really closely with our Durham Office. And they're very supportive in helping me however I need help. And my current boss is a Methodist minister as well, so he has great connections with agencies across the state, with volunteers across the state. So sometimes I'll call them and say, I've got this, and I don't know where to send it.
[00:31:28]
And he'll say I know the perfect place. So I'm really lucky to have that kind of support. From our state office. But for the most part, we act as, we have to work very independently, just because the relationships that we build are our relationships. And when I'm out of town, if somebody calls and the answer the phone, they're not going to know Loaves and Fishes schedule for when they can accept 800 pounds of Zucchini.
[00:31:57]
I know it, but they're not gonna know it. So a lot of it just has to be independent work on the coordinator's parts. But we're lucky to have those supportive staff [INAUDIBLE].
>> Victoria Lance: So how does that work? Like if you go on vacation, what happens? Who takes over for you cuz you go on vacation?
[00:32:19]
>> Jean Sears: Nobody [LAUGH].
>> Victoria Lance: A farmer has need to give.
>> Jean Sears: Yeah. I try to never go on vacation or leave in the spring summer and fall. So we're very vacation heavy in the winter. My husband I and we've grown to love cold weather hiking [LAUGH].
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah.
>> Jean Sears: So we're gone, we try to travel when we know I'm not going to be busy.
[00:32:50]
Smartphones and iPads help a great deal. So that when I am gone, people can still call me ad I still have all my contacts on my phone and I can still do a little bit of my business while I'm gone. And then I just hope that the folks in Durham can cover for me.
[00:33:11]
Yeah it's a tough position, and I think one thing that leads to burn out in my job because you feel such a sense of responsibility to your farmers who volunteers and your agencies because of those relationships. And when you're not there, you know things will fall through the cracks.
[00:33:31]
And so I think there is really a tendency for people to not give themselves a break. And quite frankly, we don't get paid enough to not give ourselves a break. It's not like we're doctors with beepers. But that's the constant tension that we tend to never turn off completely, so-
[00:33:53]
>> Victoria Lance: So how do you deal with that during the busy times, how do you turn off and not burn out?
>> Jean Sears: I drink gin.
>> Victoria Lance: [LAUGH]
>> Jean Sears: Don't put that in.
>> Victoria Lance: [LAUGH]
>> Jean Sears: You can't, I mean, you have to just keep going. And so that's why I said, my hours are average 30 hours a week.
[00:34:15]
So this time of year, typically, I'm working maybe 15 hours a week. But there's weeks of the summer where it's 40 and 50 hours, and that's just what you have to do because it's what's there. And it's not as bad as it sounds because most of the time, because I work from home.
[00:34:35]
So it does give me that flexibility that even if I'm working, I can still have a load of laundry in or I can be cooking something for dinner and then go back and answer the phone or whatever. So there's enough flexibility built into it that I feel like I'm probably ruined for a real nine to five job at this point, you know?
[00:34:55]
Where I couldn't I couldn't say, we don't have anything for dinner, and go throw something in the crockpot, and then get back to work. It takes five minutes to do that. So I survived the stress of that craziness by, you just have to embrace that the flexibility gives you a lot of time that you wouldn't have if you were in a more structured job, yeah.
[00:35:23]
>> Victoria Lance: Kinda like use the moments you do.
>> Jean Sears: Yeah sort of like how a new mother always lays down to nap when the baby naps. When the phone stops ringing for crying out loud, go do the dishes.
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah [LAUGH].
>> Jean Sears: Because they gotta get done.
>> Jean Sears: My goodness, you have a lot of questions.
[00:35:45]
>> Victoria Lance: No no.
>> Jean Sears: Good [LAUGH].
>> Victoria Lance: They're not all for you.
>> Jean Sears: [LAUGH] Good, good, good.
>> Victoria Lance: So,
>> Victoria Lance: Being kind of like a nonprofit organization, you get a lot of volunteer support, you get a little bit of community support, some grants. Do you have any kind of government support, local government support?
[00:36:11]
>> Jean Sears: No, no.
>> Victoria Lance: Do you work at all with the governments or local govenments?
>> Jean Sears: No, not really. No other than some of the, like a county extension agents are very supportive of us and will spread our name to the farmers that they work with. But yeah, other than county extension, I don't think we're really involved with anybody, yeah.
[00:36:41]
>> Victoria Lance: Do you belong to any farming organziations or anything like that to help build connections?
>> Jean Sears: I don't belong to them, I go to a lot of events. In the winter is when most of those events are, so I'll go to the Strawberry Growers Association. I go to the Blackberry Growers Association, they're meetings just to talk to them and meet with them.
[00:37:06]
I don't belong to the organizations, but I do participate in their meetings and those kindsa things, just to connect with them. I'm a member of the Food Policy Council here in Charlotte, but-
>> Victoria Lance: Do they ever bring you on for,
>> Victoria Lance: Educational types of things about how gleaning can work?
[00:37:31]
>> Jean Sears: No they never have, now I'm hurt [LAUGH].
>> Victoria Lance: Well I was thinking I interviewed a beekeeper, and so they'll bring in there's a vet, and they're doing a medicine, and they'll bring you in and do talks. It could be cool if you did like, well this is gleaning and it's good, and it makes you feel good.
[00:37:51]
And we could get you connected to some of the farms that.
>> Jean Sears: All right, I'll see what I can do. Thank you, this has been very fruitful so to speak [LAUGH].
>> Victoria Lance: I try.
>> Jean Sears: We cant.
>> Victoria Lance: So what advice would you give to other organizations, other gleaners, the nation area or even just other non profits trying to feed hungry people?
[00:38:16]
>> Jean Sears: I guess just know that there's food out there and it's all different kinds of food. Our ministry is fresh produce but there's all kinds of food going to waste. Just pick a passion and go with it and our passion is fruits and vegetables. But, there's enough food out there and enough hungry people that nothing should go to waste and no one should be hungry.
[00:38:44]
So I just say pick your passion and run with it. I think there's a new organization, newer, that's just started in Charlotte that is doing food rescue but for prepared food.
>> Victoria Lance: Okay.
>> Jean Sears: If restaurants or whatever have left over, they get that food and get it to people that need it.
[00:39:08]
That's not my mission but that's their's. And I think you just, and I think there's enough people out there who it's worth it. We just have to find them, but people care. Especially if you can get the word out to them, people care that there's food going to waste and people care very much that there's hungry people.
[00:39:32]
In a society that looks this affluent, that there's children going to bed hungry at night and seniors who don't eat on the weekends because the soup kitchen's not open on the weekends.
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah.
>> Jean Sears: And, that's just not right. No, it's not.
>> Victoria Lance: They should be able to eat any time.
[00:39:50]
>> Jean Sears: They should be able to eat any time because they raised all of us, and you know? You just hear the sad stories. There's a soup kitchen in Huntersville, Angels and Sparrows Soup Kitchen. The woman who runs it was telling me that on Friday. And it's mostly a lot of seniors will come, same families, but a lot of seniors cuz there's some senior housing around them.
[00:40:12]
And she said on Fridays, she will see the seniors and they'll eat like half their biscuit and then they take their napkin and they wrap up the other half because they won't have enough to eat over the weekend. And she said, and I get teary just talking about this.
[00:40:28]
And so she said, I always try to say, let me wrap that up better for you. And I'll take it back to the kitchen, and I'll put a couple extra biscuits or something in it. So they have something to eat.
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah.
>> Jean Sears: But she said, you would not believe how hungry people are on Monday mornings.
[00:40:43]
So I just think no one should have to just be that hungry on Monday morning.
>> Victoria Lance: It's crazy to think, cuz non-profit things I do work in, sometimes, somewhat normal business hours, where the people that work there, they want to go home. They want to be at home, and they're not gonna work Saturdays and Sundays all the time, cuz that's family time.
[00:41:08]
>> Jean Sears: Right, and people are still hungry then, but you can't expect volunteers and poorly paid nonprofit staff to be there 24/7, but the need is there 24/7. And it's kind of a system we've created by limiting how much people get with food stamps and different federally funded benefits where they could actually go and shop for what when they want when they can shop for it.
[00:41:37]
We've created this really complicated system where they know they can go to soup kitchen on Monday and get a meal but they have to go to St. Mark's on Tuesday to get a meal. And if they want canned food they can go to Loaves and Fishes, but only X number of weeks in a given year.
[00:41:56]
And it's just really crazy to make people of limited means try to cobble together food for their family with this incredibly complicated system when they have to get from place to place too with our crummy transit system, so yeah.
>> Victoria Lance: Do you ever pay farmers anything to plant?
[00:42:29]
>> Jean Sears: We don't. We don't. I know there's some groups that do. And that's just not our model. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that. It's just not how we've ever operated. I don't know if there's places in North Carolina that do it, but I've heard California where they will go in and offer them $0.07 on the dollar for produce or whatever.
[00:42:52]
So the farmers get a little something back. And they're getting fresh produce for really low prices. I don't see anything wrong with that model, and we've always just worked on the model that it's freely given and donated, and so we freely give it to other people.
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah.
[00:43:12]
>> Jean Sears: Yeah.
>> Victoria Lance: So do you know of any organizations that glean meat products or anything?
>> Jean Sears: I don't, I don't.
>> Victoria Lance: I don't know if there are many, I wonder if that's a thing.
>> Jean Sears: I think it's a more difficult thing to move, just because Price's chicken coop used to call us occasionally because, have you ever been to Price's?
[00:43:33]
>> Victoria Lance: I haven't.
>> Jean Sears: You need to go, you need to go. And they they cut all their own chicken for the fried chicken, which is phenomenal. But when they would miscut a piece they would throw it in a box, and freeze it. And then when they got a big box full, then they would call us, and we would usually just send that to Friendship Trays and they'd use them in meals.
[00:43:58]
But I think for a lot of agencies it's just really hard to have the cooling system in place, and then to know I think that can be more fragile than produce.
>> Victoria Lance: It goes bad too.
>> Jean Sears: Yeah, it goes bad, and tomatoes and corn, you pretty well know when it's gone bad, but meat, you worry about contamination and stuff.
[00:44:20]
So I'm sure there are places that do it. Nobody that I work with, other than our live tilapia. [LAUGH]
>> Victoria Lance: So how did you get into the live tilapia?
>> Jean Sears: That's a very funny story. The young man who was working at, it's called Astar farms, and he called Loaves and Fishes because, saw the fishes name, and asked them, do you accept fish?
[00:44:49]
And they were thinking like a pallet full of tuna or whatever, salmon. And they said, yeah, that would be great. And so they asked how many cans, or whatever. And he said, no, it's still alive, and apparently the guy who answered the phone almost hung up on him.
[00:45:07]
Because the director at the time, who was a very very funny woman, she ran Loaves and Fishes for like 25 years, Beverly Howard, was on vacation. And apparently when she was on vacation she would call, like make prank phone calls to them, just to have fun with them while she wasn't in the office.
[00:45:25]
And so they thought it was Beverly pranking them, so they almost hung up on him. And then they started asking him a few questions and it turned out it was this tilapia farm. And they said, well, there's no way, we don't have the structure in place, but if anyone could move that, you should call Jean.
[00:45:47]
And so he called me, and I said, well I'll see what I can do. And the first couple of loads, I just sent my regular guys with trucks and they kind of did what we always do. Like, they would load the fish up in, and they had coolers, and they would load the fish into the coolers.
[00:46:03]
And then they would just go door to door and say hey, you want some tilapia? And so people got the fresh tilapia. And then we connected them with the refugee community because those folks are, they get a lot of donated food that's donated bread and processed foods but that's not what they eat in their diets.
[00:46:26]
And we knew the fresh tilapia was something that more so than a lot of more Americanized groups, they would know what to do with the fish. They actually live 45 minutes out of water, did you know that?
>> Victoria Lance: No.
>> Jean Sears: So that when that truck goes over by the airport, and picks it up and then brings it back to Central Avenue.
[00:46:47]
The fish are still flopping.
>> Victoria Lance: My goodness.
>> Jean Sears: Yeah, yeah. And they're not freaked out by that, as a lot of who would be freaked out by a fish that was still flopping. And Marcy, who coordinates there, has sent me great pictures of them grilling the fish and they'll grill the whole fish and eat it, it's just very cool.
[00:47:10]
So that's been a great connection.
>> Victoria Lance: Do they have freezers that they put the fish in?
>> Jean Sears: I think they pretty much just eat what they get.
>> Victoria Lance: It's just like hey, we got it today, it's tilapia night.
>> Jean Sears: Right, right, it's tilapia night, and refugees support, they're just an amazing organization.
[00:47:29]
And once they were on the list that they were getting the tilapia pretty regularly, they went to Home Depot and asked them to donate buckets. So each refugee family that comes regularly has a bucket, their designated bucket. And then they tell them, the week before, next week is tilapia week, bring your bucket.
[00:47:50]
>> Victoria Lance: Wow.
>> Jean Sears: So they they'll show up, and they have cloth bags for produce that they pick up. So they'll show up, cloth bag and bucket in hand. And then they go home with their flopping fish. And some of them take the bus, so I'm really intrigued by how the fish go over on the bus.
[00:48:06]
I have Haven't asked Marcy that, but I should ask her if any fish go home on the Charlotte bus system. [LAUGH]
>> Victoria Lance: Wow, that's wild.
>> Jean Sears: Yeah, it's a really great connection for us, and I think since we've done that, other areas. Like maybe in Tennessee or someplace, that have made connections with tilapia farms, and they're gleaning the fish too.
[00:48:30]
So it's spread as an idea that it actually works. But I think it's safer to do it that way, because the fish are still alive. Than trying to transport meat, and keep it cold, you know.
>> Victoria Lance: Makes sense.
>> Jean Sears: Yeah, and the cooling systems are a limiting factor for a lot of agencies.
[00:48:51]
They just have very limited refrigeration and freezer space, so it has to be really quick in, quick out.
>> Victoria Lance: So how would you kind of characterize the greater Charlotte region? What do you think about the different food deserts that are kind of in the areas?
>> Jean Sears: I think they're big?
[00:49:20]
[LAUGH] It's been interesting, cuz they're really shifting as development in the city has shifted. My son went to West Side Schools, and I knew that, when I went to pick him up at Ashley Park Elementary School, I'd better not be planning to bring something home for dinner from there, cuz there were no grocery stores on that side of town, you know?
[00:49:42]
At least now there's a Walmart out there on Wilkinson, but you know. It's pretty incredible to me. When we moved into our house, we lived in South End in the Sedgefield neighborhood, and when we moved into our house, there was a little Harris Teeter there. Within probably a year, it was closed because it just didn't fit their model.
[00:50:04]
It wasn't big and new and fancy, like the Harris Teeters were. So they closed it, and it became like a little local store, a Giant Genie, which, I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but it was a little local chain. So it became a Giant Genie.
[00:50:17]
And it was a grocery store for a while. And then it became a Home Economist. And it was a Home Economist for a long time, a healthy home market that changed the name. But so there was always, like, some kind of little store there. But now, with that development and affluence that has come with the light rail coming down through there, you know?
[00:50:36]
We have the huge Publix. And we have the huge, brand-new Harris Teeter, which is the largest Harris Teeter in the city, I believe. It's just enormous. And, you know, then there's a Food Lion. So there's all these stores that we have access to now, that were. You know, it's an affluent neighborhood, but.
[00:50:55]
So the grocery stores follow the affluence, they don't follow the need. There's obviously just as many hungry people that live off Wilkinson Boulevard, but that's not where they're gonna put a grocery store, cuz it's not gonna be as profitable. And there are things that communities have done to encourage that kind of incentives for grocery stores to be in neighborhoods where they're needed.
[00:51:25]
But I haven't really seen kind of a political interest or will in Charlotte to move forward on that.
>> Victoria Lance: What kind of things have communities done that maybe we could do in Charlotte that you-
>> Jean Sears: They offer tax incentives for grocery stores. We offer tax incentives for all kinds of things.
[00:51:43]
But they offer tax incentives for grocery stores to invest in a neighborhood, for instance. Or to build along a transit line, or whatever. I mean, there's different incentives. I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you right off the top of my head-
>> Victoria Lance: No, yeah.
>> Jean Sears: What most of them are, but I know there's tax incentives that they can offer, yeah.
[00:52:03]
>> Victoria Lance: Okay.
>> Jean Sears: The other thing that they haven't done, which, when the light rail line went in, there was a lot of talk that there would be affordable housing built along that light rail line. And if they would put a little more, a little more nails into that, like make sure that that was actually built.
[00:52:30]
Then the folks that moved into that low-income housing would have access to the amenities that the higher-income folks are enjoying, but we don't really. I don't know how much you're involved in that, and how much you know about it. But, you know, there's very little affordable housing, and what was affordable, because it was just older, has been torn down and replaced with much higher-end living spaces.
[00:53:04]
>> Victoria Lance: And it seems like they're pushing.
>> Jean Sears: Right.
>> Victoria Lance: That out, but not supporting.
>> Jean Sears: Right, the amenities.
>> Victoria Lance: The outer-lying areas,
>> Jean Sears: Right. So, those outer suburbs are becoming poorer. And hungrier, and, but the transit system's not out there. There used to be quite a bit of affordable housing in my neighborhood, and that was great, because they had decent schools.
[00:53:30]
They could walk to the light rail, they could walk to the bus. But, you know, they're all gone now and I don't know where they went. Because, and they're not going to go somewhere that's more convenient than where I live. Because where I live is really convenient.
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah, I was about to say.
[00:53:48]
South End's kind of been the center of the city. And then they push them more out towards, in Concord, that area, towards, you know. Pineville?
>> Jean Sears: Pineville's really taken it, yeah, because they still have some older stock of apartment buildings out there, so they've absorbed a lot of that, Pineville.
[00:54:09]
And the further suburbs, but then how do you get anywhere?
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah.
>> Jean Sears: It's really a struggle. Yeah.
>> Victoria Lance: So where do you see the Society of St. Andrew's, and gleaning, and your position moving in the next five to ten years?
>> Jean Sears: I really hope that we can move forward with smaller areas, that allow to us work more intensely in the communities that we're in.
[00:54:44]
And I think if we can do that, and really invest in people in my position that are able to build those relationships, I think in five years we could be moving three times the food that we're moving, just because we know it's there. We just have to have the person power to do it.
[00:55:09]
So that's my dream for Society of St. Andrew, is that we always, as long as food goes to waste and there's hungry people, we'll be here. And I would like to be able to say, and we'll be in every community where food goes to waste and there's hungry people.
[00:55:27]
So that's my hope of where we're going in five years.
>> Victoria Lance: And then, do you see any, like, particular kinds of people participating in gleaning as volunteers? Do you kind of like get all sorts?
>> Jean Sears: We get all sorts, which is really fun. And one thing that I really love about it.
[00:55:46]
I mean, I can be in a field with, you know, African-Americans, whites, Vietnamese refugees, people that are in their 80s, people that bring their babies. So it's all ages, it's always And some people are very conservative and they do it out of a belief that stopping food waste and feeding people is a conservative value.
[00:56:18]
A lot of people are very liberal, we're do-gooders and so we're real liberal. So it's just a really diverse group. A lot of folks come through their churches, but I have people that volunteer with me that have never been to church. They have no interest in church, they just do it because they love it and they love to feed people.
[00:56:39]
Some people do it more just because they love to be out on farms. It's something fun to do outside. They truly just love the physical act of being outside. So people come to us for all different kinds of reasons. But it's a very diverse men and women. It's I wouldn't say it's probably usually in a field, it's usually 50% African American 50% white, 50% men, 50% women and we all work together.
[00:57:12]
So it's a great mix, which I love.
>> Victoria Lance: Do you ever have any issues managing different personalities or different in the field or with your volunteers?
>> Jean Sears: Not for the most part, we have a few that, the biggest problem we ever run into is occasionally with distribution because,
[00:57:39]
>> Jean Sears: People can get very protective of their agencies and their communities. And so if they don't feel like they're getting enough of something to take back to where they're going, they can get a little prickly. And that's been the biggest challenge that I've had to deal with, is just kind of getting in the middle of that.
[00:58:01]
And saying, next week maybe there'll be more but for right now we have. We try to share and share alike and go by how big the agencies are or whatever that they're distributing to. But that's the biggest problem. And I think, you know what? It's not because they're jerks.
[00:58:18]
It's because, and they might be jerks, but I think they just really want to do the best for the people they're distributing to, and it manifests itself in occasionally jerky behavior. [LAUGH] Yeah and so that's interesting that that's really the biggest problem I ever have, is that people just want to take more to the people that they're serving.
[00:58:41]
So not a bad problem to have, ultimately, that they're that committed, so yeah.
>> Victoria Lance: Do you see any needs in your volunteer base? Is there anything that you're missing that you would use more [INAUDIBLE]
>> Jean Sears: I saw that happen. [LAUGH] What I always need in my volunteer base are people with flexible schedules that can distribute food.
[00:59:11]
Yeah, typically pickup trucks without toppers on them, empty bed. When I drive around Charlotte and I see a pick up truck with this big bed and I think, you should be hauling food for me. Yeah. Driving that big truck, you are not doing good for anybody. So, which is judgmental of me, maybe they are doing good for people, I don't know, but they're not working for me, so.
[00:59:37]
[LAUGH] So that's a real need, is just that kind of flexibility in their schedules. It typically takes somebody who's retired and still healthy enough to be a little active in the distribution process. And then have a truck that can pick up large loads of stuff. So I'm pretty lucky to have a lot of great volunteers.
[01:00:06]
And being in Charlotte, which is a community that prides itself on volunteerism and serving people, I don't usually have trouble finding volunteers to go out to the fields. But the distribution, especially in the summer, I can wear people out just because I never have quite enough people that can haul that food.
[01:00:29]
>> Victoria Lance: So is there anything about gleaning that is misunderstood? What clarification to give to the general public?
>> Jean Sears: Most people don't know what the word means. [LAUGH] Yeah, once you describe it to people, peole seem to have a good idea what it is. And I think the only thing people don't understand is that historically, biblically, gleaning was something, if you were hungry you went out to the field and gleaned it yourself.
[01:01:16]
And occasionally I hear from people that say, if they're so hungry, why aren't they out there gleaning it? And some people do come out. But usually people are hungry because they have physical disabilities that they can't get out. Or if they can't get to a grocery store to buy fresh produce, how are they gonna drive an hour to a farm to pick fresh produce?
[01:01:39]
So gleaning, and I just guess that's just a clarification for people. That people need to understand that we use volunteers to do the work for them because of just the logistics of getting to the field, or because of handicaps or age or whatever, they just can't do it
[01:01:58]
>> Victoria Lance: There aren't as many fields anymore. It's not like you can go next door.
>> Jean Sears: They're not just right next door. That's what I'm saying. Usually you're driving 45 minutes to an hour, which is a lot of gas for somebody who's on limited income, if they even have a car.
[01:02:13]
I had one lady call me, and she said, I really want to come glean but I don't have a car. And she was hungry, she wanted to come and glean for herself and then share what else she picked. And just the logistics of finding somebody she could carpool with, she was never able to come, because how do you do it?
[01:02:36]
Cuz we come from a pretty wide part of the area, so the chance that there's somebody that could pick up Ms. Mabel or whatever and bring her to a gleaning is pretty slim on a given day. So that's I don't know that it's a misconception about gleaning. It's a misconception about how we serve the people we serve.
[01:03:02]
That we're not doing it because they don't want to help. It's just that in most cases they physically can't do it for whatever reason.
>> Victoria Lance: So any other questions that I have should have asked you, that I have not?
>> Jean Sears: Gosh, you have been so thorough. These are great questions.
[01:03:28]
They were different than I usually get asked. So a lot of them were very different, that was fun. [LAUGH]
>> Victoria Lance: Thank you!
>> Jean Sears: No, I can't think of anything. And they were really thorough. If I think of anything, I will get a hold of you.
>> Victoria Lance: Yeah.
>> Jean Sears: What kind of pictures, like, what kind of things are you looking for?
[01:03:45]
>> Victoria Lance: I mean, just say thank you
Tega Hills Farm - Lisa Sherman
Lisa Sherman is 26 years old, and has been working for Tega Hills Farm for three years. Her duties at the farm include product weighing, packaging, and lettuce harvesting. She learned to love farming from spending time at her grandmother’s house in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in her youth, and plans to pursue a degree in horticulture from Clemson at a later date. Topics in this interview include her experiences with both conventional and hydroponic farming, learning experiences taken from her work at Tega Hills Farm, and her long term goal of opening up her own nursery.
| Time | Description |
| 0:00:10 | Introduction, Interviewer |
| 0:00:38 | Introduction, Lisa Sherman |
| 0:01:22 | Learning of her love of farming at Granny’s house in Pittsburg, PA |
| 0:03:04 | Lisa’s personal garden and personal experience gardening |
| 0:08:19 | Coming to Fort Mill, SC as a broke college student and looking for work |
| 0:11:31 | Finding Tega Hills Farm |
| 0:14:47 | Lisa’s work at the farm with lettuce harvesting, transferring, and packing |
| 0:19:37 | Learning farming techniques from experience; likes and dislikes |
| 0:24:40 | Wanting to run her own nursery |
| 0:28:07 | Final thoughts on hard work and loving her job and the people she interacts with |
[00:00:10]
>> MG: This is Mike Gregory, graduate student, UNC Charlotte, public history. I am here talking today with Lisa.
>> LS: Yes.
>> MG: Lisa, okay, with Tega Hills Farm.
>> MG: Honestly, I know very little about you, so I'm gonna just open this up to let you introduce yourself. And then we'll get down the road to talking about your employment here at Tega Hills Farm.
[00:00:35]
So tell me about you, tell me your name and where you're from.
>> LS: My name is Lisa, I am originally from Jacksonville, Florida. We moved up to Pittsburgh in my junior year of high school, and that's where I got into gardening. My growing up in Florida, gardening was not something that I, farming's not something that I ever considered as a career.
[00:01:01]
Working outside back then meant going around and cleaning up the debris that dad had left after trimming stuff around the yard. And it just wasn't fun pulling up weeds that, its impossible to get out without burning the whole thing and starting fresh. But in Pittsburgh we were at my granny's house one year, one summer.
[00:01:27]
And she has this beautiful garden, she's always kept a huge garden. And on the drive home, back up to Pittsburgh, I sort of remember talking to my mom and asking her if we could start a garden.
>> LS: Were we able to start a garden? Cuz we weren't vegetable garden people, we had flowers and things, but not actual food crops.
[00:01:51]
So we talked about what we liked to eat. And then I just researched on my phone what kind of light do they need, what kind of soil do they need? Can I actually grow this or not? And I started my first little garden up there. And then a couple years later we moved down here to South Carolina, and I've been slowly building my garden ever since.
[00:02:14]
>> MG: So how old were you when you had this revelation at your granny's house?
>> LS: About 20 years old, so I'm 26 now. And I went from just enjoying growing flowers to having a little hobby garden, to now I have this 30 by 60 foot space. And I want to have either a farm or a nursery or something of my own one day.
[00:02:37]
Slowly working towards that now.
>> MG: So you're working toward it yourself now?
>> LS: Yes, yes.
>> MG: What type of plants and vegetables or fruit did you start growing in your garden?
>> LS: The first garden I had, I had corn, peppers, some sunflowers, and some lettuce. And I think I tried broccoli, but I started it too late in the season, and the heat killed them.
[00:03:08]
Because it was fun, we did not get much out of that garden. Did not have a fence around it, and there were plentiful deer where we were in Pittsburgh. So they pretty much mowed down the pepper plants, and we did not get any corn either. The night before we went out to harvest the corn, this groundhog came through.
[00:03:26]
In the morning it looked like a tornado had hit the corn patch. And it had just pulled down every ear of corn off of the stalks. And taken about three bites out of every ear, and then moved on to the next one.
>> MG: And this was in Pittsburgh?
[00:03:37]
>> LS: It was, yes.
>> MG: So you didn't get much out of the garden, but the groundhogs and the deer had a buffet.
>> LS: Yes, yeah.
>> MG: I'm sure they enjoyed it. [LAUGH] So when you started your garden, was it a big learning experience for you, or did you find it came quite natural to you?
[00:03:57]
>> LS: I really love to research, so I researched the heck out of that, and we,
>> LS: Actually, it did come pretty naturally to me.
>> LS: Maybe?
>> MG: How did you research that?
>> LS: I've actually-
>> MG: Yeah.
>> LS: I always research very thoroughly, I guess gardening has come naturally to me, yeah.
[00:04:25]
I didn't always have a green thumb, but I never had a black thumb.
>> MG: [LAUGH]
>> LS: I started out with a simple little petunia plant. And all I had to really do is deadhead that, water it, keep it in some sun. And I bought a half-dead petunia from a garden center.
[00:04:43]
And it was very dry, and it was very sad looking, I stuck it in a big pot, I watered it, I fertilized it just a little bit, cut it back. And then that thing flourished. And we had this great corner window in our house that faced east and south on the sides.
[00:05:01]
So it just got sun all winter long, and that thing was inside flowering in February. It's a gorgeous plant. So I said okay, well, I started with the easiest thing possible, what else can I do? I just went from there.
>> MG: What type of crops did you grandma grow?
[00:05:23]
>> LS: Lots of tomatoes, lots of cucumbers. She never pruned back any of her stuff, so it just went everywhere. She had onions, she had garlic, she had a lot of eggplant. Did I say peppers already? She had those, too. Just the main, that kinda stuff that everyone has in the summer.
[00:05:46]
She didn't have any any special, rare kinda crops in there. Just a very Southern gardner kind of lady, I think. In my garden, I like having the herbs, and I like mixing the flowers in. And I tried the potatoes, and I've tried a little bit of everything to see what I can do.
[00:06:09]
And I've narrowed it down the things that I love. I try to stay away from the cucumbers and squash and the peppers that everyone always has so much of in the summer.
>> MG: Yeah.
>> LS: Cuz I can find those anywhere.
>> MG: Yeah, my maternal grandmother and grandfather, they had a garden as well.
[00:06:26]
Huge, it was about an acre. Always had your standard Southern fare, which was collards, lettuce, tomatoes.
>> LS: We had collards too, yes.
>> MG: I think they had cucumbers occasionally, potatoes were another big one, so we'd have green beans.
>> LS: I never had any luck with potatoes.
>> LS: They look fine above the soil, and you pull them up, and they have the black rot all through them, and I don't know how to stop that.
[00:06:55]
>> MG: I don't either, my father had the same problem. He tried it with smaller garden, never could get it. Corn was never a problem, potatoes, terrible.
>> LS: My dad tries to make me grow corn for him every year. And it always gets the corn ear worms, so I'm devoting again about a quarter of the garden to corn this year.
[00:07:16]
And I'm not gonna get anything off those plants. But I do the fertilizing and I do the side dressing throughout the season. It's a small little plot, so I'm out there hand-pollinating those ears, but every year. And I'm not one to spray stuff with pesticides, so this year I'm trying to go all natural to see if that can work for me.
[00:07:44]
>> MG: Well, I hope it does. Seems like a lot of farming, what I was trying to get away from was heavy pesticides, it's probably [INAUDIBLE]. So you have had quite the journey, you went from Jacksonville, Florida to Pittsburgh, is that right?
>> LS: Yes.
>> MG: And now you're here in Fort Mill, South Carolina, that's quite the slingshot.
[00:08:04]
So Tell me a little bit about what brought you here to, you had family in Pittsburgh [INAUDIBLE].
>> LS: Yeah.
>> MG: And so that must have brought you there, but what brought you from Pittsburgh to Fort Mill, South Carolina?
>> LS: I was a broke college kid.
>> MG: Okay.
>> LS: I had absolutely no money, still living at home, and my grandparents' house was declining slowly.
[00:08:29]
So mom and dad wanted me to be closer. My dad's family is in Florida, my mom's family is down in Georgia, so it's about a seven hour drive from here to other side of grandparents.
>> LS: So I lived with my mom and dad for a while here, and I [INAUDIBLE] moved out, but my garden is still in their backyard.
[00:08:49]
>> MG: You said you were a broke college kid, what were you studying?
>> LS: I could not make up my mind for a long time [LAUGH]. I knew that I liked to garden then, but I didn't know that I wanted to do it for a career, for a living.
[00:09:12]
So at first I thought that I wanted to do, at first I was going towards animal science, and I wanted to do stuff with horses. So I did some chiropractic stuff early on and I really loved that. So I started off going to school for that. And I was not the best student growing up.
[00:09:38]
Did not have the best grades. I was enrolled at a community college trying to get my basic math, science, English stuff out of the way and my grades got up, and I was going to transfer to Princeton ideally, as my mom and dad went to Princeton, that's a part of it.
[00:09:56]
Things of family. And I still-
>> MG: Still bleed a little orange?
>> LS: Yes.
>> MG: [LAUGH]
>> LS: It's a little late in my life, but I still wanna go to Clemson for horticulture, now that I'm finally settled on something, it took me long enough.
>> MG: It's never too late.
[00:10:15]
>> LS: It's ten years to decide.
>> MG: Never too late, I'm 38 years older and still over humans in. So there's a lot to be said for having a little bit of experience and then going in as what they call a non-traditional student.
>> LS: Yeah, travel a bit, explore the world, find out who you are as a person.
[00:10:35]
>> MG: And then come back.
>> LS: What you like, and then come back.
>> MG: Exactly, so-
>> LS: You need to have your mind made up straight out of high school, you don't really know who you are yet at that point.
>> MG: I sure do.
>> LS: You think you do, but you really don't.
[00:10:47]
>> MG: Nope, you sure don't.
>> MG: So tell me about how you went from the broke college kid, back here, you're here Fort Mill, South Carolina to meeting up with Mark and Mindy Robinson and working at Tega Hills Farm. So this is definitely, it's a non-traditional farm. We're getting into a farm that has some history here.
[00:11:15]
You went from a smaller farm to suddenly work into this big hydroponic network here on two acres. So tell me a little bit about that. How did you run into them?
>> MG: Tell me a bit about your history.
>> LS: I was
>> LS: The time I was working at Pet Smart, doing a little bit of everything there, pet care, customer service, cashiering, early morning stocking.
[00:11:43]
And I was just sick and tired of being stuck Inside. I wanted to be out in the sunshine. I wanted to be in the rain. I wanted [LAUGH] to be in the snow when it's freezing out there. And I didn't like having to be stuck inside a building for eight hours a day.
[00:12:01]
Just not for me. So I looked online. I just typed in seasonal farm jobs. I live in Rock Hill, so I typed in seasonal farm jobs near Rock Hill, South Carolina. And this popped up. And I was thrilled. They work year-round here. So I'd sent them a resume, well, I actually walked it up here.
[00:12:22]
And my dad helped me type up this really nice cover letter telling them why I was interested and that I've been gardening for a while.
>> LS: I wanted to see where else
>> LS: I wanted to see if I would be interested in farming for a living. And whether I wanted to do it on my own, my own small farm or I wanted to work for a bigger farm.
[00:13:04]
>> LS: And yeah, so they interviewed me and about a month later they hired me and another girl, and I love it here. I love everything that I do. I love watching the lettuce grow, I like talking to the little baby plants.
>> MG: What year did you start, what year?
[00:13:32]
>> LS: I've been here three years now, so that was 2016?
>> MG: 2016.
>> LS: Think it was 2016, I might have lost a year in there somewhere. [LAUGH]
>> MG: It's okay, I find the older that I'm getting, I'm starting to lose years. [LAUGH] So you talk to the plants.
[00:13:53]
>> LS: I do, [LAUGH].
>> MG: That's fantastic.
>> LS: Not just for the science specific reason of, you bring out carbon dioxide, and that's what the plants need to take in for photosynthesis. Just because, they're adorable. How can you not talk to them, and tell them how adorable they are?
[00:14:12]
>> MG: Okay, I don't judge. I think it's fantastic. So what do you do here at Tega Hills?
>> LS: I work mainly with the lettuce in those greenhouses. I help with the harvesting and the transferring plants lettuce. We have another lady, Carrie, who plants the lettuce seeds every Wednesday, and I'm the one who waters those in Wednesdays, and then I also water the rest of the seedlings Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
[00:14:47]
So I'm with the lettuce every step of the way through the process. And I also work in house three, where we have the kale, arugula, fennel, watercress, that kind of stuff.
>> LS: Harvesting outside during the summer. I need a there. I had a few months where I was working in-house too with micro greens, so I've done a little bit of everything here.
[00:15:14]
>> MG: So you're, what you do tends to change depending on, is it by season, or just necessity?
>> LS: We have the lettuce year round. Every morning we harvest lettuce. What I do changes with the seasons, depending on what day it is. Some days, in summer we have peppers and tomatoes, cucumbers and squash.
[00:15:44]
So in the summer, we have a couple days a week. We go in and pick out all the stuff. And the next day or so after that, we go in and we do the cultural work, pruning and the things back up.
>> MG: So walk me through a typical day that you do, whatever you do here.
[00:16:10]
>> LS: What day of the week do you want?
>> MG: I'll leave it open To you, maybe if something, and you don't have to get too specific.
>> LS: My day, yeah.
>> MG: So as things change throughout the week, just a kind of a typical day or two.
>> LS: In the morning, we harvest lettuce.
[00:16:29]
We always harvest two passes in house one, and then two passes in house four.
>> LS: That's a few hundred heads of lettuce a day that we're pulling out, and then,
>> LS: Barely describe this without actually showing you, but we.
>> LS: Harvest a day, two houses, each house a day, and then we.
[00:17:03]
>> LS: Plant back where we harvested out our big seedlings. And then we, we clean up, we try to get all that stuff done before lunch. Then after lunch is usually planting.
>> MG: Sorry guys.
>> LS: Distracting. After lunch is usually harvesting in house three and we'll plant back in there.
[00:17:37]
Any clean up from the morning tasks if it's summer, yes we'll go through and pick cucumbers sometimes after lunch.
>> LS: If it's a delivery day, Mindy usually has me help pack in the greens orders. For picking flowers, I love picking flowers, beautiful flowers, it's great.
>> MG: It just kept adding up there.
[00:18:19]
>> LS: Can you- Jenny?
>> Speaker 3: Yeah.
>> LS: Can you find me another green lid?
>> Speaker 3: Yeah
>> LS: That means somebody will try.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> LS: Here's one box, it just does not have a lid. It might be the green.
>> Speaker 3: This color green?
>> LS: Yeah, that color.
>> LS: Gets me distracted.
[00:18:47]
>> MG: It's okay but business has to keep going.
>> LS: Yes.
>> MG: What would you say you have taken away from your time working here at Farm for your own business. What have you learned here that, and I'm sure you've probably learned a lot. You've been here for a couple of years, but that's something else there.
[00:19:17]
>> MG: But what have you learned that maybe has surprised you or something that you are going to take away for your own use for when you finally start your own market.
>> LS: I learned that I really, I enjoy waiting. [LAUGH] It's a really simple, basic answer, but I love pulling weeds.
[00:19:47]
And I didn't realize how much I enjoyed doing that. And I like pruning back the cucumbers. And I like separating the tomatoes. And I didn't realize that was something that you had to do to prune them. And to prevent your little tomato plant from turning into this giant tomato jungle monster.
[00:20:07]
You have to cut them back. And they actually produce more if you do that properly. And if you pinch off the leaves as you go, the bottom leaves, it opens up the face of the plant and allows more air flow into the middle so you prevent disease. And I learned that you shouldn't do work like that ehen the humidity is high.
[00:20:30]
Because that, those break a leaf off and that little open section of the plant is open to infection and disease and bacteria getting in there. And I just, not that I don't like harvesting lettuce but since I do it every single morning, I've decided that I do not want to farm lettuce.
[00:20:55]
I'm so tired of lettuce. I enjoy that part of my job but, for myself and my own life, no. No more lettuce.
>> MG: I can understand that. When I first spoke to Mark and Mindy. Mark told me how many thousands of heads of lettuce are harvested. And this is a small space.
[00:21:16]
It's a two acre farm, but not all two acres are full of greenhouses. There's only five, only five greenhouses.
>> LS: Yes.
>> MG: So for one, how fast they grow is staggering.
>> LS: It is, it's amazing, yes..
>> MG: And to have that many thousands of heads of lettuce pulled over such a short amount of time, and there are only five full-time workers at TV Hills or thereabouts?
[00:21:55]
>> MG: Somewhere in there.
>> LS: Yeah, somewhere in there. We have about seven employees right now. Some are full time, some are part time.
>> MG: That's so much time that's occupied by just lettuce.
>> LS: That's our summer staff. Sorry, our winter staff I mean. In summer we have about ten.
[00:22:18]
>> MG: Has working in these greenhouses with these hydroponics made you want to consider doing something like that yourself? Or are you leaning towards? You're shaking your head, that's telling me something.
>> LS: I love to play in the dirt. [LAUGH] I don't know anything about pumps, I don't know anything about water or how to add the right nutrients to the water, and I'm not really interested in learning about that.
[00:22:44]
My own garden, I have raised beds, I have the concrete block beds, I have some wooden beds. I have stuff growing on large trellises, stuff on vertical trellises, things in the ground, things growing out of straw bales. I have a little bit of verything in there. And, yeah, hydroponic growing, it just isn't.
[00:23:05]
I take more of a creative approach. For myself I don't like just, I get bored with just long rows of little, long parallel rows of plants for miles. I like to have the kind of garden where you can bring in the kids or people who don't even like plants, and they go wow, this is amazing.
[00:23:28]
Or, what are these little round yellow things, and I say that's a lemon cucumber, and they go what, that's a cucumber? And I see that happiness and that wonder on their faces, and I love when kids leave and they're like mom, dad, can we grow some watermelons? Can we grow some whatever.
[00:23:43]
I love that.
>> LS: I thought of an answer to your earlier question.
>> MG: Sure.
>> LS: About what I've gotten out of the farm and what I've learned about myself. And what I possibly want for me in the future.
>> MG: Yeah, please do.
>> LS: I recently decided, last week recently, that I don't necessarily We want an actual farm [LAUGH] where I produce food for people.
[00:24:18]
I like watering the lettuce seeds and I like taking care of the seedlings. And I like nurturing them up to the point of taking them out to the greenhouse. And I work in house too with the microgreens, it's the same thing. I love looking at the seeds, I love petting them every day and making sure every one was growing the way that they should be.
[00:24:43]
And wherever I've been now is I just want a nursery and I want to start plants and I don't want to have a whole lot of everything. I don't want to spread myself too thin over that, but I want to grow the things that I love to grow.
[00:24:58]
The pretty little flowers and herbs that you can companion plant with all of your vegetables or certain insects or throw in the beneficial. Things like that I'm still working on that idea. It's been a week since I bought that but that's where I am now. Just a love for baby plants that I didn't realize I had before.
[00:25:21]
And I'm actually able to grow these seeds. This is the first year that I'm successfully growing flowers and okra from seed. They've not sprouted at all for me in the past. So I'm thrilled with all that.
>> MG: I bet.
>> MG: So when you go back to study horticulture,
[00:25:44]
>> MG: Is perhaps opening up your own nursery your goal? Or do you have something else further in mind or what are your kind of projected ideas for your future?
>> LS: I still feel like that 20 year old that had no idea [LAUGH]. I like, at the moment, yeah, I'm going to return to my own nursery.
[00:26:09]
But I never went through a period where I really got away from the house and traveled and saw the world, so I still want to do that a bit. So right now I'm bouncing back and forth between, well, I still want to do all of these things but I had this business idea.
[00:26:25]
And I'm growing extra seeds this year so that I can sell them as small plants. And if I start that up, then I can't do the other thing. But I can't do the other thing without money. So it's a lot of back of forth at the moment. I still am only 26.
[00:26:43]
I keep telling myself I have time, it's disappearing gradually but I like to think I have time.
>> MG: You have plenty of time. So, really I think I, would like to turn it just for a moment over to you if there's anything that you'd like to say finally about your time here at Tega Hills Farm.
[00:27:09]
Or you could tell us anything you want. Because this interview is going to be made available to students. But as well as to other people who are interested in kind of our food culture in Charlotte which is wide reaching, it's coming all the way to South Carolina. There's a massive region where Charlotte seems to be kinda at the center here.
[00:27:35]
And that reach was what led me to Tega Hills Farm and to Mark and Mindy and to talking to you. So when we put this into our project online with Library Special Collections, it will reach a lot more people, people who are interested and students. Is there anything that you would like to say maybe to them, even if it's just about gardening?
[00:28:00]
Or is there something you'd like to tell them about.
>> LS: I love what I do, but people don't realize how much work goes into this. And it's long hours, it's really cold in the winter, it's really hot in the summer. And the greenhouses are, to a point they're heated in the winter and we have big fans in the summer.
[00:28:33]
We have the evaporative cooler at one end, that doesn't mean that it's temperate and cool in there. It just means that instead of it being 140, 50 degrees in there, it's only 108. So it's [LAUGH] it's a hard job, but it's very rewarding If you want to get into it.
[00:28:51]
I love bagging up produce for people. I love when someone comes in and says, well just give me your favorite lettuce, or what would you recommend? What do you like to eat? I love customers like that. I love telling people about the farm. I love sharing this joy that it gives me with people.
[00:29:14]
>> LS: No matter if we have any bug problems, nutrient problems, it's super hot, it's super cold. You have a rough day here, a rough day there, it's all worth it to me in the end. Just because of the great product that we roll out and just the amazing people I work with, too.
[00:29:38]
They're awesome and everything that I've learned has made it so worth it to me. And it,
>> LS: What am I saying? [LAUGH] Yeah, I wouldn't change it for anything. I would go back and I would do the whole thing again.
>> MG: I think that's a very touching and powerful note to end on.
[00:29:59]
Lisa, thank you so much for talking with me, I really appreciate it.
>> LS: Yes, thank you, a pleasure.
Watson Farms - Matt Watson
Matt Watson is a third-generation cattle farmer in Chester, South Carolina. Alongside his wife Kelly and his father Gary, they have a 350 acre farm and rent an additional 80 acres.
Matt recounts his grandfather moving to South Carolina in 1979 and resumed farming operations. He explains the evolution of the family farm in the 1980s and 1990s from row crop farming to strictly livestock farming, due in part because of the 1980s farm crisis. Matt has been farming full time since 2008, after he graduated from college with a degree in mass communication. Watson Farms currently uses rotational pasture grazing for their cattle and pig herds, and traditional coop methods for turkeys. Kelly takes care of the farm’s egg-laying hens. They sell meat directly to consumers, which they started in 2007.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:12 | Introduction |
| 0:00:28 | Matt discusses how long he has been farming |
| 0:00:44 | Matt explains the history of Watson Farms |
| 0:01:20 | Watson Farms moved from Indiana to South Carolina |
| 0:02:00 | Evolution of crops and livestock at Watson Farms |
| 0:02:28 | End of rowcrop farming due to weather and farm crisis of the 1980s |
| 0:03:29 | Acreage of Watson Farms |
| 0:03:43 | Livestock on Watson Farms |
| 0:04:12 | Matt discusses going to college at Winthrop University |
| 0:05:02 | Why Matt decided to become a farmer |
| 0:06:40 | Farming organically without the label |
| 0:07:39 | Matt switches with Kelly. She discusses selling and distributing their meats. |
| 0:08:17 | Kelly explains why farmers markets don't work for their products |
| 0:09:06 | The start of their direct-to-consumer business model |
| 0:09:33 | Difficulties in raising livestock |
| 0:10:19 | Kelly explains the sale barn |
| 0:10:47 | How the farm-to-table movement has affected Watson Farms |
| 0:11:31 | Working to educate the public about the farm and agricultural methods |
| 0:12:37 | Dealing with rainy and cold weather on pigs, cattle and hens |
| 0:17:32 | Government support for farmers |
| 0:18:43 | Aspects of farming that people don't understand |
| 0:20:51 | Watson Farms' labor force |
| 0:21:32 | Looking forward and the future of Watson Farms |
| 0:23:24 | The farm's social media presence |
[00:00:07]
>> Louanne Hoverman: My name is Louanne Hoverman, graduate student at UNC Charlotte. Interviewing Matt Watson. Matt, how long have you been farming?
>> Matt Watson: Full-time since 2008 when I got out of college. But I grew up on the farm. And but full-time since 2008.
>> Louanne Hoverman: So you grew up on the farm.
[00:00:30]
How far back does it go?
>> Matt Watson: My dad and my granddad both were full-time farmers, basically all their life. And even back further than that my family. Had farmland but so at least, I'm at least the third generation.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, I saw on the website that the farms started in Indiana.
[00:00:56]
>> Matt Watson: That's right.
>> Louanne Hoverman: With your grandfather?
>> Matt Watson: That's right, yeah. So they farmed in Southern Indiana around Vincennes, little town of Vincennes and they moved down here in 1979 and 1980.
>> Louanne Hoverman: What brought them to South Carolina?
>> Matt Watson: Right, just a number of different things but my granddad originally moved down here to retire, but he didn't end up doing that, and he ended up kept farming and talked my dad kinda into coming down here and farming with him.
[00:01:34]
They could buy ground cheaper down here. They could buy three acres for every acre they sold up there, so they had about 300 and some acres in Indian and they ended up at one time owning about 1200 acres down here and doing real crop farming until the mid 90s and then we got out of real crops and we started doing commercial turkeys and then.
[00:02:01]
It's just a kinda evolved into other things. From there we started grass fed beef in 2007. And so, yeah.
>> Louanne Hoverman: I wanna go back to switching from row crop farming to livestock. What made them get out of the row crop farming?
>> Matt Watson: It was, weather was one factor.
[00:02:22]
The farm crisis of the 1980's played a role in that. They survived that, but just could never get traction after that, the interest rates being so high during the 80's there and do you know it just kind of, if forced a bankruptcy so we had to sell off a lot of the real crop land and ended up keeping this land, and at that point ended up seeing an opportunity in the commercial turkeys and my dad put up some turkey barns and just basically making it work on a smaller acreage it meant kind of switching to a livestock operation.
[00:03:17]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, how many acres do you have now?
>> Matt Watson: Got about 350 deeded acres and we rent another 80 acre farm.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Wow, that's a lot of land. So what type of animals do you raise?
>> Matt Watson: We raise turkeys, commercial turkeys, and pasture pigs, and cattle. And then my wife does layer chickens.
[00:03:50]
>> Louanne Hoverman: What are layer chickens?
>> Matt Watson: They lay eggs.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay.
>> Matt Watson: Yeah, yeah, sort of laying hens.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Versus a meat chick I say.
>> Matt Watson: Right, that's right.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Yeah.
>> Matt Watson: Yeah.
>> Louanne Hoverman: You mentioned you went to college. Do you have any education in farming? Or did you go for something else, like science?
[00:04:07]
Like a biology or-
>> Matt Watson: Something else.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Architecture?
>> Matt Watson: Yeah. One of those would have been great. I did Journalism.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay.
>> Matt Watson: So I was a Mass Communication major at Winthrop University. And my parents wanted me to get a degree and I thought it be good too, but I didn't get an agricultural degree or anything like that but the journalism actually is into that with some public relations with our customers being that we do direct market to our customers.
[00:04:45]
>> Louanne Hoverman: So what influenced you to take up farming?
>> Matt Watson: Yeah, I didn't always know for sure that I wanted to farm but as I was getting out of college I started to realize that, family farms were increasingly dwindling, and so I wanted to make an opportunity there if it was possible, and so the one opportunity that wasn't there years ago was this interest in local food, and grass-fed beef, and pasture-raised meat.
[00:05:32]
And so we saw that opportunity, and have made a run with that and it's been doing good and customer interest is still very much there and it's done well so far.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, so the family farm went from raw crops to turkeys, when did you start with the beef cattle?
[00:06:01]
>> Matt Watson: We've always had beef cattle for-
>> Louanne Hoverman: Like personal consumption?
>> Matt Watson: No, we always had them and we would market them through conventional channels through the sale barns and things and basically just [INAUDIBLE] operations, but we in 2007, we started direct marketing to the customer.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, do you farm organically?
[00:06:27]
>> Matt Watson: Not per say, we're not technically organic but we use organic methods. But, yeah, yeah, basically.
>> Louanne Hoverman: I've noticed that seems to be a trend with farmers. A lot of people don't know that to get an actual organic label. There's a lot of paperwork, and there's a cost associated with it.
[00:06:50]
>> Matt Watson: Yeah,
>> Louanne Hoverman: And so a lot of farmers, they don't have the label but they still use all the organic methods. So they might as well be organic.
>> Matt Watson: Yeah.
>> Louanne Hoverman: It's just not official.
>> Matt Watson: And I'm actually not feeling real good right now for some reason. Let me, I'm gonna let my wife continue this, if possible.
[00:07:08]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay. We are switching out with Kelly Watson, Matt's wife. Luckily we've gone over a lot of the history.
>> Kelly Watson: Okay. [LAUGH]
>> Louanne Hoverman: So I want to talk about selling and distribution. So you sell your product. What are the methods that you use? You did not mention direct to consumer.
[00:07:28]
Do you sell at like farmer's markets or to restaurants?
>> Kelly Watson: We deal with a couple of restaurants but not many. Most of ours is our customers they go on our website and place their orders on the website and we have several pick up locations from let's say Matthews all the way down to Charleston.
[00:07:49]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Wow.
>> Kelly Watson: So we do deliveries every Saturday of the month, or people could pick up here, and that's how most of our product gets moved.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Have you tried farmer's markets in the past?
>> Kelly Watson: We have, we did them for about four or five years. And it just The best sales cuz you're going and sitting out all day on Saturdays or Thursdays or whenever the market is.
[00:08:16]
And you're having to take all those products with you in coolers, and you're bringing back most of it because by Saturday morning markets, a lot of customers aren't ready to buy frozen meat because they've got list of things to do on that Saturday and that kinda thing. So we decided that we were gonna stop those and we haven't done those in several years now just because it just didn't work for us anymore.
[00:08:41]
>> Louanne Hoverman: That makes sense.
>> Kelly Watson: Yeah.
>> Louanne Hoverman: How did you start the director consumer method, just word of mouth?
>> Kelly Watson: Just word of mouth that is what most of ours is. We have a Facebook page and we're putting stuff on the Facebook page and we have a YouTube page.
[00:08:56]
But most ours is just word f mouth. So we started a lot of those customers of last year are doing the farmers markets, we told them and a lot of them stuck on and then just people researching and finding us and that kind of thing.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Are there any difficulties that you have experienced in raising the livestock?
[00:09:22]
>> Kelly Watson: Goodness, no, not really. It's pretty, I don't want to say easy, but it's minimal. You'll have some that get sick, that kind of thing and we'll treat those just so we don't lose them. But we don't sell them in our pasture meats business. If it's a cow we'll sell it to the sell bar, if it's a pig we'll kill it and eat it ourselves.
[00:09:45]
But we don't sell it since it's been medicated and that kind of thing, but yeah, overall it's not that bad.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, Matt mentioned the sale barn, what's the sale barn?
>> Kelly Watson: It is we like Chester life Stock Exchange is where different farmers from wherever. A lot of like the one in Chester, a lot of local farmers, but people come from all over and you can sell your cows and pigs and that kinda thing through them.
[00:10:13]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay.
>> Kelly Watson: Yeah, and buy of course.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Has the recent emphasis on farm to table increased sales or have you seen an effect?
>> Kelly Watson: Yes there's as it grows, of course, you get more people that are wanting, as I learn what they're getting when they bought store bought me compared to what they're getting from the farm.
[00:10:39]
Our business grows at with that. Farm to table yeah, that has a big role with it because when I see restaurants wanting to do that, then individuals are wanting to do that. So they realized, hey, that really means something, [LAUGH]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Do you guys take part in any education like teach the public why pastured meat is maybe better than some of the conventional.
[00:11:05]
>> Kelly Watson: Yeah, we're constantly doing that on our Facebook page. We're doing videos, we have on our YouTube page as well, we're constantly doing videos that educate why we do what we do and raise the animals how they're supposed to be done. And, throughout the year, we'll have some groups come out for tours and stuff.
[00:11:28]
We're a big part of the ag and art tour in June. So a lot of people come out that day so they can see it and we're of course doing hay rides, educating that whole time. And throughout the year other little things that pop up we'll do from time to time.
[00:11:43]
But a lot of our education we do from our website and our Facebook page.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, this is pretty rural area, but have you encountered any complaints about smell, noise
>> Kelly Watson: No, most people that live out here know that they are in farming country. So they know that it's going to happen, so
[00:12:10]
>> Louanne Hoverman: This region has very volatile weather patterns, I mean, yesterday it snowed and this afternoon its 70 degrees, so does that have any effect on the animals?
>> Kelly Watson: It can, when we have days like yesterday, we take extra precautions. We took some hay back to the pigs to let them have something to kind of bed down into, gives them something dry cuz the course, the ground was wet.
[00:12:36]
[COUGH] But most animals, they're developed to live outside.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Yeah.
>> Kelly Watson: So one day like that is not, [COUGH]. Now, I'm not saying that they like being in the snow all the time, but day to day like this, no. It wasn't enough yesterday to matter or make a big influence or anything like that.
[00:13:01]
We do take extra precautions, like I said, with the pigs we gave them hay so they could bed down and stuff. Not much you can do with the cows, [LAUGH] and that kind of thing. And on our land hands, we keep the curtains rolled up when it's cold, so that they have somewhere they can go inside their hoot house, and get away from the wind, and the weather, and that kind of thing, so.
[00:13:21]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, now this past winter was extremely rainy, did that have any effect on, seems like the pigs are more susceptible to strange weather.
>> Kelly Watson: Yes, we lost several groups of pigs after they were born. When they were real little just because of the water. And it would run into the houses, kind of out of our control.
[00:13:48]
And if it's real cold, then piglets don't do well on that. If it's,
>> Kelly Watson: Other than that, no, it just makes a mess on the farm, [LAUGH]. Everywhere you go is muddy, but there are times where it gets a little bit rough on them, but it doesn't normally last too long.
[00:14:07]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Yeah, I saw your YouTube video from yesterday, that Matt recorded. Where there's this giant mud puddle next to the pigs, and the snow is coming down, and that's the perfect representation of our winter.
>> Kelly Watson: It is.
>> Louanne Hoverman: It's muddy-
>> Kelly Watson: And the pigs will still stay in the mud, they love it.
[00:14:27]
It can be cold, it can be hot they do it more when it's hot and this type of weather than anytime. But yeah, they'll still roll around in the mud and this winter several times they'd be laid out in the mud puddles, but that's what they use to cool off.
[00:14:43]
They use the water and the mud puddles to keep them cool so they don't get too hot. So, yeah, [LAUGH] lots of puddles around.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Now since all of your pigs and your cows are pasture raised, how do you handle droughts? Like when the grass gets really dry and just doesn't grow very well, like in the heat of the summer.
[00:15:06]
>> Kelly Watson: Luckily, yeah, around here it doesn't get too bad. We do go through droughts, but yeah, we plant annuals that help our grass grow, but we also have hay that we put up and silage that we put up in the fall, I guess? [LAUGH] And so if it's necessary, in the wintertime, of course, we could do that, because there's not much grass that grows in the wintertime.
[00:15:34]
But if we need to in a drought, we can feed that as well, so they at least have something for the cows. For the pigs, they still get grain, they get their feed every day. But the cows, we can give them that hay to supplement them and give them stuff.
[00:15:50]
They just don't gain the weight as easy in those months.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Yeah, what kind of local cooperative organizations are you both involved with? Is there anything with the sale barn like this?
>> Kelly Watson: No, we are not I mean, I guess you can technically say, yeah, we don't do anything with Sell Barn except if we have to sell something.
[00:16:21]
We work with Catawba Farm and Food Coalition, I think is the name of it. And they're in Chester and its a food hub. So we work with them, and right now we're just doing eggs through them. So they got some restaurants in Charlotte that are getting our eggs.
[00:16:39]
And there's a place like that in Charleston that we work with, but other than that.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay.
>> Kelly Watson: It's just us. [LAUGH]
>> Louanne Hoverman: What kind of support has been available through the government, whether it's local, state, or even federal, any?
>> Kelly Watson: There are a lot of programs out there for new farmers and young farmers.
[00:17:01]
Not that we're old, but people that are just starting out, there are some programs out there for that. But we don't, us personally, we don't get anything from the government, or anything like that to run our operation.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Even though you guys are pretty young, since it's a third generation farm, does that have any impact on support from the government?
[00:17:27]
Cuz technically the farm isn't new-
>> Kelly Watson: Yes.
>> Louanne Hoverman: But you guys are.
>> Kelly Watson: We, I guess, technically we could get help, but we just haven't. We haven't gotten to that point to where we've needed them to do anything. Honestly, if we can [LAUGH] stay away from getting them involved in anything, then we do.
[00:17:52]
Nothing against the government, but.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, what's an aspect of farming that most people wouldn't understand?
>> Kelly Watson: Just the everyday work that goes into it. It's not just a 9 to 5 job. It's sometimes sunup to sundown. That you actually have to take care of the animals. You can't just give them their water and expect them to be good or give them their grass.
[00:18:18]
They've got to be moved. We're constantly checking on all of them. Every day we go around and check all animals, make sure, cuz anything can happen. You can have everything good one day and the next day have a herd of pigs that's dead or something like that. But just that it is intensive work.
[00:18:41]
Everybody thinks that, you just get to be outside all day and do that. And yes, you do, and on beautiful days, it's great. But we're working in the rain, in the snow, 0 degree weather,100 degree weather it doesn't matter. So just that it's not as good as everybody thinks it is.
[00:19:03]
It is hard work, and there's not vacations. And especially owning your own farm, you can't just take off whenever because there are animals that have to be taken care of and all that.
>> Louanne Hoverman: It sounds like you might be able to eke out a day.
>> Kelly Watson: We can, and we're lucky.
[00:19:24]
If we have an employee working for us at that time or half days here and there. And sometimes even our time is just, we go to the back of the farm with the kids and do something at the creek or that kind of thing. So there is time, but it is not as easy.
[00:19:42]
You don't get paid vacation and sick days [LAUGH] and all that, so.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Even if you have a cold or the flu, the cows still need to be fed.
>> Kelly Watson: They still need to be fed and-
>> Louanne Hoverman: Go check on the pigs.
>> Kelly Watson: Yes, and all that, so, yeah, you work 365 days in a year.
[00:19:57]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, you mentioned an employee. What does your labor force consist of?
>> Kelly Watson: Meaning? [LAUGH]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Who works on the farm?
>> Kelly Watson: Right now it is my husband and myself and my father-in-law. I deal with all of our customers and orders and that end of it. And my husband and my father-in-law do the outside work.
[00:20:25]
We have had employees from time to time that help us out just to make it a little bit easier on my husband and that kind of thing. But when we have an employee he's doing the same things we're doing. If we've gotta set posts for a fence or whatever, he's doing that same stuff, so.
[00:20:42]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay.
>> Kelly Watson: Yeah, but right now it's just the three of us.
>> Louanne Hoverman: What do you see for the future of the farm?
>> Kelly Watson: We hope that our children want to do this. Right now, we have a six-year-old and a two-year-old. And our six-year-old washes eggs with us every day.
[00:21:00]
She's out there working with us, she loves going out. But that's our goal is that more people will come to realize that this is the way the meat's supposed to be raised to help us stay [LAUGH] in business. But then also, just that our children wanna continue it for generations on down.
[00:21:24]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, is there anything else that I may have not thought of?
>> Kelly Watson: You covered it pretty well. [LAUGH]
>> Louanne Hoverman: You mentioned YouTube and Facebook. Who handles the social media?
>> Kelly Watson: Me and Matthew, me, both of us.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay.
>> Kelly Watson: We both kind of, he does most of the videos.
[00:21:45]
There for a while I was doing most of the videos, but he does all the editing and getting them put on Facebook and YouTube [LAUGH] cuz he's better at that. But just our regular posts and stuff on Facebook, we both do. So with everything on our website, we're both constantly, we just both do it.
[00:22:03]
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay.
>> Kelly Watson: There's aspects that he can do and stuff that I can do [LAUGH], so it works.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Team effort.
>> Kelly Watson: Yes, team effort.
>> Louanne Hoverman: Okay, that was pretty much it.
>> Kelly Watson: All right.
Yow Farm - Eddie Yow
In this interview, Mr. Eddie Yow discusses his life, reflecting on the many changes to farming and livestock raising in the North Carolina Piedmont region. Mr. Yow was born local to the area in 1952. and has lived in Stanfield, NC for over 30 years. During this interview, Mr. Yow details exactly what work he does raising livestock, why his methods differ from other farmers, and gives anecdotes from his past of examples of the many changes that have taken place since his childhood, including those in selling his product. Mr. Yow also discusses how he envisions farming in the region changing in the future, and the challenges that newcomers to farming will face.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:07 | Introductions |
| 0:01:13 | Explanation of past work |
| 0:02:09 | How Mr. Yow got into his line of work |
| 0:03:07 | Row Croppers change Mr. Yow's work |
| 0:03:31 | Diffences in types of feed for cows |
| 0:08:27 | Why Mr. Yow discusses why he grinds his own cow feed |
| 0:10:14 | Mr. Yow talks about his birthplace and home |
| 0:11:16 | Mr. Yow explains why farmers work part time |
| 0:12:28 | Raising hens |
| 0:14:16 | Mr. Yow talks about his traditional lifestyle |
| 0:16:17 | Changes in perserving food and personal growing |
| 0:18:10 | Family lineage and growing up with hogs |
| 0:20:42 | Importance of self-reliance to Mr. Yow and lessons from his father |
| 0:24:07 | Transition from gardening to livestock raising and neighborly farming |
| 0:25:55 | Vanishing orchards and pulling weeds |
| 0:28:07 | Mr. Yow talks about agribusiness and no till regulations |
| 0:32:32 | Common processes for Mr. Yow and diseased crops |
| 0:35:17 | Mr. Yow talks about livestock slaughtering and regulations behind it |
| 0:38:12 | Mr. Yow discusses changes to the rural country and benefits of regulations |
| 0:42:13 | Discussion about Farmers Markets and changes over time with them |
| 0:46:47 | Outside labor for farmwork |
| 0:48:27 | Why do people shop at Farmers Markets? Trust. |
| 0:52:07 | How the growth of cities affects new farmers |
| 0:56:02 | Differences between farming in the north and farming in the south and pooling resources |
| 0:57:35 | Lessons learned from farming and maintaing traditions |
| 0:59:30 | The future of Yow Farm and the future of farming in the Piedmont |
| 1:03:32 | Mr. Yow discusses how trust is the most important aspect of farming |
[00:00:08]
>> Bradley Holt: Good afternoon, my name is Bradley Holt with UNC Charlotte in the graduate history program, part of the Public History Department. Today I am conducting an interview under the Queen's Garden Oral History Project, histories of the Piedmont food shed. And today, I am sitting down with Eddie Yao, and the date is April 9th, 2019.
[00:00:30]
So just real briefly, if you wanna introduce yourself, and what sort of work you do.
>> Eddie Yao: My name is Eddie Yao. I've raised beef or packaged beef sales. I have done this now for probably ten years. Before that, I sold half and whole animals Most felt they were there for the first time.
[00:00:52]
I had worked public work during that time up until about four years ago when I retired.
>> Eddie Yao: My background is maintenance, technical.
>> Bradley Holt: So you say you've been doing this for about ten years?
>> Eddie Yao: The packaged beef sales.
>> Bradley Holt: The packaged beef sales?
>> Eddie Yao: Mm-hm.
>> Bradley Holt: And before that, what do you mean by the selling selling of-
[00:01:15]
>> Eddie Yao: A lot of folks, that's kind of faded away. But a lot of folks used to buy halves and whole beefs. And I would haul them to the processing plant for them. And they would give them their instructions. And they would put them in their freezer and have them processed.
[00:01:27]
I was selling live animals. First it's packaged beef.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay so, before you were handling the live ones first. And now you've moved on to kind of the whole process.
>> Eddie Yao: I've been raising beef for a long time. It's just changed in the forms. I had a market management, Piedmont Market approached me to, back in the day before they had anybody selling packaged beef, if I would do that.
[00:01:53]
So I got the meat handler's license and proceeded to go into the packaged beef business. I still occasionally will sell one. I just sold one to a guy that does packaged beef.
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah, I remember you telling me about that on Saturday.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
[00:02:09]
>> Bradley Holt: So what made you make that switch over into packaging it yourself?
>> Eddie Yao: Well, once the market manager talked me into that and I got started, it was just a joy dealing with the people. And I like being able to sell folks beef that don't have freezer capacity.
[00:02:27]
But yet you wanna buy local and you wanna buy from somebody that just doing it on a small scale.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, how many animals do you have at the moment in terms of your lifestyle?
>> Eddie Yao: Normally, I'm gonna have right now, and that has changed in the last ten years.
[00:02:42]
At one time I ran a commercial herd, about 60 animals. And I would take calves off those cows once they were weaned, and I’d raise them on my own. And I would sell whole or halves, or packaged beef, okay? When corn prices shot up at about five years ago, I was leasing quite a bit of land, a little over 200 acres maybe.
[00:03:07]
And I lost it to the road croppers. Pastures became fields, quarter of acre fields. So, I brought back of what I had did many, many years ago. I buy baby calves from dairies, the bull calves, and I raised those out model ' and raise them up.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
[00:03:29]
>> Eddie Yao: And I can tell you that dairy beef is a much better selection. I've done both than beef type. The reason that the type is popular is because they can survive on grass for a while when they're young. And once you turn them out on pasture if you're willing to wait about two years, which is why grass fed beef is so tough.
[00:04:01]
They will eventually get the size with the dairy animals. Grass alone just won't quite cut it. They've got to be fed and with me doing what I'm doing, taking baby calves, they've got to have feed and grass from the time they start eating. Because they're not staying on their mama until they weight about 4 or 500 pound, but yeah.
[00:04:25]
>> Bradley Holt: So, what sort of feed then the-
>> Eddie Yao: I run a high percentage of barley. I won't give out all my secrets because I've been doing this for years, and a lot of folks don't know how. I run a high percentage of barley, I run a much, much smaller percentage of corn.
[00:04:46]
That is the non GMO that, I mean the GMO that I will have in the feed also incorporates a substantial amount of hay in with the feed. I run a very light feed compared to what you could purchase, okay? By doing that, I'm able to free choice those animals.
[00:05:06]
Horse or cow, a lot of folks don't know this, but you can't just put feed out there. They will eat til they literally bloat, okay? Which is a serious problem. However, if you lighten up the feed to a point, that they're full, but they're not full off heavy feed, you can do that.
[00:05:29]
So what I've done, and that's the change I've made from the way old folks used to do it. Old folks used to feed in the morning, feed in the evening. My feed's out there in the pasture, with the grass all day long. And they'll pick grass, that'll fill up on that feed, which has a high percentage of hay.
[00:05:51]
And they do really well.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: They're not on any kind of feed schedule.
>> Bradley Holt: So they're just able to eat when they please?
>> Eddie Yao: Yes.
>> Bradley Holt: Basically.
>> Eddie Yao: And I won't get my check ratios on the hay.
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH] If not, you're good.
>> Eddie Yao: You can't do that on a big scale because feed companies couldn't make enough money selling that kind of food.
[00:06:12]
Well, they could but then I couldn't afford to sell beef at that price.
>> Bradley Holt: I got it. So basically, kind of like those old happy cow cheese commercials, the happy cows make the better beef here.
>> Eddie Yao: That's right, let them eat when they're hungry. Another thing is, the biggest reason I started grinding my own feed was because, to be able to control exactly what was in the feed.
[00:06:35]
All of new commercial operations, and I've worked in businesses not in grain but in minerals that used conveyor systems.
>> Bradley Holt: Mm-hm.
>> Eddie Yao: I don't know if you ever been around the augers, the big augers and the belt conveyors with the buckets, bucket elevators.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah, I know what they look like.
[00:06:55]
>> Eddie Yao: Okay. So, you take a big bucket that's grinding feed for the public, I won't call any names cuz I don't wanna be sued, okay?
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Eddie Yao: But let's say they have ran a batch of chicken feed, okay? When they convey it out of the grinder, it's gonna come out in auger.
[00:07:12]
It's gonna dump into a bucket elevator or some sort, it's gonna go into some more augers, and they're gonna fill the trucks up. Or they're gonna go into a bagging operation to go back. They may run 1,000 ton, okay? Then they're gonna switch over and they're going to do hog feed, okay?
[00:07:34]
Typical way that they do that is they'll do a purge. And what that means is the first ton or two of feed that comes through those augers after they went into their new grinding menu. They'll waste that or they'll mix in something that don't matter. And they're saying they cleaned it out.
[00:07:52]
But I can tell you, that when you're dealing with augers and belt conveyors, they don't get it all. I mean, once you put meat meal, which is a big thing in hog feed, chicken feed. They're not vegetarians like cows are. Then they switch over and they do cow feed.
[00:08:12]
So they can say they haven't put meat mill, and they haven't.
>> Bradley Holt: It's just cross contamination.
>> Eddie Yao: That's exactly right. So I was telling people, I was going to local feed mills and having my grain ground and what have you. And I was saying, no meat mill, and I got to thinking about that thing.
[00:08:31]
And I thought well, the only way that you can legitimately say and be true to yourself is grind it yourself. So I got hammer mills, I got a couple hammer mills. And I don't grind chicken feed, and I don't grind hog feed. I grind cow feed.
>> Bradley Holt: Exclusively for cows, thereby-
[00:08:47]
>> Eddie Yao: They're vegetarians. Chickens and hogs aren't. People don't realize that, too. You see the advertisements on TV of Eggland's Best, and they'll say a strictly vegetarian diet. That's not normal for a chick. I can tell you that is absolutely not normal for chicken, but maybe the egg's better, I don't know.
[00:09:11]
Okay.
>> Bradley Holt: So, what led you to that switch, then? How did you learn about, or what made you make that switch from buying it as opposed to grinding it up yourself?
>> Eddie Yao: Well, I have never bought it.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Okay, but I was having somebody else grind it for me.
[00:09:33]
That's been around for years. As a child in the 50s, if you went in, I was born in 52, so my earliest memories will be like 60, early 60s, but if you went to a local feed mill and you asked them, you brought most of those farmers back then brought their own grain, and we did, too.
[00:09:53]
They would ask you any supplements for the feed, they were talking about meat mill and bone mill, okay? Been around for a long time. Folks just been hearing about it, it was just this cheap source of protein.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah.
>> Eddie Yao: Okay?
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, now you said you were born in 52.
[00:10:12]
Were you born in this area?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, about, I was born on Rocky, well, Stemmick Herring Hospital, but I grew up my first years was on a small farm on Rocky River.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, and just for the record cuz I don't think I stated it at the beginning, we are in Stanfield, North Carolina.
[00:10:32]
>> Eddie Yao: Yes.
>> Bradley Holt: Stanfield and how long have you been here, in Stanfield?
>> Eddie Yao: In this house here for 30 years.
>> Bradley Holt: 30 years, okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Yes.
>> Bradley Holt: And as for your farmland itself, where your livestock are, how long?
>> Eddie Yao: I'm on Yow Road, that particular portion of land has been in the family since 90.
[00:10:54]
And I had a cousin that owned it, was fixing to lose it, my dad stepped in and bought that at the time, I inherited it from him.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, and so you've-
>> Eddie Yao: We sold the farm on Rocky River back years ago.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, yeah, so you mentioned your father was into farming as well, was it?
[00:11:13]
>> Eddie Yao: Part time.
>> Bradley Holt: Part time, okay.
>> Eddie Yao: That's something else that's changed. When I was growing up, there were very few people, we talking in the 60s that farmed full time. And you had maybe in the area I knew one guy that farmed big enough that he did it full time, he also ran a feed mill business.
[00:11:37]
Most of your folks had anywhere from 60 to 80 acres. And they would farm that and would work public work, too. Things changed, back in the day, 60, 80 acres was probably all one guy could handle when you were talking horses and old tractors. But things changed, and that no longer took up their time and they could no longer make a living doing that, so he worked the farm, too.
[00:12:04]
>> Bradley Holt: So your father, part time farmer and then-
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, we raised our own hogs, and most folks back in the early 60s, out in the country did that. General hogs, we had a milk cow when I was a smaller.
>> Eddie Yao: We raised our own chickens, eggs forever.
[00:12:27]
I can't ever remember buying eggs, never remember that.
>> Bradley Holt: Does that still continue today?
>> Eddie Yao: It does, I still have hens. I have ten laying hens, these haven't been washed. I kind of furnish the family, ten hens will. Those haven't been washed, wash them. That's another thing, a lot of folks don't understand that.
[00:12:52]
When an egg is laid, some folks call it a coupon or a bouquet, but it's got this like film over it. If you don't wash it, I think it's like four or five weeks, I can't testify to that because I don't keep them that long. But I can tell you that a hen can lay out here in the woods if it's a broody type hen and they have a clutch, so many eggs they'll lay out at a time.
[00:13:17]
It's about 12 to 16. They'll lay there in the hot summer sun when the hen decides to brood on them when she's laid out, so to speak. And those eggs will hatch. An egg is a living organism, it's totally different from meats, a lot of folks wouldn't understand that.
[00:13:33]
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah, I think I've read that over in England, they don't wash their eggs, which is why they don't have to be refrigerated.
>> Eddie Yao: They come with a built in protection.
>> Bradley Holt: Exactly.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: So you kind of adopt the more-
>> Eddie Yao: When I wash them, I let that bucket get full.
[00:13:50]
I just gave my brother in law a dozen eggs this morning, and he's gonna have to wash those, but once I wash them, I put them in the refrigerator.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: I still live country, we still can all of our vegetables, I could show you jars of green beans, freezers full of peas, squash, okra.
[00:14:13]
Yeah, I still live basically like I grew up and the reason behind that, it's not that I just super enjoy it. I do, I do. I can't live, find that standard by going in a grocery store. Okay, I like being able to, that sort of thing. I like what I get from that garden, from what I get.
[00:14:39]
>> Bradley Holt: So growing up, did you end up kind of the same way you're doing it now in terms of growing all of your own food and not really going to buy it?
>> Eddie Yao: We never bought anything.
>> Bradley Holt: Same way then?
>> Eddie Yao: Yes, now I'll buy some things.
>> Eddie Yao: I love ice cream.
[00:14:57]
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Eddie Yao: But I'll buy some things, like maybe a pork loin. And then I just bought one this morning. I'll buy things like that. Or we're barbecuing, we'll put in an order for a bunch of shoulders or Boston butts. We'll do that. We do that at Christmas as a family thing.
[00:15:18]
If I can get my hands on it, my brother will still kill hogs every once in a while. I love the salt cured streaking in fat back, but I know where it's come from. I really like that one that doesn't have the seasoning put to it and some that you buy in the store do.
[00:15:34]
>> Bradley Holt: You gotta do it yourself to make it taste good.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, I've got quarts of green beans in the pantry. We just, that's-
>> Bradley Holt: Do you grow those?
>> Eddie Yao: I'll show you [INAUDIBLE] just a second.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, we grow everything.. I've got, sometimes I go at it too big, stay, stay, stay.
[00:15:53]
I forgot about the dog, [INAUDIBLE].
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Bradley Holt: Stay.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah.
>> Eddie Yao: That's mustard greens-
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: That's string beans. We got packages of corn. The thing that has changed for me, the biggest thing in putting back vegetables, the thing that has changed is the food saver, best thing that's came along for anybody gardening or into food preserving.
[00:16:29]
The old style was if you took stuff that you didn't normally can, like peas, peas are better frozen than they are canned, corn, same way. Was that you blanched it, you brought your water to a hot simmer. Okay, and that helped it keep its freshness. With the food preserver, you package it fresh and freeze it immediately.
[00:16:52]
It's the closest thing to fresh that you'll ever eat.
>> Bradley Holt: So how much produce or plants do you also work with? Do you personally grow them?
>> Eddie Yao: I don't sell anything. What produce that we do is for our own use.
>> Bradley Holt: Personal use?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, we got, maybe a half acre, three-quarters.
[00:17:15]
Okay, we spaghetti sauce, we do all of that. Wife does all of that.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: She's listening. She does most of it. [LAUGH]
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH] So you do at least have that mix of you're doing livestock and then selling. But then you're personally growing for yourself [INAUDIBLE] as well.
[00:17:40]
>> Eddie Yao: Eggs, produce we buy practically nothing in the line of vegetables at the grocery store.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, just the ice cream is what you needed.
>> Eddie Yao: Just the ice cream and I like Breyers.
>> Bradley Holt: Breyers, okay?
>> Eddie Yao: [LAUGH]
>> Bradley Holt: Do you make your own ever?
>> Eddie Yao: I have, I have a freezer, but I stay too busy.
[00:18:00]
I've already taken on too many projects, okay?
>> Bradley Holt: Mm-hm, okay, so you mentioned a little bit before we started the interview, how far back can you trace your family to this area of doing farming?
>> Eddie Yao: Forever.
>> Eddie Yao: By the geneology, my folks arrived at the time of Rico.
[00:18:25]
And thinking that that's what pulled them into the area.
>> Eddie Yao: But that land I'm pretty sure that we got now was an original stake claim.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Okay, part of a stake claim, it was a couple hundred acres at the time. And between me and my cousins, we're still on it.
[00:18:50]
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah-
>> Eddie Yao: Got split up over the years.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah, a few of the other interviews I've listened so far that's relatively common. It just gets split up and the lands gets smaller and smaller.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, but we grew up, we killed, it was always two big hogs a year, always, for family.
[00:19:10]
And that was my time to stay out of school. I get to keep the fire when I was small-
>> Bradley Holt: What time of year of would this be?
>> Eddie Yao: It'd be always right after Thanksgiving, between that Christmas. They'd wait for the whether to change cold, dry days, yeah.
[00:19:27]
>> Bradley Holt: And that's when you would kill the hogs?
>> Eddie Yao: Yes.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, and how long would those last you?
>> Eddie Yao: A year.
>> Bradley Holt: A full year?
>> Eddie Yao: Back in the day that was a staple out in the country was what they called side meat, the country ham.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
[00:19:42]
>> Eddie Yao: Your shoulders, the front part of the hog and the back part, the hams, was cured. And that was all called country ham, even though part of it was shoulders. And then the side portions of the hog was the fatback and streaky meat. Country folks call it streaky meat.
[00:19:59]
But you would salt that down, and what that was was like you didn't eat a bunch of that stuff. At supper time in the summertime there might be fresh corn, string beans, and a piece or two of that streaky meat. There wasn't a lot of big meals, big meats cooked during the week out in the country.
[00:20:17]
It just wasn't available.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: And folks in the country didn't trust buying beef and stuff out in stores.
>> Bradley Holt: My grandfather grew up on a tobacco farm and he-
>> Eddie Yao: You understand what I'm trying-
>> Bradley Holt: He was always, don't bring the chicken into the house. I don't want raw chicken in this house cuz he didn't know where it was coming from.
[00:20:35]
>> Eddie Yao: That's right.
>> Bradley Holt: I know exactly what you're talking about there. Yeah, so that's a really important thing for you is knowing where your food is coming from, right?
>> Eddie Yao: Absolutely, and the other thing is not having somebody do everything for you. And not losing a lot of that knowledge that's getting lost, how to do things.
[00:20:58]
>> Bradley Holt: So you learned how to do all this from your?
>> Eddie Yao: Father.
>> Bradley Holt: Father?
>> Eddie Yao: And family.
>> Bradley Holt: And then he would've learned it from?
>> Eddie Yao: His father, so on.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, so what was it like growing up learning this?
>> Eddie Yao: I've seen lye soap made back in the day when it wasn't popular to make lye soap.
[00:21:16]
Saw it made in a wash pot.
>> Bradley Holt: And what is lye soap?
>> Eddie Yao: Lye soap is made from animal fat and lye. And just to give you a little history on that, I asked my dad one time years later. We were talking about him making that lye soap.
[00:21:32]
And he would use it out around the barn. I can't remember exactly all the uses he put it to. I mean, you could buy soap at the store it too at that time. But I asked him one time, I said, well, if everybody kinda made it on their own, I said, who they find Red Devil lye to put in lye soap?
[00:21:51]
And he looked at me like I was stupid. He said, son, he said, they made their own lye. He said everybody had an ash hopper when I was a kid. And he said, like he way he explained it, they took the ashes out of their wood heaters, and they put in a hopper made out of boards.
[00:22:06]
And as it rained, that leached through into a catch basin underneath. And that's your lye, so that was the way of doing things, if you knew how to do it, yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: If memory servers, lye soap was fairly harsh, wasn't it?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, it was strong. It would clean, definitely clean with the lye.
[00:22:24]
But it was as strong as you made it, I imagine.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: It probably depend on who's lye soap you were using as to what strength whether their skin would stay on or not, yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: So the lye soap was one of the things that you learned how to make from your-
[00:22:41]
>> Eddie Yao: Well, I don't know how to make it. But I've seen it made.
>> Bradley Holt: You've seen it.
>> Eddie Yao: I'm sure I could figure it out. But I've got no use for it. But I just got to see a lot of things. He still had a horse, when I was a kid, that was a trained work horse.
[00:22:58]
And he would do that when somebody was there just to show them how good that horse was. He would pull the wagon out. He had a old corn. He had pulled the wagon up parallel, out far enough that the horse could maneuver. And then with him standing on the ground and the reigns up in the wagon, he would pull that horse up backward and get her to back that wagon right up to that horse.
[00:23:21]
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Bradley Holt: Like showing off the-
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, she was good, and he would just show them how good she was.
>> Bradley Holt: Did you ever learn how to do that, work a horse?
>> Eddie Yao: I have worked a garden with a horse.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, I have the for cultivation and a plough, and I've done that, absolutely.
[00:23:42]
I've driven one with a wagon when I was a child too. A lot of that was just doing it the old way when we had time.
>> Bradley Holt: Keeping the traditions.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: So when did it become clear to you, or let me rephrase this. Was there ever a point where you thought you might not continue the farming tradition of the family?
[00:24:06]
>> Eddie Yao: It just kind of stays with you.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: There was a period of time in the 70s and 80s when I didn't do anything but garden. And I can't remember exactly how it happened. I started leasing pasture land here and there. We always had a beef that we were feeding off ourselves, okay?
[00:24:30]
I can't ever remember a time that I didn't have beef in the freezer from something that I had fed out or raised out to maturity. But I just started just gaining cows, gaining cows and I got back into it in the 80s, and I have just been into it ever since in a bigger sort of way instead of just for myself.
[00:24:50]
I always liked the fact that I could produce as much beef as what I do, and feed as many people as what I do. It's a lot to just your own weight. But when you can help carry along somebody else too, and give him something he can't get anywhere else, kinda a good thing.
[00:25:09]
I like over producing.
>> Bradley Holt: You like over producing? Yeah, I do remember your freezer was nice and full at the farmer's market.
>> Eddie Yao: I always plant too many vegetables and give stuff away. I like being able to do that.
>> Bradley Holt: I feel like that's a really common out in the country.
[00:25:28]
>> Eddie Yao: It is.
>> Bradley Holt: I mean we're about 45 minutes out from Concord, I think. Was it always kind of that communal farming?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, everybody, when I was growing up, had a garden, and everybody was always sharing. Need any green beans? Come on over, pick them. They weren't gonna pick them for you.
[00:25:48]
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah
>> Eddie Yao: But you come on and that sort of thing. And another thing that's disappeared is when I was a child, practically every farmer or every small acreage had an orchard of some kind. They would have apple trees or damsels, plums they would make jellies out of, and that's just gone away.
[00:26:10]
That has just gone away.
>> Bradley Holt: Do you think there is a reason for that?
>> Eddie Yao: My people, when you work and you're not there at home a lot, you just don't have the opportunity, that sort of thing. Putting up stuff takes a lot of extra work and a lot of folks are just not willing to do that.
[00:26:31]
My neighbor was mowing his orchard with his horses, he was a true farmer. He never did anything but farm. My earliest memory of him he was in his 60s, and he had a nice orchard, a lot of apple trees, some peach trees. And he was out with his two horses, had them hooked up to a horse drawn mower machine.
[00:26:52]
Just a sickle bar. He had a seat for riding back there. And I asked my dad, I said dad, is that the way you folks did it when you were growing up? [LAUGH] He said no son, he said, back in my day, you pulled up every bit of grass you saw growing.
[00:27:08]
It was a snake issue, I think. Yeah, yeah. They just, he said your yards were swept. He said, you did not allow grass to grow around your house and in your yard. It's just hard to imagine, but.
>> Bradley Holt: Now I can't muster up the motivation sometimes to mow my grass once a week.
[00:27:26]
>> Eddie Yao: I know it. I know it. And then back in the day, they actually kept the grass pulled up and the yard swept with those old straw brooms, yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: And you said him using the horse and the scythe was in the 1960s?
>> Eddie Yao: When I saw that, that would have been mid-60s, somewhere along that line.
[00:27:47]
>> Bradley Holt: That's just a little bit.
>> Eddie Yao: At that time, you still had the folks that had farmed up through the 20s and the 30s and 40s and were still living, and still had their old horses. He would borrow my dad's horse when they, his cash crop was cotton.
[00:28:07]
>> Bradley Holt: Cotton?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Basically back then, see it's not like now. There wasn't a lot of market for corn. You didn't see the big corn fields, you didn't have the big farmers like you've got now that could do a couple of thousand acres. So what corn was grown was for their own use, their animals and their livestock.
[00:28:27]
The one crop that they could sell, soy beans was almost nonexistent when I was a child around here. I don't remember the first time I saw a soybean field. But cotton was the one thing that somebody that was the true farmer that was surviving from the farm could grow and sell.
[00:28:43]
And they had cotton. And he would borrow it, when they were working their cotton, he would borrow my dad's horse. He had several grown boys that would come in and help him, and cultivate that cotton with horses.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah, I am aware of that. Down by Norwood, I know that they have some really large cotton fields down that way.
[00:29:05]
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, and I know that guy, and-
>> Bradley Holt: Is it one guy who owns all that?
>> Eddie Yao: There's actually two. But, the one that you see if you go Plank Road, if you've been that Plank Road going back side of nowhere down through there and saw those huge, that's Frank Lee.
[00:29:20]
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Okay. Yeah, you got mega farmers now. The people that are in farming now are actually agribusiness. It's not like it used to be.
>> Bradley Holt: So when you say agribusiness, what do you mean by that?
>> Eddie Yao: He's growing several different crops to sell. The cottons not that, that's totally for sale.
[00:29:48]
The beans are totally for sale, and the corn is totally for sale. Most of them of your row croppers now it's not true in all of them, they're the row croppers. They're not raising livestock and that sort of thing.
>> Bradley Holt: So it's road cropper?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, it's row crops, corn-
[00:30:06]
>> Bradley Holt: Row.
>> Eddie Yao: Bean, that's what he's calling it.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, okay, row cropper.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, a lot of folks, I'll put this in there, they don't understand how the GMOs happened. Before GMOs, everything was cultivated, okay? That meant going in there with either horse or tractors and taking the grass out of it after it got so high after it germinated.
[00:30:31]
That's not done anymore, and the reason is they were able to go in there and spray and kill all the grass. And it came about for a good reason. It wasn't that, I'm not a GMO fan either, but the no till program is what started all of that.
[00:30:52]
Erosion was a real issue, okay? When you planted, what you did, you come in and you turn the soil over first thing. Exposed it, okay? Comes the rains, a lot of your top soil washed away. When they went to the no till, they come in there now, they spray the top of the ground, they kill everything, okay?
[00:31:13]
They've got no till machines that plant the seed right on top of the ground without turning off, you don't have the problem with erosion that you once had. But since you can't cultivate once you do no till, there is no cultivation, you can't cultivate. They started using pre-emergents, and it worked okay on the beans but not so much on the corn.
[00:31:35]
>> Bradley Holt: When did that start?
>> Eddie Yao: I don't wanna tell you wrong, but the first I remember of it was when it really got big. It would've been sometime in the late 70s, early 80s.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Your agricultural park was actually encouraging and had incentives for you to go no till.
[00:32:03]
They were really fighting the erosion thing. And so that's how your GMOs happened. It wasn't from a necessarily bad standpoint. What happens always is not good, you kind of trade off one for the other, yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah, you try to pick the lesser of two evils.
>> Eddie Yao: That's right.
[00:32:22]
>> Bradley Holt: So today, do you have like a standard day or is just every day a different-
>> Eddie Yao: Every day is different.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, what are some of the common processes you kinda have to work through?
>> Eddie Yao: Grinding grain. Finding grain. I don't raise any grain, sometimes I might do a little barley.
[00:32:49]
I buy from neighbors.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Watching out for the pitfalls. I may have told you about getting a load of bad corn and having it tested and the guy came and got it back. I know it didn't cost anything except my time. A lot of folks worry about GMOs.
[00:33:12]
With corn, or peanuts, there are much bigger issue that you gotta be concerned about and that's the aflatoxins. It happens in those two crops. And you'll have all kinda explanation of why it happens and when it happens. But everybody wants to talk about stress, maybe that's it. A little bit dryer than usual, but it's carcinogen.
[00:33:35]
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: And it can be passed on. Luckily, I had heard that it was prevalent in some people's crops. And I had just got the load in and I took it to a fairly large farmer, a really large farmer that lives close to me, he's got a testing lamp.
[00:33:55]
And it was out the roof. Yeah so I called the guy I got it from. He come and got it and I talked to another guy, another neighbor. And he said, well you come and get some of mine, it looks really good he said, and you have it tested if you want, so I did.
[00:34:11]
It was out the bottom so I got a load of that. But you you're gotta watch for, just because it's non-GMO corn that was used, that wouldn't be the big issue for me. I can tell you. There's other things out there that'll get you. You just gotta know and you gotta be careful.
[00:34:32]
And I try to be careful.
>> Bradley Holt: Mm-hm.
>> Eddie Yao: I don't wanna eat anything like that, let alone sell anything like that.
>> Bradley Holt: And when did you start selling?
>> Eddie Yao: Maybe, I'm just gonna guess.
>> Bradley Holt: Mm-hm.
>> Eddie Yao: 15 years ago maybe.
>> Bradley Holt: 15 years ago?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, now, I've raised some cows and was selling calves, but I'm talking about the individuals.
[00:35:01]
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah
>> Eddie Yao: When I had the commercial heard most of what I raised went to the stockyard. I would pull caves out of that, that I would go on out and sell to people that wanted.
>> Bradley Holt: And so today I think you mentioned earlier you kind of do that yourself the stockade and the slaughtering and all that?
[00:35:22]
>> Eddie Yao: No, no, I can't do the slaughtering by state law.
>> Bradley Holt: State law?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, yeah. I take it to Cruze's. That's at Rommertown, the other side of Mount Pleasant. He did have a state inspector. Now he's got federal. But if you sell within the state it really is not an issue.
[00:35:41]
And I am not going to say that one is more particular than the other as far as these judgement calls. I can't see a big difference. They package it, put the weights to price and they vacuum seal, they do the vacuum seal, which best thing [INAUDIBLE] ever come along.
[00:36:02]
Just like the food saver with the, yeah, I can tell you. Gives whole new meaning to that frozen beef or meats, yeah. You can't tell the difference when you open a package fresh, just looking at it you can tell the difference
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, so has there always been the state law on having to have the inspector at the slaughterhouse, or when did, do you know if-
[00:36:36]
>> Eddie Yao: I don't know, I can tell you that growing up, well, it's like things have changed so much. You didn't eat sausage year round, and pork. You only ate it in the fall of the year when you killed hogs. Beef was a little different. You ate beef, a lot of folk had milk cows.
[00:36:55]
And when the milk cow would have a [INAUDIBLE] you didn't see the commercial herds like you see around here now. You just didn't see that. Pasture might have a few Herefords in it, but the Black Angus was nonexistent. So folks will have a milk cow and have a milk cow, you've got to keep her bred.
[00:37:13]
It's not like she starts giving milk and that's for the rest of her life. So they would have a like a male calf. Well, most farmers were not going to keep the male calf doesn't give any milk. So when that calf got up about 4 or 500 pounds, they go around, they'd slaughter it themselves.
[00:37:30]
And they'd go around, most of it being beef, cut up chunks, and they would sell it out. That was the only time that you ever got beef.
>> Bradley Holt: So it was seasonally, it wasn't year round.
>> Eddie Yao: Occasionally would be the word for it. You just didn't eat beef that often.
[00:37:50]
It just wasn't available. Most country people, they'd heard the tales of horse meat and stuff like that. They just weren't gonna buy it, and you didn't have the major supermarkets around in our area like you've got now. Wasn't available. You'd go to Concord or you go to you had to travel, okay?
[00:38:08]
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, so how
>> Bradley Holt: How often did you go into like Concord or Charlotte like some of the-
>> Eddie Yao: To buy meats and stuff? Never.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah buy anything just anything in general.
>> Eddie Yao: Well now if it was closed, you'd go to Concord or. And this area is situated between Charlotte and Concord Monroe so you have a selection.
[00:38:38]
But typically you'd go to town to buy clothes for school and that sort of thing. It was far and few between.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay so for the most part you were-
>> Eddie Yao: Here.
>> Bradley Holt: Self-sufficent out here.
>> Eddie Yao: Absolutely.
>> Bradley Holt: And I don't think of this as the country in a way becuase-
[00:38:58]
>> Eddie Yao: It's not.
>> Bradley Holt: The highways have been built and everything now.
>> Eddie Yao: It's not anymore. I can remember when a lot of roads around here weren't even paved. And there was a time when I knew everybody that lived in the Stanfield area. Basically, that's not true anymore. The country is disappearing fast, really fast.
[00:39:25]
>> Bradley Holt: So kind of building off of that a little bit, how, over the past 15 years, have your operations changed? Are there any major changes that come to mind?
>> Eddie Yao: There are no more small feed mills around feed ground. Those are gone.
>> Eddie Yao: And that's a big thing.
[00:39:50]
>> Eddie Yao: Luckily, they've tightened up on the regulations. Just because somebody's from the country doesn't mean there are scruples of what they should be, and They do tests, ever so often they'll come in and take samples of the meat hanging at the processing houses. And they're testing for stuff like cattle wormer that has a withdrawal period, antibiotics that have a withdrawal period, so they do test that.
[00:40:31]
I've never had a problem with that and mine has been tested. The other thing is the packing used to take animals in that were call downers. And what that meant was, especially dairy cattle in particular, can get down in their back, but it wouldn't matter. It could be broken leg or whatever.
[00:40:58]
And you had folks that would come around with trailers and a winch and they would winch those animals up onto the truck. And there were packing houses that would process them. And now the rule is he walks in under his own power or it doesn't get slaughtered. And they have other regulations, too, about different things that they didn't used to have ten years ago on what they could slaughter.
[00:41:25]
>> Bradley Holt: So they're tightening up a lot of this.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, that mad cow thing opened up a lot of people's eyes and it caused them to look at other things, too, okay?
>> Bradley Holt: So you view these regulations as a positive, for the most part?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, yeah, from that standpoint, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:45]
A lot of people that would come around selling the beef like I was telling you. They didn't let it get mature because most people wouldn't have figured it out. But they were folks in the country that would come around selling beef out that we knew that my folks wouldn't buy meat from.
[00:42:05]
>> Eddie Yao: Okay, people's standards are just different than what yours are.
>> Bradley Holt: Mm-hm.
>> Eddie Yao: Okay.
>> Bradley Holt: So moving on a little bit now to the actual selling of the product, I'm aware you do sell at the Winecoff Farmers Market. I personally bought a couple steaks from you, and I overdid them a little bit cuz they were bigger than what I'm used to cooking them from the store.
[00:42:29]
>> Eddie Yao: I used to sell at the one in Morrisville. And I used to sell at one south of Concord up there, Afton Village, I think was the name of it.
[00:42:50]
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah.
>> Eddie Yao: But that market, I just didn't do enough. And there was some traffic issues getting in and out at Afton Village. And Morrisville was just too far. So now I'm basically, now I sold at Harrisburg for a while.
>> Bradley Holt: Harrisburg.
>> Eddie Yao: But I'm getting older and and this running down the road don't suit me, and preparing the sale like it did.
[00:43:13]
Got a little store up in Morrisville and got one down toward, it's on Badin Lake. It's actually in Montgomery County, there's a resort, a gated community down there. I'm trying to think of the name of it. But anyway, got one there that sells for me. This guy that's in the same business I'm in, he's more pork than he is beef.
[00:43:44]
I'll sell to people like that they want something they can sell.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, so you kind of act as a supplement to other sellers as well as personally selling for yourself?
>> Eddie Yao: Yes.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: If I have extra.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah, so have you always been selling at these farmers markets?
[00:44:02]
When you said you started kind of 15 years ago, was it to farmers markets or who were you selling to at the outset?
>> Eddie Yao: I got up to three farmers markets about four years ago. And I cut all that out about two years ago. I did it for about two years.
[00:44:17]
But it was just keeping me away from doing what I needed to do. And they were during the week, and they were after 12 o'clock.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: And I wasn't getting home till like 7:30. And then I had animals to tend to. So it just didn't work out.
[00:44:33]
It just didn't mesh with what I was doing.
>> Bradley Holt: So, when you get going at these farmer's markets, did you reach out to them or did they reach out to you to sell?
>> Eddie Yao: They came to me.
>> Bradley Holt: They go to you?
>> Eddie Yao: At that time, they were just getting into the protein.
[00:44:54]
They weren't selling eggs.
>> Bradley Holt: And we're talking about Winecoff, right?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, and you're talking about, this would've been 2007, 2006, maybe, that's how fast this has come along. By the time I could get my license and get set up with, at that time the nearest place that was doing this, made it legal, putting the weight, the package labeling was at City.
[00:45:25]
And I was having to haul an hour and half to get them done. But they came to me, and by the time I got to the market, it took me not quite a year, and folks were there, too. And I don't think anybody was selling eggs, even at that time.
[00:45:46]
And that's really came along big time in the last five, six years, let's say, folks getting into that.
>> Bradley Holt: Selling eggs at the farmers market?
>> Eddie Yao: Mm-hm, mm-hm.
>> Bradley Holt: What other ways have things changed at the farmers markets over the year?
>> Eddie Yao: Less small timers, folks that are farming just say a half acre or so, come in with potatoes or whatever is coming off, onions, peas.
[00:46:21]
But now, it's more the folks that are into even a little bit bigger scale.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: That do the raised beds, and they're doing things like a raised bed that's probably about 20 to 24 inches. They'll have three rows of peas or green beans close together. And got help picking them, that sort of thing, that has changed.
[00:46:47]
>> Bradley Holt: Do you have any outside labor force that helps you, or is everything-
>> Eddie Yao: Just occasionally.
>> Bradley Holt: Occasionally?
>> Eddie Yao: Occasionally, like with the hay, I've got a guy that I raise the hay. He comes in and he'll cut it and bale it for me. And I get it out of the field.
[00:47:07]
When I have trouble, I need some help, I've got several folks I can call on to come in and help me. But mostly I'm a one man show. And I'm trying I, well, I know I'm gonna keep it that way. My age, I will keep it that way.
[00:47:21]
>> Bradley Holt: So before you retired, did you rely on more labor as you were working in public fields?
>> Eddie Yao: Yes, yes. Yeah, I had a young guy who helped me for several years.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: So in terms of the farmers market changing, it's most likely the small timers are kind of getting pushed out a little bit now?
[00:47:43]
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, yeah. You don't see the folks a little bit older than myself that were going there, about my age. That just had a big garden and would plant extra tomato plants, and were selling tomatoes, squash. It's people that's more or less making a living at it. It's still local.
[00:48:03]
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah.
>> Eddie Yao: They're still growing it. But it's more commercial, what I would call commercial, even though it's local. They're not as big as the big growers, the Armani and folks like that. But they're doing five, ten acres, which is huge when you're talking produce gardening. Yeah, they're doing irrigation with the drip lines and that sort of thing.
[00:48:27]
>> Bradley Holt: So why do you believe that people choose the farmers' markets over grocery stores? Cuz I feel like there's been an increased interest in farmers' markets recently.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, it's a trust issue.
>> Bradley Holt: Trust?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, when you go into a supermarket, you don't know where the vegetables come from.
[00:48:51]
I mean, I'm talking countries, you don't know where the beef comes from. Basically, you don't have a clue. You don't know their standards of cleanliness, just handling stuff.
>> Eddie Yao: I think it's a trust issue. I think everybody's seen the horror stories on TV news. And it's not all bad, I mean, it's not.
[00:49:20]
But you're losing control, is what it boils down to.
>> Bradley Holt: So you think people are trying to kind of reclaim a little bit of that control over their food again?
>> Eddie Yao: I think so. I’ve always been like that.
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Eddie Yao: But I think it's just beginning to realize it's like anything else, you can’t have everything done for you and expect it to be the way you would do it.
[00:49:42]
That just doesn’t happen. My mother, I’ll just give you this example, I bought a can of greens, just like you see setting up there on the table that we canned. And I bought them, I told her I had done that, and she said I can't believe you'd buy some.
[00:50:01]
There's no way I'm gonna eat anything like that. Well, she said they just can't be as careful looking, that's what she called them, preparing it, looking it and preparing it. I bought another can shortly after there and I had emptied them out and there was a half a cricket.
[00:50:19]
>> Bradley Holt: Ugh.
>> Eddie Yao: Not a cricket but a grasshopper, I guess the machinery just couldn't, it was just absolutely rank. You could put it in a big batch and wash it, but it's not the same thing as somebody there looking at it. Or you looking at it, preparing it.
[00:50:34]
It's just not the same thing.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah, I-
>> Eddie Yao: I don't think I bought any since.
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH] I work in grocery, and I've dealt with produce and grocery, and I remember just recently the big romaine e-coli scare.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: And we had to pull everything because none of the romaine was source.
[00:50:56]
We had no clue where any of it came from. And so that's exactly what you're talking about right there.
>> Eddie Yao: And the big thing I remember with Meeks was when they had the, that was Cargill, and I don't know how many years ago that was, but they had the contaminated.
[00:51:12]
And their statement was, I think they were doing it, they just did to have it banned. Their statement was that it had been mixed together, and it was from nine different locations. And I think they've changed the laws on that now, they should have. But I think they was just playing the game to keep from having, not being able to take it from their farms in whatever country and bring it in here, yeah.
[00:51:44]
But why would your Pa ever do something like that? Nix, just from a standpoint of control and being able to, I think that's it.
>> Bradley Holt: Reclaiming that control. So, you're a bit outside of the Charlotte metro area. Like I said, about 45 minutes outside of Concord probably, 90 minutes, maybe, outside of Charlotte, maybe a little bit less.
[00:52:10]
>> Eddie Yao: Less than that, about 50 minutes, it's actually, you go down 2427 and be in Charlotte probably as quick as I can be in Concord.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay, okay, I try not to drive into Charlotte if I can help it.
>> Eddie Yao: I don't drive in Charlotte. If we go, I've got a driver.
[00:52:27]
>> Bradley Holt: So Charlotte's continuing to expand as well as a lot of the other little cities, Concord, Kannapolis, Monroe maybe even. Has that sort of growth affected you in any way even though you're a little bit outside here?
>> Eddie Yao: Not really, I tell you who it would affect, it really would affect anybody that's wanting to get in with this sort of thing or continue on.
[00:52:55]
>> Eddie Yao: One thing that has helped in this state to a point is the land use laws. Before that happened back in the 80s, I think that was in the 80s, real estate value would force the sale of most farms whenever the heirs, not the heirs, but the folks died off, and there was a bunch of children involved.
[00:53:28]
Now, you can get a special tax status on the land. But somebody going out to purchase land that wasn't under that person, it'd be kind of tough to get started. We're not rural, there's a term for it. What do you call it when you're not rural but you're not urban?
[00:53:53]
>> Bradley Holt: Suburban.
>> Eddie Yao: No, they say something. I saw something come on. It was pretty accurate the way it was stated, but that's what's happening around here. Servicing programs are going in and buying up or buying, doing the contract thing, where the land has to stay in farming. And that's a great thing.
[00:54:17]
And that's happened with a lot of places around here. But this was all mostly down in the little town of Stanfield. But it was all the small farms. Yeah, all the small farms.
>> Bradley Holt: So just those farms as far as the eye can see but now it's just?
[00:54:39]
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: A lot of it's dormant or-
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: Underdeveloped.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: Okay.
>> Bradley Holt: So are you?
>> Eddie Yao: It's gonna get more so.
>> Bradley Holt: You think so?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, Charlotte's growing. And farm land is not valued in this country cuz it's more of it than we need to feed ourselves.
[00:55:01]
It's not like I understand in Europe where it don't matter if you own it or not, you're not gonna build on it. And it'll come to that one day here if the population continues to grow. It'll have to, it'll have to.
>> Bradley Holt: So are you part of any local cooperative farming organizations?
[00:55:23]
>> Eddie Yao: No.
>> Bradley Holt: So it sounds to me like a lot of your organization is more informal, just kind of working with other people and less of a more of a institutional type organization?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: And is that kind of something that's just traditional, just every one has always kind of helped out each other?
[00:55:43]
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, yeah, wasn't uncommon when I was growing up, somebody was harvesting one thing, and other ones wasn't ready for them to help out. If nothing but driving a truck, or whatever, but In this area, now if I'm understanding, I've had friends up north. Up north you have the co-ops, but down here it was basically small farm, okay?
[00:56:15]
And somebody in the area would have a new version of a combine that was combining for everybody in the area. So it wasn't like you had to own a big combine or stay abreast about that.
>> Eddie Yao: I don't know when it actually started happening. But you couldn't go anywhere and buy.
[00:56:49]
You could have a few meals round your shop, but there was no place I know right here in this area where you could go and buy cow feed or horse feed. They just didn't exist. Our old work horse got corn on the ear and trust me, she could eat it too.
[00:57:08]
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Eddie Yao: And the hogs were the same way. My folks didn't want anything but corn fed hogs. I have toted many a five gallon bucket to those two hogs that I have every year, put it out, and a hog don't waste it, trust me. If a grain popped off he can find it.
[00:57:24]
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Eddie Yao: But things have just changed
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: So I guess, wrapping things up a little bit here, what sort of lessons has your experience working in farming and livestock raising taught you over the years?
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah, first of all, you gotta like doing it or you're not gonna be in it.
[00:57:50]
I don't make a lot of money doing what I'm doing. I make a little but I enjoy it. And in the process, I raise my own food too. So, it kind of gives me an avenue. I stay in it. I just produce more than what I need. And I've got a market for it
[00:58:11]
>> Eddie Yao: I'm able to still live the life that I kinda grew up with, to a point. The one thing that's difficult with me is, I'm trying to be funny, is that unlike the farmers in my day, I'm pickup poor. I've got three pickups. It's a long story.
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
[00:58:34]
>> Eddie Yao: Farmers, in my day, very few of them own pickup trucks. It's hard for folks to imagine how they did it. Well, tractor and trailer behind it going to the field. They didn't have to go long distances. I know a guy that's in dairy business that he would carry his bull calves that he wasn't gonna keep to the sale barn.
[00:59:00]
There's a market for day old calves. In the trunk of his car, a baby calf will travel real well if you tie his feet, you hobbled him and just lay him down. But that's a big change. Folks don't realize that most farmers, in this area anyway, didn't own pickup trucks.
[00:59:18]
They might have a old, big truck of some sort, but it's a huge change. But, I like the pick-ups-
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Eddie Yao: As far as getting work done, yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: Very helpful for you, I'm sure.
>> Eddie Yao: Absolutely.
>> Bradley Holt: So looking to the future a little bit, do you envision your business continuing-
[00:59:38]
>> Eddie Yao: For a while.
>> Bradley Holt: Through your family taking over?
>> Eddie Yao: Not really. They may continue to raise some cows and sell it to keep the farm going but most of them are tied up in what they're doing that they just would not have the time. But they'll keep the animals on the farm and that sort of thing.
[01:00:00]
>> Bradley Holt: Okay
>> Eddie Yao: They'll do that.
>> Bradley Holt: So how do you envision local farming will look in the future? You kinda brought it up a little bit with the land usage. What other things do you think will change in the future looking forward?
>> Eddie Yao: I think much to your small farmers.
[01:00:16]
Let me put it to you this way, I do enough business that it didn't really affect me but, think just recently, in a farm bill, it's been within the last couple years, changed the qualifications for tax exemption on farm animals. When I started at this, I think it was $1000 of revenue, okay?
[01:00:50]
For you to be able to qualify for tax exemption on stuff like fertilizer, seeds, animal feed, anything agricultural. It was recently changed to $10,000. Now what that does is, your small truck farmers that got a half acre out here, he can no longer compete, not really. Because everything he's got, he's gonna pay more for than the guy that's doing the five to ten acres, more in a commercial scale.
[01:01:31]
It's the same thing like some guy holding onto five, ten acres of land. And he goes and buys some calves in the springtime. Push them out there, gets them good and fat. Takes them to the market and sells them. He's not gonna clear that $10,000. So if he buys fertilizer and put on his pasture, it's a lot harder to be competitive.
[01:02:01]
Now, it didn't affect me because my revenue was such that. But things like that really hurt somebody that's got 100 chickens and they're cashing on them and selling eggs. There are feed that they're buying for them, they can't get the tax exemption on that now. But little things like that can have an impact.
[01:02:24]
But cost of land is probably the biggest.
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah. [LAUGH]
>> Eddie Yao: By far.
>> Bradley Holt: Especially out this direction where they're trying to expand everything it feels like.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah. It's just hard. Just like the guys with the five, ten acres doing it. I got a guy that sells besides me up there and he's just close to organic.
[01:02:53]
He just won't go to the aggravation and the problem of getting the testing of it. But what I was gonna say was, there is no way that the guy with five to ten acres can be as close to organic natural-
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah
>> Eddie Yao: As say, a small guy with a small patch.
[01:03:14]
>> Bradley Holt: I actually did speak with someone who sells a lot of farmer's organic products. But he was telling me, a lot of it's organically grown but they can't go through the certification process just due to the costs and the regulations behind it.
>> Eddie Yao: Right.
>> Bradley Holt: So I guess my final question for the day, what do you want people to take away the most about farming?
[01:03:41]
What's the most important thing someone should know about what you do?
>> Eddie Yao: Especially with meats,
>> Eddie Yao: Everybody has a sales pitch, okay? Most imported thing, when you're buying eggs, fish Beef, pork, lamb, especially on the meats, is that you just got to find somebody you could trust because folks would tell you anything.
[01:04:16]
You got to find somebody that's particular about what they eat to begin with, cuz if they'll eat anything, they'll sell you anything, okay?
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah.
>> Eddie Yao: It's hugely a matter of trust finding somebody that you believe shoots straight, and is not gonna do anything to endanger themselves, let alone endanger you.
[01:04:42]
Yeah, yeah, I think it's a matter of trust.
>> Bradley Holt: And that kind of goes back to why people are kind of shifting to those farmers' markets again?
>> Eddie Yao: Now if I thought you were selling something to somebody that's gonna kill them, I'd speak out, but it's like the pasture raised beef.
[01:05:06]
I don't look at it. But I know that if I was a shopper, knowing what I know, they probably don't know, and I saw white fat on a pasteurized beef, I would know that somebody was not telling it like it was. That does not happen with pasture raised beef.
[01:05:28]
The other thing that I would point out to people is to know the questions to ask. Grass doesn’t grow year round here. So if somebody tells you, they're totally grass-fed, what are they feeding those animals in the winter? And how old are the animals when they're slaughtered?
>> Eddie Yao: A steer is like a young person.
[01:06:03]
His mama can sit there and eat grass and hay, and as long as she gets about 2% of her body weight during the day, it don't matter what it is, she'll maintain and she'll do just fine. But that steer is like a young person. He's growing muscle, he's growing bone.
[01:06:24]
Once mama weans him off or he gets to a size that the milk is no longer enough to propel him on, if his genetics tell him in his body that he's gonna weigh 1400 pounds at maturity, then what you're doing is you're delaying his growth if he doesn't get what he needs.
[01:06:52]
So I can tell you that a typical steer at 16 months of age, if he gets what he wants and needs to eat, will weigh about between 12 and 1400 pounds, okay? Now, if he doesn't get what he needs, that same steer would take 22 to 24 months, so what's the point in that?
[01:07:17]
What's the health benefit in that? There is none. There is none. All that's telling you is he can reach his mature, marbled, hopefully perfectly marbled, weight in 16 months. So if you don't supplement, grass is great and I'm glad I got plenty of it for mine. I think they need a balanced diet, it's like anything else.
[01:07:45]
But to say that grain is bad, typically it's because of corn and the GMOs, but in the Bible it says, with Solomon, he grained fat and cattle. I know there weren't any corn in there cuz corn was over here in the Americas, but feeding an animal is not bad.
[01:08:03]
[LAUGH]
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah.
>> Eddie Yao: Yeah.
>> Bradley Holt: So, it sounds like-
>> Eddie Yao: I'm saying that,
>> Eddie Yao: Reading the book on how to build a rocket to the moon doesn't empower you to do that. It gives you a general knowledge. And folks need just read between the lines and look at it in a deeper sense.
[01:08:28]
Everybody knows that GMOs are not well liked. I'm not a fan of them either. But you can't let yourself get zeroed in on just one particular thing and forget about, not being able to see the forest for the trees so to speak.
>> Bradley Holt: [LAUGH]
>> Eddie Yao: Okay?
>> Bradley Holt: Yeah.
[01:08:46]
>> Eddie Yao: There's just a lot out there and if you're buying produce or beef, or meats, or eggs from somebody, you just gotta know that they know what they're doing, and that they're not an unscrupulous sorta person, they're gonna do it right.
>> Bradley Holt: Going back to that trust thing.
[01:09:01]
>> Eddie Yao: That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
>> Bradley Holt: Well thank you for sitting down with me today. Are there any final remarks you'd like to make?
>> Eddie Yao: I think we've talked a little bit about everything. If there is something else you want to ask me then feel free.
>> Bradley Holt: I think we hit on just about everything.
[01:09:16]
>> Eddie Yao: Okay, if you've got what you needed,
>> Bradley Holt: Thank you again.
Myers Park Baptist Church Community Garden - Ed Williams
Ed Williams recounts the foundation and continued growth of the Myers Park Baptist Church Community Garden. Ed discusses the way the garden was founded through church members, the collaboration of the garden with Friendship Trays, and the everyday use of the garden. He explains the life cycle of the produce grown in the garden, including how it is planted, harvested, and finally distributed. Other subjects in this interview include using a volunteer labor force, organic gardening, composting, life lessons, and fond memories of gardening. Ed concludes the interview by talking about the future of community gardens in Charlotte.
[tabby title='Tape Log']
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:07 | Interview Begins |
| 0:00:47 | Foundation of the Myers Park Baptist Church Community Garden |
| 0:01:15 | Fred Allen and Ed Williams begin the garden |
| 0:04:24 | Layout of current garden (plots/beds/size) |
| 0:04:41 | HVAC problems and closure of original garden area |
| 0:06:21 | Using raised beds in the garden |
| 0:07:42 | Using a mix of seeds and seedlings |
| 0:09:16 | Joys of being outdoors and community gardening |
| 0:10:29 | Church members and volunteering |
| 0:12:19 | Watering system in the garden |
| 0:13:02 | Types of produce grown in the garden |
| 0:14:39 | Growing methods for produce |
| 0:15:25 | Pollination methods and lack of pollinator beds |
| 0:16:13 | How they fertilize the garden and keep it organic |
| 0:16:59 | Utilizing the compost system at the garden |
| 0:18:35 | Confidence in their garden and their concept of simplicity |
| 0:19:42 | Sustainability of community gardens and volunteerism in Mecklenburg County |
| 0:20:19 | Insect Infestation in the garden |
| 0:21:29 | No vandalism in garden and location of garden |
| 0:22:49 | Food Distribution to Friendship Trays |
| 0:24:52 | Cross pollination and strange fruits in the garden |
| 0:27:41 | Types of volunteer gardeners |
| 0:28:24 | Story of a neighbor sewing on strawberries |
| 0:30:49 | Volunteer base and the church community |
| 0:31:33 | Challenges of the community garden |
| 0:33:03 | Benefits of Community Gardening |
| 0:37:42 | Future of community gardening |
| 0:41:16 | Final words about community gardening |
| 0:43:33 | Interview Ends |
[00:00:07]
>> Savannah: Hello, my name is Savannah Brown, and today I'm interviewing Ed Williams. The date is Friday, March 29th, 2019, the time is 1 o'clock PM. We are interviewing in Charlotte, North Carolina. And today we will be discussing the Myers Park Community Garden and Ed's involvement with the organization in tending of the garden.
[00:00:26]
The garden donates fresh produce to Friendship Trees, a non-profit organization that delivers meals to the elderly in [INAUDIBLE] communities located throughout Macklenburg County. So my first question is kind of a two part. Can you tell me a little bit about the history of the garden, kind of how long it's been in operation, and then when did you become involved?
[00:00:48]
>> Ed Williams: Well, the idea for the garden has been around since the Garden of the Eden [LAUGH].
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: We have a group at our church that's very interested in environmental matters and they meet and talk about good ideas. And they've been talking for some years about doing a vegetable garden.
[00:01:08]
And it's a kind of place where good ideas go and they sit there like the library until somebody comes and checks them out. So Fred Allen is a doctor who lived in the neighborhood of the church, and I decided instead of talking about it this year, we'd just plant some stuff and see what happens.
[00:01:27]
So we were kind of ready plant a, and we didn't know exactly where we were going, but we figured if we got the plants in the ground, they knew what to do. And this was, I don't know, five years ago, six years ago. You have the dates and some of the material I gave you.
[00:01:42]
It was just the two of us and we decided we would do it at no expense to the church. So we went around to people members of the church and raised money to build some raised beds. I think we started with eight or ten raised beds and we wanted to do two things.
[00:01:59]
One is minimize the requirements for maintenance and the other was have really good soil. So I looked around and found this place in Gaston County that makes composted soil for gardens. And I called them and told them what we were doing and they said, well I'll tell you what, we'll give you all the soil you need if you'll just pay for hauling it, so that was a great breakthrough.
[00:02:30]
And then we worked with Lowe's and some other supply stores to get lumber and things at a reduced price and I think we wound up spending $500 or so to build all those beds, get the dirt, buy seeds and plants and get everything started. What made it possible was that Fred who lived in the neighbourhood and walked by the church every day so he could come by and do the watering which removes one of the great barriers to having a successful garden without water.
[00:03:03]
It doesn't work and he was there every day as needed doing watering. So we planted and we watered and we got started. We had a big kickoff with the people from the church who loved the idea and kids helped plant things, all sort of stuff like that. Since we did it on a Sunday and it was essentially a no news day in the world, the local TV came out and covered it.
[00:03:32]
It was a great find and then we just did it. I paid pretty close attention to it. We had maybe four or five other members of the church who would pitch in as necessary. The routine devolved into this. Fred would take care of the watering every day in dry season, less if conditions indicated.
[00:03:55]
And we would harvest on Mondays and Thursdays and take it to Friendship Trays, our church has a long relationship with Friendship Trays. So we knew that all the stuff would be well used if we took it there. And that's it, and then we just did that year after year [LAUGH].
[00:04:16]
>> Savannah: Thats great. Can you tell me a little bit about the garden, how many beds you have and just kinda the layout of it?
>> Ed Williams: Well, we had I think maybe 12 or so. And my wife and I were out of town and somebody sent me an email, most of it saying the garden has exploded.
[00:04:34]
[LAUGH]
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: Which I thought odd [LAUGH] But sure enough it had. A lot of the heating and air conditioning stuff that serves the Cornwall Center, the big recreation and education center next to the garden, it goes under there, and one of the pipes had broken. And it really, it looked like a volcano had erupted.
[00:04:59]
[LAUGH] The gasses and liquids and all that stuff shot up through the garden. And so the powers that be decided gee, you probably need to let us take care of this HVAC stuff and put the garden somewhere else so they moved it to the spot where it is now.
[00:05:19]
Also next to the Cornwell Center but far away from any underground [LAUGH] piping. And we have let's see, ten beds now, four by eight each of them, again filled with wonderful garden soil.
>> Ed Williams: And,
>> Ed Williams: Water access right there, and we've just built a compost bin, and that's part of the garden.
[00:05:48]
And we'll be planting next week, and we'll have tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, beans, cucumbers.
>> Ed Williams: Probably something else [LAUGH] that I don't remember, and whatever else fits. I mean we'll have three or four people involved, and each of them has something favorite they'd like to grow, so we accommodate people's wishes pretty much.
[00:06:15]
Everything we produce will go to Friendship Trays.
>> Savannah: Can you tell me a little about why you use raised beds?
>> Ed Williams: Because you don't have to worry about how good the soil is. In any soil around a public building that's heavily used, there's going to be packed [LAUGH] To a consistency that nothing would grow in.
[00:06:48]
And here, it's gonna be clay, so it's just messy to work with. And if you build your garden on top of that, and put in soil that you know will grow things, you don't have to worry about preparing that soil, or anything. So that's, as I said, one of our goals was to make it as low-maintenance as possible.
[00:07:08]
And if you get garden soil, it doesn't come with weeds. So that can raise beds about eight inches, which is deep enough to grow everything we're growing and we don't have a weed problem and we don't have a fertility problem. So the raised beds made sense for us and since we were doing it on the cheap, and got good prices on things, it worked out well.
[00:07:40]
>> Savannah: Do you plant seeds, or seedlings, or a mix of both?
>> Ed Williams: Both, tomatoes we usually plant seedlings. Squash, cucumber, beans seems to be just fine. My own personal thought is that seeds give you a healthier plant than transplanting seed lengths but the availability of so many varieties of tomatoes, it makes it tempting.
[00:08:07]
The Burpee's catalog comes, and I begin to tremble.
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: [LAUGH] So we do both. Eggplants and peppers we'll use Ceilings. But, as I say, you're not talking about a bunch of money, so we just get the ones that are easiest and healthiest to her.
>> Savannah: Where do you get the seedlings?
[00:08:33]
Do people bring them or pick them up from a nursery?
>> Ed Williams: We've done a little bit of both. I think this year I'm gonna order them from Burpees. And then we'll go to the hardware store over in Matthews. His name I've just forgotten. But it's a wonderful Renfrow's Hardware.
[00:08:54]
They have a wonderful arrangement of plants and they know a lot about gardening. They're gardeners themselves and they really love it so they're free with advice and have good prices and a wide variety of stuff. And I just like going there. [LAUGH] So there were two things we want to do.
[00:09:12]
More obviously, but two things really stood out in my mind. We wanted it to be something we could do so that it didn't become a chore but was a joy, and we wanted it to be beautiful. [LAUGH] And so a lot of the plants we chose, we chose because, my goodness, they're great to look at.
[00:09:32]
Eggplants, how could you beat an eggplant or a tomato? And we grew some foot long beans that people are just thrilled by to see how long they are. And we grew some foot long cucumbers last year. I don't know really about this year. But we wanted to make it interesting.
[00:09:52]
And we have a lot of people who just stop in and look. There in the city, it's pretty hard to do gardening unless you're dedicated to the task. And a lot of people just enjoy being there and walking through it.
>> Savannah: Yeah, [COUGH] one of the things that's been a theme is just the joy of being outdoors.
[00:10:13]
>> Ed Williams: Yeah.
>> Savannah: And especially the small pockets of space community gardens can create in this urban landscape.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah.
>> Savannah: Which is really nice. Is your garden for, you don't rent out any beds?
>> Ed Williams: No.
>> Savannah: No, okay. Are most of the people working there just volunteers at your church?
[00:10:33]
>> Ed Williams: Yeah.
>> Savannah: Okay, have you had any difficulties with the volunteer base or has it been pretty steady?
>> Ed Williams: Well, gardens are pretty forgiving except for watering. If you don't harvest, well, you'll have to throw some stuff away, but it's not bad, and if you harvest too early.
[00:10:51]
Well most of the stuff we're growing, if it looks like it looks in Harris Teeter it's time to harvest it. So it's not really complicated, and I haven't had any problem. We've depended on people who express an interest, and I've called on my Sunday School class at the church a few times to do stuff.
[00:11:08]
But the only real problem is organizing volunteers. I mean, there's no shortage of people who are willing to help, but figuring out when they can be there, and when they're needed and all that. As I say, we're on an as-needed schedule watering, so you need somebody who is there at the appropriate time to do that.
[00:11:30]
And then we harvest on Mondays and Thursdays because that's convenient for friendship trades. If you take a bunch of stuff on Friday, they're closed for the weekend. They don't reject it, but they look at you with [LAUGHS] less than a generous view. I'd say there aren't more, if we need people for a project, building something, we can get all the people we need simply by asking through the church communications system.
[00:12:04]
But really people tend to incorporate it into their daily lives. It's easy to get people who are going to be at the Cornwell Center for an exercise class or an educational class to spend a few minutes on the garden. So it hasn't been a big problem.
>> Savannah: Can you tell me a little bit about the watering system?
[00:12:23]
Do you just have hoses?
>> Ed Williams: We have one hose and one faucet and one garden, [LAUGH] and that's been fine. It's just obvious. If things look like they need watering, you water them. The raised beds have really good drainage. So it's not as though you're going to drown something.
[00:12:42]
So the only real concern is that things are gonna dry out too much, and one summer they did because we just didn't organize the watering very well and someone went on vacation. But mostly this is not highly complex scientific stuff. This is if it's dry, water it. [LAUGH]
[00:13:02]
>> Savannah: Yeah, [COUGH] I know you told me a little bit before, so tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers. What are some of the main produce you grow in the garden? Well, one thing we brought in the past that we're not growing this year is sweet potatoes.
>> Ed Williams: There's a wonderful brand of variety of sweet potato called the vardaman sweet potato developed in Mississippi that we've had some really good luck with, and we had a couple of raised beds that were four by four feet wide and then three feet tall, so we had some depth there.
[00:13:40]
Sweet potatoes grow under the ground. So you'd put in the little sweet potato slips, they're called, little pieces of vines with roots on them, and let them grow all summer, and you never know what's there. And then when you harvest in the fall, sometimes you come up with a wonderous stuff.
[00:13:58]
The second year we did it, I think, my wife and I were digging up some sweet potatoes and we found one that weighed 14 pounds. And she held it up to have her picture made and it looked like a small puppy, I mean it was really huge. That was fun.
[00:14:15]
But I think we've got to figure out how to grow sweet potatoes again. Let's see, I can't remember what else is there other than what I mentioned. We usually have a couple of varieties of peppers. Usually a couple varieties of eggplants cuz they're so gorgeous. The traditional one you see in the supermarket, plus some long Japanese eggplants that are just nice.
[00:14:39]
>> Savannah: [COUGH] Do you have a specific type of growing method, like certain vegetables first, followed by others? Or do you harvest anything in the spring, and then again in the fall? We really haven't in the past, simply because of our commitment to keeping it simple, stupid.
>> Ed Williams: [LAUGH]
[00:14:57]
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: Cuz we figure if it's gotta be done by volunteers, you need to make it as light a burden as you can. So we've tended to plant things that grow in the spring through the frost. We haven't done much with lettuce. We haven't done much of the quick growing things like beats, and turnips, and carrots.
[00:15:19]
We've just planted things that you put them in the ground, and they stay there all summer and you harvest things all season long.
>> Savannah: Yeah, do you have any pollinator beds? Any flower beds?
>> Ed Williams: No, we don't. I wish we did. The whole problem with bee population and butterfly population is a great concern.
[00:15:36]
We have a woman in the church who has volunteered to help us do that, but we got caught up in moving the garden and haven't done it, but that would really be nice to have something that ouldl attract butterflies and bees and all of that. And it's easy to do, it's not any trick.
[00:15:53]
>> Savannah: Do you have to self-pollinate any plants or the-
>> Ed Williams: No.
>> Savannah: No, okay, most of it's just natural, yeah.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah, I mean, mostly if you plant stuff it knows what to do [LAUGH] if you keep watering it. And we try to use plants that are hearty and self-sufficient in that regard.
[00:16:11]
If they have to train us to do things they're in trouble. [LAUGH]
>> Savannah: [LAUGH] And can you tell me a little bit about the fertilizer? I know you mentioned that in the very beginning. Or the soil that you got. I don't know a ton about this, about organic or not organic fertilizer, so if you could speak to that.
[00:16:27]
>> Ed Williams: Well, ours is fully organic and we haven't used any fertilizer other than compost. You could increase your yield some if you did, and I just don't know enough about fertilizer and stuff to do it. And no one has come forward who does [LAUGH] so in keeping with our simplicity, it's best we've just used very fertile soil and we supplemented it with compost.
[00:16:59]
>> Savannah: How does your compost system work?
>> Ed Williams: Well, we're about to find out. [LAUGH] We just got this compost built by a young woman as a school project. And I think what's gonna happen is you throw stuff in there and you let it compost, natural. We had a women in the church who wanted to do kind of aggressive composting, which involves turning stuff and all that.
[00:17:27]
And then she moved to Davidson. So we haven't done that, we just used it to mostly throw waste from the garden. The young woman who built this compost Ben, that's out there now, hopes to get people from the church kitchen involved in throwing coffee grounds and left over vegetable matter in there, which would speed things up, but we've just been content to let nature take it's course.
[00:18:01]
>> Savannah: So the compost is fairly new, they can't-
>> Ed Williams: Well, we had a nice compost system in the old garden. That was destroyed when the whole garden was destroyed, that had three large bins so it could shift stuff from one to another. But as I say the woman who was in there moved, so we just kinda threw stuff in there and let it compost itself.
[00:18:23]
If we were interested in efficiency and maximum productivity, there's a lot of stuff we could do. But the fact is, we're interested in having a project that we are confident we can do, and that people are willing to work in. That doesn't require of anybody a great deal of expertise.
[00:18:44]
I think the danger in community garden projects is that you'll let the perfect, the old saying, the perfect become the enemy of the good. So in seeking perfection, you neglect doing something that's simply good, and then you find that seeking perfection is more taxing on people's energy and interests than you'd anticipated, so we wound up with nothing.
[00:19:10]
We have a pretty good garden that gives pretty good yield and it goes to a good price, and that's what we've been trying to do, and we've been happy with it.
>> Savannah: Yeah, I think one of the things I've realized as I look at community gardens is, they start with really big ideas, and then they seem to be fizzling out.
[00:19:31]
So contacting people in McCumber county about this big list of community gardens. There's really only a handful of them that are sustainable. So that makes total sense, what you're saying.
>> Ed Williams: Well, yeah and when you're talking about sustainability, you're talking not only about the garden, but about the people who run it.
[00:19:48]
You don't wanna require too much of them, you don't wanna wear them out, you want them to enjoy the experience. And you want the people to be, essentially, replaceable. That is, if you can't do it, that's okay, we can find somebody who can, cuz it's not complicated. And I think keeping it simple has been one of the keys to our success.
[00:20:12]
>> Savannah: Have you ever dealt with an insect infestation, any kind of bug problem, or-
>> Ed Williams: Yeah, they're nasty.
>> Savannah: [LAUGH] yeah.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah, and that's a problem, when you're trying to do an organic garden. We had some kind of nasty-looking, nasty-smelling weevil that would get after our squash a couple of years ago.
[00:20:33]
And at first, I was dealing with them by picking them off and squishing them, between my thumb and forefinger. [LAUGH]
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: Which was, I was not keeping up [LAUGH] with the growth of the infestation. Sometimes you just have to give up on plans. And, it's gonna take more than you're willing to invest in savings but there's usually something you can plant into a space, but we haven't had any massive infestations, no problems with tomato wilt or anything like that.
[00:21:05]
The bugs on the squash have been the big problem.
>> Savannah: Any problem with rabbits or squirrels?
>> Ed Williams: No we're pretty lucky. We don't have deer munching on anything, or rabbits, or squirrels, where we are.
>> Savannah: My next question is do you ever have any kind of vandalism? Anybody like littering in the garden or anything like that or it's-
[00:21:28]
>> Ed Williams: We have people who come by and take samples, but no one's ever done anything that seem to be at all malicious. I mean, it's a church next to a very busy building. So you'd almost have to plot [LAUGH] to do something malicious and most people are not that mean-spirited and we haven't had any problem with that.
[00:21:56]
>> Savannah: Nice, that's good.
>> Ed Williams: It is.
>> Savannah: Yeah.
>> Ed Williams: But it's not out in a really public place, either. It's kind of tucked away around a corner of a busy building.
>> Savannah: Think that was one of the, I interviewed someone from the UNC Charlotte community garden on campus.
[00:22:11]
I think because it's kind of a well trafficked area, it attracted some, just more options for littering, or people being in the garden a little bit more. So, that was the first time I'd ever encountered a garden having vandalism or just something wrong, so I just wanted to ask what, usually it's squirrels or rabbits.
[00:22:33]
>> Ed Williams: Yeah, but you guys are college students, we're more cvivilized than you are. Come on, we're what you're hoping to become.
>> Savannah: [LAUGH] True. [LAUGH] So, can we talk a little bit about the food distribution and what you give to Friendship Trays?
>> Ed Williams: Everything we do goes to Friendship Trays.
[00:22:51]
So we don't have any distribution challenges. We just take it over there and they know what to do with it. As I said, we try to accommodate our schedule to theirs, so that's the only thing. We know where it goes. As I said, we've had a long relationship with Friendship Trays, and a good one.
[00:23:10]
So that's it. We're not trying to create a new system. There's a perfectly good system that we can fit into well. And that's what we've done.
>> Savannah: How much, do you only harvest at the end, like, one harvest? No, you said you harvest on Mondays and Thursdays?
>> Ed Williams: Yeah.
[00:23:28]
>> Savannah: Okay, how much produce would you say you take overall?
>> Ed Williams: Well, let's see, it's in that material I sent you.
>> Savannah: Yes.
>> Ed Williams: And I'm sorry I didn't memorize-
>> Savannah: It's okay.
>> Ed Williams: Any of those numbers, but half a ton, or something like that, on a good year, and if there's going to be a narrate rather than leave the space you could see how much we did.
[00:23:53]
And we had the second and the most productive year, the second most productive garden in the friendship trade system. But I don't remember how much that was. I would have to say the first, most productive, was about ten times what we got. It was the one connected with the school.
[00:24:13]
And they really did some stuff. But we were pleased with what we were doing. It was basically then.
>> Savannah: So you don't ever sell farmer's markets to trees?
>> Ed Williams: No.
>> Savannah: Okay, so in the material you sent me, I did really enjoy the strange fruits.
>> Ed Williams: Yes.
>> Savannah: So can we talk a little bit about what I kind of wrote down being a gardener or a farmer sometimes comes with being a scientist a little bit.
[00:24:44]
>> Ed Williams: [LAUGH]
>> Savannah: So that cross pollination of squash and zucchini and pumpkin. So what types of surprising fruits or vegetables have you found in there?
>> Ed Williams: Well, that's basically it. One year from our compost bins which were right next to the garden, we'd throw in a bunch of squash and stuff in there at the end of the previous growing season.
[00:25:05]
And in the spring, this vine popped out, and it just looked so vigorous, I was kind of afraid to do anything to it. And it started growing, and it grew maybe 40 feet along the driveway and the fence that was behind our garden and everything and started producing these giant squash, melon looking things.
[00:25:29]
And we didn't know what it was. It didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. And I looked up and found that there are 46 million varieties of squashes on the Internet [LAUGH].
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: So that didn't help. So I took one of them home, and my wife cut into it to see if it was edible, I let her take the first bite.
[00:25:49]
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: And it was great. So I took some over to Friendship Trays and showed them to some of the people there and someone said, yeah, that looks like something I had in my home which is in Central America. And they started using it. And I mean, these things were growing 20 or 30 pounds.
[00:26:08]
>> Savannah: Wow.
>> Ed Williams: So that's the year we had the fantastic production [LAUGH].
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: Nature had provided us with that edge. And I never knew what it was and the next year it came back and it was a little different. A lot of the seeds we use, if you harvest from them and use the seeds from the harvest, they won't produce the same plant because they're hybrids.
[00:26:35]
And I think what had happened was a couple of plants had gone back to their natural state and who knows what they did on the dark out there? At any rate, and interbred produced these wonderous miracle fruits. You know nature knows what it's doing. It doesn't tell us sometimes, but that's been the nice thing about the garden.
[00:27:01]
You just don't have to know much to grow a good garden if you got good dirt and sunlight and water. The seeds and the plants know what they're supposed to do. And if you just let them do it, it would be all right. But you do have to make sure you've got the sunlight and we did so all that and particularly the water.
[00:27:22]
>> Savannah: With some of the people I've interviewed I've kind of noticed that there's a trend with people who had past experience with gardening really enjoy it. Is that kind of, with your volunteer base, do you find that people were either their grandparents gardened or are they brand-new gardeners or a mix of both?
[00:27:41]
>> Ed Williams: It's a mix of both. In my case, I lived in a very small town and my mother's father was a kind of jack of all trades. If you needed a garage built, he'd build you a garage. If you needed a garden planted, he'd plant you a garden.
[00:27:57]
So he was actively involved in the garden business, and as was my family. But my experience with the garden was mostly weeding. I didn't like that at all, so I lost interest in gardens. And then my wife and I moved here, and at first we lived in a,
[00:28:15]
>> Ed Williams: A condominium, and it had a sunny backyard, so we thought we would plant some stuff. I'll tell you a story. We planted some strawberries. And every day I'd get home from work, we'd go out and look in the garden to see how the strawberries were doing. And one day we went out there and on what had been barren strawberry patch the day before, there were now huge red strawberries.
[00:28:41]
I thought, what on earth is that? And then we looked next door, and our neighbor who had watched us out of her kitchen window all these days was a nurse. And she had come over and sowed those strawberries [LAUGH] to the plants just for the joy of seeing us, we don't get many miracles like that.
[00:29:00]
>> Savannah: Yeah.
>> Ed Williams: We shouldn't have said anything maybe she'd do it again.
>> Savannah: Yeah.
>> Ed Williams: But I just kind of got interested because Earth Keepers which is this environmental organization at church that I was talking about, had been kicking around the idea of a garden. And I'd retired after many years as an editor at the Charlotte Observer and I was looking for something to do, and Fred Allen had retired from his medical practice.
[00:29:33]
>> Ed Williams: We just decided to make something happen. And once we got into it, we really, really loved it.
>> Savannah: Yeah, I mean there is a joy I think of being a long time gardener and a first time gardener, just being outside it's always nice.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah, and not having to weed is the joy [LAUGH].
[00:29:51]
>> Savannah: Yeah.
>> Ed Williams: I think people going into it need to understand that the things they think will be problems very often are [LAUGH] Don't think your weeds are gonna go away. You're gonna have to dig them out, and we have some friends who work on a garden, I think it's at Sedgefield Middle School or elementary school, I'm not sure what it is now.
[00:30:14]
But it has Bermuda Grass and what you know if you have a garden that has Bermuda Grass is that it's always going to have Bermuda Grass. Just take that as part of life. So I would've shunned that idea at the outset because I didn't, I've had my experiences with Bermuda grass and was content not to have it again.
[00:30:36]
But if you do the right steps, you have easy access to water. You have access to a few volunteers who will attend the thing, it's not a big chore. And if it's not a big chore, it's a lot more fun.
>> Savannah: [COUGH] Yeah, for your volunteer base, is it all members of the church or is it outside members?
[00:30:56]
>> Ed Williams: No it's all-
>> Savannah: Just all members of the church? Well, that's good, I mean it's kind of a built in volunteer base which is nice.
>> Ed Williams: Well we tell them they're going to hell if they don't, so that gives you some sort of leverage, I think.
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
[00:31:09]
>> Ed Williams: That we haven't had to follow through on that. And we've got a couple of Sunday school classes and we have an email message group of people who have signed up, so it's not really normally that big a challenge.
>> Savannah: Which kind of leads to my next question.
[00:31:27]
What have been, do you think, the biggest challenges of the community garden?
>> Ed Williams: Organizing, organizing the volunteers. That's about it.
>> Savannah: I think we touched on this earlier, but it doesn't have to be your community garden, but what challenges do you think Charlotte's community gardens face?
>> Ed Williams: If there into distribution, that's a big challenge.
[00:31:55]
We, as in everything else, decided to keep it as simple as we could, and go to Friendship Trays. In some places it may be that you simply don't have a suitable place for it, and you try to transform what you know is an unsuitable place. So you have some challenges weeds, and soil fertility, and things like that.
[00:32:16]
But as in almost every endeavor, the big challenge is always the people. If you have people who are willing to make sensible decisions about use of resources, you can do most stuff. If you don't, if you're trying to overcome some significant natural barriers or you have people who want to run things to the exclusion of others, then you run into trouble.
[00:32:43]
As we were talking earlier, sustainability of the human effort and commitment as well as the, it's the soil and plants is the big challenge.
>> Savannah: What have been some of the benefits and it doesn't just have to be the Myers Parker but it could just be the benefits of community gardening.
[00:33:03]
>> Ed Williams: Well I think there's a little community building involved. As I've said, we've had some work days and things like that, where a lot of kids get involved. The Charlotte kids' yoga program always comes out-
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: Which has a presence at our church, comes out and works a day in the garden.
[00:33:23]
There are lot of things kids can do, it is not a highly demanding task to plant a bean. You push it in the ground and you cover it up and you're okay. So kids can do that, and one year we let each kid write his or her name on a little stick and put it by the bean that that kid had planted and their parents particularly love that stuff, and it's just fun seeing where stuff comes from.
[00:33:51]
I mean if you think everything you eat comes in on a truck to Harris Teeter you're missing a significant part of what the world is really like. And I think seeing that process of creating the food that we eat is particularly useful as a teaching tool for kids.
[00:34:12]
But also as a reminder for adults that we're not as far away from nature as we think we are. And I think it makes it a little easier to talk about the need to care for the Earth. If you're actually working in it and getting things out of it.
[00:34:33]
>> Ed Williams: And it's introduced me to some people I wouldn't have known otherwise. And there is a kind of enthusiasm about it not just from the people who work in the garden but from people who are just proud that we're doing it.
>> Savannah: Yeah, I mean I think that's the emphasis on community-
[00:34:51]
>> Ed Williams: Yeah.
>> Savannah: And community gardens. And especially in a city of Charlotte that's growing so fast.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah.
>> Savannah: And in an area where there is abundant food stores, and then there's areas where there's no grocery stores.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah, yeah.
>> Savannah: So the knowledge of learning about these vegetables and learning that we can grow things in this area is really important, which is why I've really liked community gardens and talking about them.
[00:35:15]
>> Ed Williams: Well, it's fun to take some kids through the garden and just see what they can identify, cuz a lot of them have never seen things growing in nature. And to see a little tomato that becomes a big one, or a little bean that becomes a big one, or all of this mass of vines that is masking a sweet potato growing under the soil.
[00:35:40]
And if they're there through the cycle, they can see the beginning of that process, and the end when you dig things up, or cut them up or what ever. Nothing cuts a good thing. It's particularly good for churches. I think there's a significant part of the reason for being for any church is to feed the hungry.
[00:36:04]
And this is part of that commitment but it also ought to be caring for the Earth the Lord gave us and seeing how much of it just works on its own, pays no attention to you whatsoever as long as you water it. [LAUGH]
>> Savannah: I will say, plants are very hardy.
[00:36:26]
I had my tomatoes and my peppers on just to porch. I might forget about them for a few days and then but water, just a little bit of water and a little bit of sun and they did just fine.
>> Ed Williams: Could you hear them screaming? [LAUGH]
>> Savannah: Yeah.
[00:36:39]
I forgot to tell my roommate to water for about a week and then I came home and I was like, my peppers. And I mean they came right back.
>> Ed Williams: It is a sad thing to see a healthy tomato that has collapsed because you failed to water it, and sometimes it's going back.
[00:36:54]
Sometimes you water them and they just perk up, and sometimes they.
>> Savannah: I had two tomatoes that did really well, and one that I couldn't bring it back. But I think that's just the cycle of gardening.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah, yeah. Well we planted a bunch of beans one year, and these were maybe four year olds, five year olds from the church through the week school.
[00:37:16]
And one boy's little bean just didn't come up. And he was crushed. I said look, the germination rate on these seeds is about 99%, which means that you know starting out that one of them is not going to come up. You moved on that one, but here's what you do.
[00:37:34]
Here's another one, stick it in there.
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: We did, and it turned out all right, yeah.
>> Savannah: [COUGH], What do you see for the future of community gardens, here in Charlotte?
>> Ed Williams: Well, obviously, the number of them is growing rapidly, and Tom Duncan, who I suggested that you talk with, is kinda the overlord of community gardens, and they got a big grant from the Women's Impact Fund, which gives money to good things.
[00:38:05]
So Friendship Trays offers both an easy distribution network, and expertise if you're just getting started. My experience has been that gardeners from one garden are perfectly willing to help gardeners from another garden. We've got a number of people that have come by and wanted to know how we did this.
[00:38:26]
Business has been very supportive of our's and I had to nudge some of them a little bit by writing to the corporate headquarters, but they've been good about giving us discounts on this, that, and the other. So there's a lot of support for it. I think dealing with food deserts in Charlotte is gonna take a better organized and better financed effort than we have seen.
[00:38:53]
So far, but it is a way to do some things and I think once people begin to realize what they can do on their own, every little bit helps. So, I think there's more and more concern about sustainability of almost everything. As we become more and more reliant on our cell phones and the people who live in Silicone Vally to make everything happen.
[00:39:22]
And we're beginning to realize that we're giving up not just a lot of freedom but also a lot of self reliance, and I think reminding people that there are a lot of things you can do yourself is liberating. And I think community gardens contribute to that and are evidence of the strong hunger for it, you are not gonna hear it.
[00:39:51]
>> Savannah: [COUGH] something you mentioned, is there, maybe there's not but is there kind of a community of community gardeners when you said other gardeners came over and asked questions-
>> Ed Williams: Friendship Trays provides that with news writers and gathering of various sorts and all. So, there's never been a question I've wanted them to answer that they haven't helped me with.
[00:40:19]
And they have a couple events a year inviting. Community gardeners to come in. And then they have a garden specialist who will come out and-
>> Savannah: Really?
>> Ed Williams: Yeah, and help you do things.
>> Savannah: Very nice. Yeah, I didn't know that.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah, ask Lucy about that.
>> Savannah: I will.
[00:40:35]
She showed us her wonderful map of the garden. I mean it's fantastic and just how far they reach and she really touched on that. It's not a food growing problem, but a distribution problem.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah.
>> Savannah: And that's really kind of what people get mixed up sometimes.
>> Ed Williams: Yeah.
[00:40:50]
>> Savannah: So these are just two clarifying questions that I was thinking of, but so you don't use any kind of pesticide or anything on your garden?
>> Ed Williams: No.
>> Savannah: Okay, when we went back to the question, I was just thinking about the insects, and so I wanted to make that clear.
[00:41:09]
And is there anything else that you wanna tell me about the garden, a funny story, or any other anecdote?
>> Ed Williams: Well, people do interesting things if it's just that kind of out there and nobody's guarding it. When we were just getting started, someone brought us these wonderful little bent wire words that we put on the drawing bench.
[00:41:34]
Grow love, stuff like that. And one of them was opus dei which is God's work but is also the name of a Roman Catholic conservative organization that many people consider a cult. Mel Gibson is a member of it and we were having our opening of the garden. And I thought I wouldn't put that up, I didn't want to look like one of the dads that's sponsored by a Roman Catholic cult of questionable political leanings.
[00:42:06]
So we left that off, but then we put it back on. I have a friend named Annie Hart who makes wonderful outdoor welded metal sculptures, and she made a sign for us and gave it to us. I mean people are so enamored of the idea that they enjoy being a part of it and they'll contribute their skills even if their skills aren't gardening to help make it look better and work better, produce more.
[00:42:38]
So it's been an altogether rewarding experience. I've had to cut back quite a lot because of ill health, but people have stepped up. And it's been nice to see, and I suspect we'll have a new generation of gardeners. Nobody likes to see it not work [LAUGH]. So it's been a good experience for the church, and it's also good to have something that everybody knows is a good idea become reality.
[00:43:14]
Cuz you get kind of embarrassed if they're good ideas that just kinda hang around [LAUGH] like deflated balloons on the table, you know?
>> Savannah: [LAUGH]
>> Ed Williams: Somebody needs to blow them up. [LAUGH] Let them shine.
>> Savannah: Well that's all my questions, thank you so much for this, this was wonderful.
[00:43:29]
>> Ed Williams: It's been my pleasure, thank you.
>> Savannah: This was really great, thank you.
>> Ed Williams: Just send my check to the usual place.
>> Savannah: I will. [LAUGH]
Bethel Feed and Farm - Anson Eaves
Bethel Feed & Farm, LLC, located off North Carolina Highway 24/27 in Midland, North Carolina, has been owned and operated by the Eaves family since 1957. Anson Eaves, the current owner/operator of the feed mill, is the third generation of the Eaves family to be involved in this business. The mill produces and sells livestock feeds, fertilizer, and crop seeds.
Anson Eugene Eaves (Owner/Operator, Bethel Feed & Farm, LLC) was born on May 9, 1970, in Charlotte, North Carolina. He grew up helping his grandfather (Gordon Eaves), father (Gene Eaves), and uncle (Jimmy Eaves) at the mill, which was previously known as Bethel Milling Company. Anson is the sole full-time employee of Bethel Feed & Farm, which he has owned and operated since 2011. Anson’s family has been involved in the local farming community for several generations. He earned B.A. degrees in history and political science, with a minor in biology, from Warren Wilson College, in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
| Time | Description |
| 0:00:07 | Introduction |
| 0:00:37 | Anson Eaves (“Anson”) introduces himself and describes the daily operations of Bethel Feed & Farm (“BF&F”) |
| 0:01:35 | The process of feed milling, including the sourcing of raw grains and ingredients from local farmers and customized feed mixing for different animals and customers |
| 0:04:45 | The different animal feeds produced by BF&F |
| 0:05:50 | The different grains BF&F uses and the network of local farmers Anson has developed to produce the grains used |
| 0:08:20 | The ingredients and mixing process for sweet feed |
| 0:09:20 | Other types of feed, including their ingredients and distinguishing characteristics |
| 0:10:30 | How the use of animal proteins in feeds led to the spread of mad cow disease, prompting implementation of additional regulatory measures for feed mills |
| 0:11:08 | BF&F’s customer base, primarily horse training and boarding barns and "backyard" hobbyists raising goats and chickens |
| 0:12:00 | The local rise of goats as cash crops |
| 0:12:50 | The differences between small-scale feed mills and the larger institutional operations that service Perdue and Tyson contract farmers |
| 0:14:30 | Anson discusses his role as advisor for local farmers like Connor Newman and Kim Schoch of Hodges Family Farms (also participants in this oral history project) in their experimentation with different crops and fertilizers |
| 0:16:17 | Differences between large-scale "row cropper" farmers, hobbyists, and people that just "keep" livestock, including the different services, products, and markets BF&F provides for them |
| 0:18:15 | Changes in farming and feed milling since the 1950s |
| 0:20:40 | The history of BF&F, including the first two generations of owner/operators: Gordon Eaves (Anson's grandfather) and Gene and Jimmy Eaves (Anson's father and uncle, respectively) |
| 0:23:38 | The development of customized feeds based on trial-and-error experimentation and customer feedback |
| 0:25:15 | General rules and philosophies for creating feeds to maximize livestock potential |
| 0:26:38 | Teaching and mentoring agricultural hobbyists, especially those getting inaccurate or inapplicable information from the Internet |
| 0:27:48 | Anson describes growing up and getting involved with the mill, and his relationships with his customers and suppliers |
| 0:30:30 | The mill as a social center for the local community, including as a gathering place for local farmers; interesting story about the mill being a place for women to find eligible mates |
| 0:32:54 | Historical changes in BF&F and the overall milling industry, including the impact of increased regulatory environment and the transition from state to federal regulation due to the Food Safety Modernization Act ("FSMA") |
| 0:36:38 | Issues with the FSMA, including cost/resources required for compliance, inspections and audits, and potential adverse impacts on the continued viability of small farms and feed mill operators |
| 0:44:23 | Discussion of the impact and cost of the organic farming, farm-to-fork, and non-GMO (generically modified organism) movements on BF&F and the feed milling industry |
| 0:50:55 | Discussion of milling processes and equipment |
| 0:53:20 | Maintenance of aging milling equipment |
| 0:55:00 | Ongoing challenges facing continued operations of BF&F |
| 0:55:55 | A typical day at BF&F |
| 0:59:30 | Historical changes in agriculture in Cabarrus County, including as to the size of operations and the role of farming in local family lives |
| 1:02:42 | The health and evolution of farming and the food shed in the local community; issues and questions to be resolved going forward; future farming opportunities for the region |
| 1:09:00 | The milling of grains for human consumption |
| 1:10:35 | Misperceptions and pre-conceived notions concerning milling and farming |
| 1:13:41 | Concerns about the ongoing status and availability of land for agriculture |
| 1:17:50 | End |
[00:00:07]
>> Tommy Warlick: All right, so this is Tommy Warlick, I am with the UNC Charlotte History Department and I am working on the Queens Garden Oral History Project, oral history to the Piedmont Food Shed. It is March 28, 2019, about 1:00 PM in the afternoon, and I am sitting here with Anson A-N-S-O-N Eaves, E-A-V-E-S with the Bethel Milling Company in Midland, North Carolina.
[00:00:33]
Anson, thank you so much for your time, we really appreciate you sitting down with us today.
>> Anson Eaves: All right, glad to be here, Tommy.
>> Tommy Warlick: If you don't mind, can I get you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background?
>> Anson Eaves: Okay, I'm Anson Eaves, I run, now it's changed from Bethel Milling to Bethel Feed Farm.
[00:00:52]
Bethel Milling was the company that my parents, my dad and uncle ran, my grandfather. When I came in, accounting-wise, it was easier for me to start out as Bethel Feed & Farm. What we tend to do here is, I buy grain, I buy grain from local farmers, turn it into livestock feed, horses, cows, lots of chicken feed, some swine feed.
[00:01:21]
I also move quite a bit of lawn seed fertilizers, some dog feed, some other things.
>> Tommy Warlick: So Anson, I don't think a lot of people who are gonna be listening to this really understand what a milling company is and what feed milling is. Can you give us a background of what that entails?
[00:01:44]
>> Anson Eaves: Sure, farmers bring in grain, I buy the grain straight off the trucks, I end up buying it by the bushel. So I would make a contract with a farmer and basically it's a handshake contract that I'm interested in 10,000 bushels of oats from them. We would agree upon a price, I'd say $4 a bushel, they would bring the grain in here.
[00:02:09]
I store it in bins and then I pull from it, run the grain through elevators into the mill, I process it with, I'm using a roller mill now. Then I would mix the oats with various other grains, corn barley, running it through basically big blenders. Then the final process of making the horse feed part would be that I add molasses to it, tumble it all together with molasses.
[00:02:42]
Bag it up in 50 pound bags and distribute it to individual horse barns and such. The same thing works with chicken feed, the process is basically the same, except the ingredients in the chicken feed will be different. Instead of using oats, and barley you use more corn, and wheat, and milo for something like chicken feed, the same thing goes for hog feed.
[00:03:08]
There's also some speciality feeds such as some sheep feed, some calf feed, which I would end up making a higher protein. But I end up buying, especially something like oats, oats are a seasonal crop, farmers don't tend to store those year round. So whatever oats I need to buy for the year, I basically end up buying in the months of July and August, on oats.
[00:03:36]
Farmers are more likely to be able to have storage on the farm for corn or wheat. So the corn is more readily accessible to me 12 months out of the year. I still end up filing bins up but I don't have to buy a year's supply one time on the like oats and barley.
[00:03:56]
I basically have to buy everything I need for the year when it's available because otherwise I would end up going through brokers, not so much the local farmers. The main crops you see grown in Cabarrus County, Stanly, Mecklenburg County, you see a lot of corn, you see wheat, you see soybeans, and you see cotton.
[00:04:19]
The reason that those crops are so prevalent is because there is a steady year round market for them. There are other crops like the oats and barley that I need that's not really a year round market. They can't move them, there's a limited market so there's a limited supply then, so I have to move quickly to secure that stuff.
[00:04:45]
>> Tommy Warlick: All right, so it sounds like from that description, you're pretty much making food for all kinds of livestock.
>> Anson Eaves: I do, I do. The largest market I have are horses and horse barns but I have more customers feeding things like chickens and goats than horses. However, one barn may be feeding 60 to 70 horses, that's a ton, a ton and a half of horse feed that goes to one customer a week.
[00:05:22]
Where 50 to 100 pounds of chicken feed lasts the average backyard guy for the week. So you could move more bulk in horse feed to the same amount of people.
>> Tommy Warlick: I'm gonna pause this for just one quick second.
>> Anson Eaves: Sure.
>> Tommy Warlick: Okay so we're back on, I apologize for that, Anson, my batteries were dying quicker than I thought they were.
[00:05:49]
>> Anson Eaves: Sure.
>> Tommy Warlick: You mentioned a whole lot of different types of wheat and barely and the whole nine yards that you use, like corn, what do you use most often?
>> Anson Eaves: Corn and oats are the largest two things that I buy. Barley and wheat I basically just use in chicken feed and so it's very limited, where I might go through a couple hundred bushels of barley or wheat or milo during the course of the year.
[00:06:19]
Several thousand bushels of barley, but wheat and barlow will be in the couple hundred of bushels. Oats and corn, we're dealing with 15 to 20,000 bushels each for those products.
>> Tommy Warlick: And are all that bought locally or do you bring any in from outside here?
>> Anson Eaves: Most of the grain I do is grown within 20-30 miles of here.
[00:06:45]
Occasionally, if they've had a bad crop, I have to go farther. I have access to some brokers that I can deal with going to South Carolina, the upper part of Georgia, especially on oats. There's plenty of corn grown locally for my use, but once again, the oats become a scarce product.
[00:07:10]
A lot of the people would not be even growing oats if I was not their market for it. They know that they can sell me oats, therefore they're willing to grow oats. Corn has a very established price, it's traded, you can find the price of corn anyday, anywhere in the state.
[00:07:37]
On oats, I suppose I end up working closer with the farmers, we do a handshake agreement on pricing. And it has to be a situation that I can make money on but they also have to make money on. If at times you could buy oats much cheaper than what I pay but if I chose to do that then nobody would grow oats the next year for me.
[00:08:06]
And so I could save a couple dollars one year, but then the next year, it would mean that I was having to transport oats out of South Carolina or something like that. And it would end up costing me in the long run.
>> Tommy Warlick: So when you make an individual feed for a particular animal or whatever, what are your ingredients?
[00:08:26]
Are you using just one grain? Are you adding some nutrients to that?
>> Anson Eaves: Most of the time, say on a horse feed, on a typical sweet feed, it is basically two parts oats, two parts corn, not quite one part barley. I'm adding salt and a mineral mixture. I'm also blending molasses.
[00:08:52]
I buy molasses by the tractor trailer load. I buy tanker loads of molasses in here. The molasses actually usually ship out of Baltimore, Maryland. The molasses makes the feed more palatable. It shines the feed up, but it also makes the horses, cows, whatever, they gravitate towards it more.
[00:09:18]
>> Tommy Warlick: And you mentioned sweet feed, is the molasses sweet feed?
>> Anson Eaves: Sweet feed is what qualifies it. Molasses is what qualifies it as sweet feed.
>> Tommy Warlick: So what other kinds of feeds are there? I'm not familiar with that.
>> Anson Eaves: There's scratch grains, scratch grains are just kind of a mixed grain, which will be a cracked corn, wheat, and milo.
[00:09:35]
It's a very basic chicken food, very basic kinda maintenance chicken feed. There's laying pellets and crumbles, which become a higher-protein feed, which encourage the laying of eggs in chickens. Hog feed is also a higher protein feed. Some whole feeds, and I do not do this now, years ago, my dad, uncle, grandfather made their own supplement to make hog feed where they would grind corn, they would grind wheat, milo.
[00:10:12]
The supplement was made out of alfalfa meal, bone meal, or a blood meal, really. Hogs need the animal protein. If you have hogs shut up, and they don't have a certain type of protein, they tend to do things like tail biting and ear biting. They're looking for the blood off the other pigs to supplement the protein.
[00:10:38]
When we had problems with the Mad Cow Disease 15, 20 years ago, the regulations became different on using animal proteins, so we ended up stopping. We don't use any animal proteins at all anymore. The regulations became different and kind of became prohibitive as to doing that. So while I do sell some hog feed, I sell some pre-packaged hog feed and I sell some just straight dry grain mixtures for hogs.
[00:11:13]
>> Tommy Warlick: So who are your customers?
>> Anson Eaves: Most of my customers, the largest customers I have are training and boarding type horse barns. They bring horses in, they board horses for other people, they train horses. Some barns where they have lessons, and each of these barns can have between 20 to 60 some horses there.
[00:11:38]
As far as the chicken feed, most of the customers that I'm dealing with are people that have chickens in their backyard. They're keeping a flock of a dozen to 50 chickens. They enjoy having the chickens there. It's a hobby, maybe a self-supporting hobby. Sometimes they do sell eggs.
[00:12:01]
But there seems to be a lot of people with chickens around. I also deal with people raising goats. Goats have turned into a new cash crop around here. There's a legitimate market for goat meat, for goats on the hoof. There's a sale in Monroe now every other week that does nothing but sell goats.
[00:12:25]
The Hispanic population, the Middle Eastern population has really caused a boom in the goat market. Goats have gone from a $35 animal that was just basically a pet, a hobby, into an actual money making crop now. You can run through the sale at Monroe now and bring easily $4 a pound on the hoof.
[00:12:52]
People will raise them if they can make money out of it. I see a lot of, especially the out the door customers, it is people with a few animals behind their house. Whether it's chickens, goats, one or two pigs, the people raising chickens on a large-scale production are usually doing it for a big grower such as Tyson or Perdue.
[00:13:21]
Something like that. Those companies supply their own scientific ration to the farmers raising the chickens for them. They're not going to come here. They don't come here and buy the feed. The feed is delivered to them through much larger milling operations that are run by the chicken company, by Cuddy, by Tyson, by Perdue.
[00:13:49]
So I end up seeing a lot of hobby farmers. Yes, some of them do make money at it, but they do it more for enjoyment, more for the pleasure put of it, than actual income raised. Now, the biggest horse customers I have are professionals. That is their source of income is running large-scale barns.
[00:14:18]
I also deal with a lot of people with two horses in their backyard, but they're not in it for the money. They just enjoy the horses.
>> Tommy Warlick: I met with Connor Newman and Kim Hodges at Hodges Family Farm a couple of weeks ago. And they were going on and on about what a valuable go-to resource you are and how helpful you've been to them over the years.
[00:14:41]
How do you interact with the local farming community? What's your role and what do you do with local folks?
>> Anson Eaves: Well with Conner and Kim, it's been different. I've watched them trying to hold on to the family farm, which is really inside the Charlotte city limits. They have a rare bird.
[00:14:58]
From their interviews, I'm sure you understand it was a dairy farm. They're trying to figure out a way to make the farm pay. They're trying to figure out a way to keep from selling the farm. Through that, what I have been able to do for them, or what I have tried to do for them is as they've been going through the trial phases, Connor or Kim will call me for some advice about raising livestock, for some advice about fertilizers for cover crops.
[00:15:35]
I've been able to bring them in some specialty seeds for cover crops, such as some vetches, such as some yellow clover. Connor became interested in bees, I was able to find him some bursa clover. As they've been trying to figure it out with the experimentation that they've been doing, I hope I've been able to help them.
[00:15:58]
We've worked together to figure out what kind of fertilizers work best for what crops, what kind of cover crops work best for their. Specific needs. It's been fun to be able to work with them, lots of questions, lot's of questions and it's been fun for me, too, because even when I haven't known the answers, it's helped me to take the time to go look for the answers for that.
[00:16:25]
A lot of other farmers, as far as the people farming, when I say farmers, I typically use the word farmer to mean road croppers. That means somebody farming on a semi-large scale, it means somebody farming the corn, beans, cotton type situation. When I say, we've always kept cows.
[00:16:53]
We've always had cows. We never described ourselves as farmers. That was never a word we used, even though there's tractors there. Even though there's land and production. The cow, we just kept cows, we did, there was no identification as a farmer, the farmer, the word farmer was used to refer to basically row cropping with large type tractors and.
[00:17:19]
What I end up doing for, what I feel like I do for them is supply a market for certain products. Corn is movable anywhere, there's a dozen places within 100 miles of here that will buy corn at the drop of a hat or buying corn every day. I do give the farmers a chance to, as applies a chance to move barley.
[00:17:46]
Barley becomes something this hard to move. I have made arrangement with farmers to grow barley, otherwise, they wouldn't have a market for it. Also, in the last couple of years, I've become an outlook for some other straw. The straw becomes the byproducts of wheat or barley crop. I can offer them a retail outlet for that, I can pick up, some of the farmers at want grow small fields and Milo is a place to move it.
[00:18:19]
We don't, when the mill was started in the 50's, the farming was different. The mill was different. In the 50's, the farmers typically were much, they ended up farming much smaller tracts of land. And everybody had a public job. 90% of the people had a public job. They farmed after they got off work.
[00:18:43]
They had 30 cows or they had 20 couple acres of corn plant to feed their own livestock. Well, at that point in time, the farms weren't big enough to justify storage to justify their own storage or their own milling equipment or something. So, we ended up, granddaddy, this is way before my time.
[00:19:04]
Granddaddy stored grain for farmers. As they harvested their 20 acres of corn or their 40 acres of corn, they brought it here. We stored it in the bins that were here. Then through the course of the year, as they got ready, as they needed a ton of cow feed, we pulled out their savings account here, it was, you kept a record of how much corn they brought in.
[00:19:32]
You kept the record of how much corn they had taken out, at that time, and then you added whatever other grains you needed to add to make an appropriate ration.
>> Anson Eaves: And you ground and process the feed for them. So you made your money by actually processing their own grain.
[00:19:54]
Today, I buy the grain, all the grain I'm running is grain that's already purchased. It's not owned by the farmer at that point, it becomes and that's a big change over the years. Now the farmers that are row cropping, they are big enough. They have their own storage.
[00:20:14]
They have their own on-farm storage. Some of them have their own on-farm processing facilities, where they are able to grind their own dairy feed, they're able to grind their own hog feed, and that's a major change. So, even though there's probably fewer people participating in it, the tracts of land and the money involved in it are exponentially bigger than they were 60 years ago.
[00:20:43]
>> Tommy Warlick: So, you mentioned your grandfather started Baffle.
>> Anson Eaves: He actually did not start it.
>> Tommy Warlick: Okay.
>> Anson Eaves: Two other brothers started it. Granddaddy bought one of them out really before the mill was opened. Another man bought the other brother out and then granddaddy bought him out. So he became the sole owner probably in the late '50's early '60's.
[00:21:07]
>> Tommy Warlick: So the mill started early '50s?
>> Anson Eaves: In '57.
>> Tommy Warlick: '57-
>> Anson Eaves: '57 is when it was put up.
>> Tommy Warlick: And your grandfather's name was?
>> Anson Eaves: Gordon Eaves.
>> Tommy Warlick: Gordon Eaves, okay, and so Gordon's two brothers were the first-
>> Anson Eaves: No, not his brothers, just two local guys.
[00:21:25]
>> Tommy Warlick: Two local guys, okay-
>> Anson Eaves: Yes, and the mill is actually, this was actually family land a very long time ago. But when my grandfather's parents passed, the brothers and sisters and granddaddy sold the land off. And then over the years, we've bought certain tracks of it back.
[00:21:47]
>> Tommy Warlick: How did your grandfather learn about milling and doing this type of an operation.
>> Anson Eaves: Granddaddy was a salesman. Granddaddy enjoyed, Granddaddy enjoyed selling as much as he enjoyed anything else. He was a good salesman, but that was, I considered that that was probably his favorite part of it and probably also his strength in it.
[00:22:11]
He enjoyed calling on people, he enjoyed pushing the product that he made. He thrived on that.
>> Tommy Warlick: Was the mill his full time job or was he?
>> Anson Eaves: Yes, it did become his full time job. It was his full time job. My grandmother was a teacher that also supplied them a steady source of income as he was trying.
[00:22:35]
No matter what decisions he made around here. My dad and uncle, there was going to be food on the table. And it gave him the ability to take some risk to make some moves that he probably would not have been able to do, had it been the family's only source of income.
[00:22:54]
>> Tommy Warlick: And I know your dad was in banking for a while.
>> Anson Eaves: Dad was in banking until 1976 or 77 and then he came back to the mill. My uncle, Uncle Jimmy, I think started working back at the mill in 66. I think he had one other job after high school.
[00:23:16]
They had both grown up here, they lived right across the road from the mill. When school was out, if granddaddy saw them coming home, they got roped into coming over here and working. So both of them stepped away for moments, but both of them came back, and since say 76, both of them have been doing, have been running the mill full-time.
[00:23:39]
>> Tommy Warlick: Has there been any educational process in trying to learn how to do milling or is it just been trial and error-
>> Anson Eaves: It's been trial and error experimentation. Once again, even today with myself, I ask customers questions everyday. As what do you want the feed to look like?
[00:24:03]
What do you need the feed to do? Am I missing something? If we need to increase the protein in this, let me know. Does the horse feed have enough molasses on it for you? So I end up searching for a lot feedback to make the product that these people are looking for.
[00:24:27]
And certain customers, I value certain customer's opinions highly. They're the ones that see it, they're the ones that see the results of what they're doing. They know whether I'm doing things right or not. And if they tell me I'm doing things wrong, then I need to make the changes that they're expressing to me.
[00:24:48]
>> Tommy Warlick: So it's almost a custom feed per customer.
>> Anson Eaves: Some of the feed is definitely custom. I do have a lot of customers that request that I will make a thousand pounds of feed for at 16% to 18% protein with, I have half a dozen, 10 customers that I have recipes individually tailored for them.
[00:25:13]
>> Tommy Warlick: Are there specific rules of farm or important go-bys for you when you're coming up with a particular feed for what a customer wants for their animal or?
>> Anson Eaves: There are Tommy, there are, I believe, certain things. I believe some of them may be not scientific but they seem like they've worked.
[00:25:38]
Feeding a calf out, feeding a calf out for slaughter, if someone's got one up in a barn, I believe the best thing you could feed it is straight cracked corn with some salt and maybe some molasses in it. When you go farther than that, if you start adding barley to it.
[00:25:59]
The corn seems like the, makes yellow fat on cows, and that's what tastes good. So that but no, I want certain feeds to run certain proteins. The horse feed I make is going to run about 10.5% protein. I've found that that's a very nice number. That that's a very nice place to be.
[00:26:25]
That it keeps the horses acting right. Some people believe that they need more protein than that. I think you start causing problems. That's my personal opinion but everybody has their own.
>> Tommy Warlick: And with this hobby farmers that you work with, do you find yourselves teaching mode or a mentoring mode like you're doing with the guys over.
[00:26:46]
>> Anson Eaves: You do, you do find yourself, you do find yourself, okay, I got chickens. I just went and bought 20 chickens. What do they eat? So, people willing to take a chance, well, if you feed the scratch, this is what's going to happen. If you combine that with laying pellets or laying crumbles, then this is what's going to happen.
[00:27:10]
People do come in with questions. Some of them, I try to be nice to everybody. I try to take everybody but you get some people asking some very wrong questions. And the computer has changed that a lot because there are a lot of answers on the computer now that we didn't have access before.
[00:27:35]
So, a lot of people can spend 45 minutes Googling how to feed a horse and all of a sudden, they know everything there is to know about a horse. And the information is worth what you paid for it.
>> Tommy Warlick: [LAUGH] All right, I hear you. That's great. Now, when did you get involved?
[00:27:55]
>> Anson Eaves: I worked here basically on and off my whole life. If I wasn't in school at times, even in elementary school, I like to come down here and spend time. And that time, yes, you would sweep the floor but we would play a lot, too. My cousin, Uncle Jimmy's son Jay and I would play down here.
[00:28:16]
There was always something interesting going on. There were old men standing around the wood stove that were, mom says this is where I learned to curse. I'm sure I learned some things that I shouldn't have learned around here, but I enjoy spending time here. But even then, grandaddy, you would sweep the floor or you would go with my dad or uncle to deliver feed.
[00:28:39]
Even though you couldn't carry the bags, you could drag them to the back of the truck. So I had my hands in it, I worked here full time for several years after college. It had been probably 10 years since I had worked here full time when my dad and uncle decided to retire.
[00:28:59]
They decided to retire in 2011 and they offered me the option of coming back in and taking over, and I did. So I've been here, it has been my business since 2011. It worked well because I had already established relationships with a lot of the farmers. They knew who I was.
[00:29:23]
Most of the customers knew who I was. That was definitely an asset. Since then, I've had to, we've had to figure out if we deal well with with each other, and it's worked very well. And I can see not only did I continue, was I able to continue relationships with the customers or suppliers, but I have formed new ones also.
[00:29:53]
And you can see the [SOUND] demographics changing. You can see some of the customers coming in, you can see 20 year olds coming in, looking for, they have got their first chickens or are interested in raising their first cow. That's, I'm perhaps more tolerant of that then maybe my dad and uncle were.
[00:30:15]
That they expected someone with a cow to know how to feed a cow. I maybe don't have the same expectations anymore.
>> Tommy Warlick: So, you mentioned about everybody sort of congregating here. I've heard from your sister, Carla, a lot about the mill, this seems to be a real community center here, particularly for the local agricultural and the little farmers and all.
[00:30:37]
What role would you see the mill playing in the local community?
>> Anson Eaves: There are, even today, a certain number of retired men that come around. That once again, you see there's always a wood fire. A lot of times, there's a wood fire, there's usually a free sun-drop around.
[00:30:58]
So people have asked me, volunteered, let me bring a couch down here, let me bring my couch down here, let me bring my recliner. No, you can't have it too comfortable. If you make it too comfortable, it doesn't work. You don't need a coffee pot
>> Anson Eaves: I have a lot of work to do here.
[00:31:17]
You don't have time to lean against the stove, and you don't have time to lean against the stove all the time. It becomes a very pleasant experience but there's also work that has to be done. You do, I can tell you, I can name every player in the 1962 county basketball championship game between Harrisburg and Bethel because I've heard that story a lot of times.
[00:31:48]
I can tell you Bethel's baseball teams from 60 to 62 and who pitched what game. And that's, I consider that a great gift. I consider that a lot of fun to be One of the coolest stories, when I came in, shortly after I came in and an older lady pulled up here, and she spoke to me, she was from town and looking for something and she said, are you married?
[00:32:17]
And yes ma'am, I sure am. I can't believe your wife let's you hang around a feed mill. Now, why would that be an issue? She said, doesn't she know what kind of women come around a feed mill?
>> Tommy Warlick: [LAUGH]
>> Anson Eaves: And it was such a story from, such a story from another time because when she had been a young lady, the feed mill was where you went to go find a man.
[00:32:44]
It probably doesn't work that way any more. I can't say that that was my experience but it's a story that I filed away.
>> Tommy Warlick: [LAUGH] So other than a dating pool, how has the feed mill changed over time? You say you see your customers change. How are things sort of evolved as you've been involved with the business?
[00:33:02]
>> Anson Eaves: Since I've been involved in the business, one of the major changes, and this is one of the major changes is our regulatory agency has traditionally been the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. In 2011, the USDA took over. The Food Safety Act went into effect, so instead of being regulated by a state agency, now it's changing over into a federal agency.
[00:33:32]
The regulations are going, I have a new stack of 700 pages of regulations. That is going to be a major change. With the state, I could basically call anyone in the state and get some kind of answers. On this, you can't. And it's the old story of small business and big government once again.
[00:33:59]
You also see that this business is located on a four-lane highway. 20 years ago, it was located on a 2-lane road. That's changed, what we have coming by is not local traffic now, it's commuter traffic. And people also tend, I would say people because it's a female, people don't necessarily know what a female does.
[00:34:32]
When they think about buying feed. If they're thinking about buying chicken feed. If they're thinking about buying a bag of fertilizer. They tend to look to Lowe's, to Home Depot, to Walmart, to Tractor Supply, and then to a degree, a place like Southern States. Which are very retail-type outlets.
[00:34:54]
We've always supplied fertilizer to farmers. At times, lots and lots of fertilizer. That's is the major change in the market now. Even people that are coming in, regular customers, I didn't know you sold fertilizer. It sounds funny to me to say that because we've always moved fertilizer. And traditionally, 40 years ago, this is where everybody would have come to buy fertilizer, that's no longer the case.
[00:35:27]
I also see more. I also see more outlets for some products like shelled corn, there's more farmers selling shelled corn straight off the farm than there were 20 years ago. It becomes a value added product to them. They're able to sell a bag of corn to someone feeding their chickens or someone baiting deer off the farm, that they make an extra $2 off that same bushel of corn.
[00:36:07]
It's hard to begrudge that. But 20 years ago, this was basically one of the only outlets for a product like that. Now there's a lot more.
>> Tommy Warlick: So, I was gonna ask you about the Federal Food Safety Modernization Act. [LAUGH] And I'm looking over here at this notebook you've got.
[00:36:32]
>> Anson Eaves: That's it, that whole stack. That whole stack of paper.
>> Tommy Warlick: It looks like it weighs about 10 pounds. So, how is it impacting you? I mean are you in the process of getting up to speed or what does that entail for you?
>> Anson Eaves: That is, the worst part about it is everything in there, basically everything, those whole 700 pages at this point, are all recommendations.
[00:36:56]
They say the farm guidelines are established but they have not really established farm guideslines. It's gonna be a matter of they're gonna come in and look at structures, equipment you're using, batch samples, a much more stringent regulation. A much more stringent set of regulations. Before, the state would come in.
[00:37:28]
They would sample feed. They would test for. As I tag feed, the protein is. As I tag, not custom feed, but labeled feed. I'm required to have a label on them with the protein, with the fat content, etc. The state, once a year, will come in and take a sample of that to make sure that I was meeting my labeling requirements.
[00:37:51]
If something was labeled 9% protein, they wanted to see the 9% protein. The state also tended to check for mycotoxins, which were things like alpha toxin and stuff like that. To make sure that you're putting a safe product out there. What I see from the federal government and this becomes cynical is the way the regulations read, they don't believe your intention is to put a safe product.
[00:38:21]
They want to regulate, they want to regulate the whole manufacturing process.
>> Anson Eaves: Because they don't believe you're capable of doing it yourself.
>> Tommy Warlick: So based on what you've read so far and what you know so far about these regulations, what's the additional burden gonna be on you, as far as man hours, expense, all that kind of stuff?
[00:38:49]
>> Anson Eaves: Last and this was not federal, this was this was still the end of a state thing. But last summer, I ended up having an audit, there's there's a tax. There's a tax on horse feed, it goes to the North Carolina horse count. So I pay, it used to be $5 a ton.
[00:39:06]
It's moved to $10 a ton. I keep up with it pay, so basically, from a nickel a bag to a dollar bag. I keep up with that. I keep up with what I pay. I pay the state quarterly. Each ton of horse feed that I send out there.
[00:39:21]
Last summer, I ended up being audited over the last three years and had to account for every bag of horse feed I had sold for three years. So, I ended up with, I think it was 37 pages of audit that I had to account for the day and the customer that had received these feeds.
[00:39:44]
So, it took me two days going back through ticket books and calendars. It took my wife an extra day or so at work to compile everything. So, just on something like that, there's 24 man hours involved in that. This is a one person operation. You don't have 24 man hours to do these things.
[00:40:08]
When you become, if you're the size mill of the Purinas, and Nutrinas, and you have compliance officers in place. And you have everything computerized, then these regulations become much more easy to comply with. If you can pull people off and have a paint job put on everything, to clean everything up, that's not what I do, that's not the scale that I'm able to work on.
[00:40:41]
It is going to become prohibitive, and at this point, I'm still not sure how prohibitive. Since these regulations have come out, I've seen two or three, at least three other people that were doing some milling. Especially on some farm, just some farm-side operations but they were selling some feed on the side.
[00:41:08]
I've seen very few people pull their door shut, it does not make sense for them to try to comply with this. They're gonna be closed down anyway, so they've gone ahead and pulled the door shut, and these were just kind of sideline type operations, we'll see how it applies here.
[00:41:28]
And it's still hard to get a firm answer as to exactly what kind of compliance issues I will have but there will be some. And it becomes a matter of how much money am I willing to spend to comply? Does it make sense to continue doing this? If they say, all your elevators have to be replaced because they are not in compliance, it basically doesn't make sense to continue operations.
[00:42:01]
if I was going to invest, a certain point, a certain kind of money, it probably would not be in a feed mill. As long as I can run it, as long as I can continue running it, yes, it does work. But if I have to make a 20-year capital investment, then no, it makes no sense to try to continue the operation.
[00:42:24]
>> Tommy Warlick: Are there any types of exemptions or breaks for smaller operations like yours-
>> Anson Eaves: Yes and no, the smallest operation, there became a two-year exemption, we're in that window now.
>> Anson Eaves: The maximum sales operation for that was a company doing $2.5 million a year, so that is still out of scale for me.
[00:42:59]
But at this point they are not showing any exemptions for very, very small operations. They're dealing with $100 million a year companies, and $20 million a year companies, a $2.5 million a year companies, and that's who the regulations were written for. There are still other mills this size out there in this scale and the regulations were not written to apply to this kind of scale operation.
[00:43:35]
If they end up having to apply, then there will be a problem for me.
>> Tommy Warlick: And you said, they, so this is gonna be like USDA?
>> Anson Eaves: This is USDA, at this point, the state is perhaps gonna continue contract work for the USDA. The inspectors that I used to deal with will contract out to the USDA.
[00:44:00]
The North Carolina Department of Agriculture may handle this with the guidance or help of federal inspectors.
>> Tommy Warlick: Okay. So changing gears on you, I know there's been a lot of talk about organic farming, about farm to fork and all of this type of stuff. I'm sure with regard to animal food products, that's impacted what your customers are interested in and what they want from you.
[00:44:29]
What changes have you seen caused by those things?
>> Anson Eaves: One of the biggest things that I can see is I have more customers curious and interested in non-GMO products. People are much more cognizant of what they are feeding their livestock. You do see people, if they want 20 chickens in their backyard, they become their pets.
[00:45:01]
They have heard the catchphrases, non-GMO, they've heard the catch phrases, organic, free range, grass fed, most of them are not. A lot of them, even though they're aware of the phrase, they're not necessarily aware of what it means and what it entails.
>> Tommy Warlick: So just for purposes of the folks listening, what does it mean?
[00:45:27]
>> Anson Eaves: Non GMO means non genetically modified ingredients, so most of the corn grown now, most of the soybeans grown now are maybe classified as Roundup-ready. So they splice the gene into this plant that gives you the ability to use a chemical like Roundup on your fields. That becomes a weed control, so you're able to plant soybeans.
[00:45:56]
Glycol phosphate is the actual pesticide or the actual herbicide we're talking about when I say Roundup. So before if you had non-Roundup-ready beans, if you sprayed Roundup on it, you would have killed the whole field. Now you're able to spray Roundup, and that helps control weeds such as pigweed, such as cocklebur, such as sicklepod, some of the other noxious weeds that get into your field.
[00:46:30]
By doing that, it makes your fields clean, it makes your beans cleaner at harvest. The downside of that is a genetically-modified product and I think we're still trying to see what the repercussions of the genetically modified products are. But people are aware that it is something to pay attention, to to be afraid of.
[00:46:54]
I have people asking those questions a lot, one of the stories that I tell is, a guy came in here feeding his chickens, I want non GMO feed. My question, why do you want non GMO feed? Because I don't want my chickens eating GMO. I understand, what's your issue with GMO products?
[00:47:20]
He said, there's a man in Mexico that's buying all our seed and he's going to keep us from having food. I said, I don't understand this, what are you talking about? I'm not going to support that man that's buying all our seeds, he's gonna starve us. I said, that man that's buying all our seeds up?
[00:47:42]
And I thought a little bit and I said, are you talking about Monsanto?
>> Tommy Warlick: [LAUGH]
>> Anson Eaves: And it was months, so even though he is aware that there's an issue and it's something to pay attention to, he didn't know why he's paying attention. His logic is, I also see, it's funny to me.
[00:48:05]
Sink them with chicken feed. A lady will come in eating a double whopper and smoking a Marlboro light, but she wants non-GMO feed for her chickens. And it becomes a question of where are our lives? But I think it's a great thing that people are paying more attention to it, are more aware of it, are more cognizant of the possible impacts that are taking place with it.
[00:48:41]
And there's no doubt there's more awareness of that now than there was ten years ago.
>> Tommy Warlick: Has that caused any changes for you though, I mean, are you having to change your recipe?
>> Anson Eaves: To a certain degree, to a certain degree. There's a lady that I make non-GMO feed for her horses, even though she's never going to eat the horse, she prefers the feed made with that.
[00:49:10]
I am lucky in that oats and barley are not typically GMO products. I can leave the corn out, and produce her a feed that she's satisfied with [SOUND] and that works. You do see it, some of the grains that I am using, like myloaf, wheat, are non-GMO, oats, barley are non-GMO.
[00:49:38]
The corn, I cannot guarantee it is. I know where it's produced, I know who produces it, but it probably is a modified product. I can see the difference on the feed that I resell. It's feed that I buy from a larger mill and resell. They avoid the non-GMO phrase, but locally produced whole grain, they're using it in their advertising campaigns also.
[00:50:18]
>> Anson Eaves: And even though in my situation, perhaps there's a preference for non-GMO products, if they're not willing to pay the price, if I can't pay the farmer a premium on it, then I can't buy the grain. If they're not willing to pay the price for the finished, a premium for the finished product, then I can't supply the farmer with a premium.
[00:50:43]
So the farmer, the row cropper, the guy growing the corn has to make the decision as to where his yield is highest and where his profit margin will be highest.
>> Tommy Warlick: Okay, okay, now you mentioned early on that you're using a roller mill method.
>> Anson Eaves: Yes.
>> Tommy Warlick: What type of equipment is involved with what you do on a daily basis?
[00:51:03]
>> Anson Eaves: Here, I'm probably running, I've counted before and close to 40 motors. Anywhere from 5 horsepower to 50 horsepower electric motors. All the bins have unloading augers in them, unloading motors. I put the grain in the vent in the bins, either through an auger, which lifts the grain up and drops it into the bin.
[00:51:31]
It comes out of the bin much the same way. There's an auger that pulls it out of the bin. I run it from there to an elevator into a crimper, the roller mill, which has two sets of corrugated steel rollers in it which actually crush the grain, either crack the hull on the grain, crush the grain, depending on how I set the rollers, depending on how fine of a finished product I have.
[00:52:02]
The grain then runs through a cleaner, which screens the grain. It removes the fines, it removes the chaff. Even though the grain's been cracked, it produces a cleaner grain from there. Then I end up running the grain back into the mill into a mixer. The mixer simply tough makes the various grains together from there into another elevator.
[00:52:30]
And then I run it through either a blender, which I used to spray molasses on it, or I avoid the blender and then I run it through an automated bagger which weighs out 50 pound bags. And then I either put them on the truck or I bring them out here for sale.
[00:52:52]
So lots of motors, lots of augers, lots of conveyors, lots of things to get your hands caught in if you're not careful. The base is grain handling. It just becomes a material handling process. With grain, like a lot of other material handlings is, you lift it up high enough and make it fall where you want it to fall.
[00:53:15]
That becomes the secret to it, is if you lift it up high enough, you can direct it wherever you want it.
>> Tommy Warlick: And you're pretty much the only one doing all this?
>> Anson Eaves: Yes, yes.
>> Tommy Warlick: Wow, Anson, that's a lot to do.
>> Anson Eaves: It becomes a lot, and if everything works smoothly, it's very manageable.
[00:53:32]
It's manageable. When a piece of machinery breaks down, I don't have a lot of redundancy here. When a piece of machinery breaks down, there's a lot of bolt turning also. And because the machinery, a lot of it is 1980, 1960 vintage, it breaks down a lot, and there's really not a lot of people that really want to go climb up a 60-foot elevator and work on it.
[00:54:02]
So you tend to take on the mechanicing yourself.
>> Tommy Warlick: That's what I was gonna ask. Are you doing a lot of the repair work yourself?
>> Anson Eaves: Yes, I do 99% of the repair work myself, I carry a lot of wrenches around.
>> Tommy Warlick: [LAUGH] So has there been a lot of technology changes that have impacted how you're doing what you're doing, or-
[00:54:24]
>> Anson Eaves: There have been a lot of technology changes in the milling business, but not at this location. I'm running it very much the same way it was run in 1970. I'm running all the machines, my granddad could come in here and recognize every piece of machinery and tell you what it does.
[00:54:49]
Now he might not know where the switch was, but he would know what it was supposed to accomplish. Okay, are there any issues or types of problems that are unique to feed milling that are challenges for your that are becoming challenges for you that maybe haven't been in the past?
[00:55:07]
>> Tommy Warlick: Once again, the regulations will be the major one. The regulation changes are perhaps one of the major ones. Like I said, you do see a different type competition now. You see a different type competition now. You also see a changing demographic, in that this community is not rural-based anymore.
[00:55:33]
It's so people don't understand exactly what a feed mill is and,
>> Tommy Warlick: Yeah, there become a lot of challenges. Once again, probably the biggest one for me is equipment wearing out, as just entropy takes over, entropy takes over. I'm sorta hesitant to ask this, but is there a typical day around here?
[00:56:00]
What's a typical day like? It doesn't sound like there is one. No, but an example of a day would be I'll come in 8:00 o'clock cold weather, I'll build a fire. I'll hang out with the dog. I'll drink a Sundrop. Get my eyes, get started. See what is on the desk.
[00:56:19]
Then I will start making feed. And a lot of times that involves picking up a shovel and moving some grain around in the bin so that you can get to it.
>> Tommy Warlick: Most of the time, usually every day I have at least one customer's barn that I have to go deliver to, which means putting a couple tons of feed on the truck, driving either 10 miles or 75 miles, getting the feed off the truck.
[00:56:52]
I'll come back and start making more feed. In the meantime, as you're doing these things, you're also waiting on out-the-door customers. You're also answering the phone for orders.
>> Tommy Warlick: And so you end up making and delivering a lot of feed. By making the feed means that I'm rolling grain in buggies to the places I need it to process.
[00:57:16]
Then as the feed's being bagged I'm picking the bags up and stacking them on pallets to be sold here or rolling them back into the mill until I can get a truck loaded. It's a lot of physical labor. I'll pick up 250 pound bags every day of the week.
[00:57:42]
I will move basically five tons of feed around, and you feel like you wear the bags out sometimes. You handle them, you stack them, you roll them, you pick them back up you put them on a truck, you get them off the truck. But every day you're moving 50 pound bags over and over and over.
[00:58:03]
That's probably a good rule of thumb, if nothing goes wrong, if nothing breaks, if you don't have to go pick up fertilizer, if you don't have shipments of grain coming in. And that's kind of how the days go. You get,
>> Tommy Warlick: When they're hauling grain you have to do deal with the unloading of the trucks, setting everything up to unload the truck.
[00:58:33]
You have to deal with the farmer to whatever degree, whether it's paying him, figuring the payment, and that becomes an added part of the day. That ends up taking another hour or so out of your day. If you're lucky you have a little bit of time to go walk out to the garden.
[00:58:56]
If you're lucky, maybe, no, you really don't ever get the eat lunch. I'm here, it's a nine hour day. I really don't stop for lunch. I drink a Sundrop or something like that and usually keep going, and then at 5:00 o'clock my nanny will drop the kid off here and then I start the second part of the day.
[00:59:22]
>> Anson Eaves: So let me take a step back, you and your family have been involved in farming, or have at least touched on it for a long time, here in Cabberus County.
>> Tommy Warlick: Right.
>> Anson Eaves: What changes have you seen over that time period?
>> Tommy Warlick: One of the bigger ones that we talked about a little bit earlier is even into the 70s, when I was a kid, so many of the people farmed.
[00:59:48]
Everybody had larger tracts of land. There were not as many half acre lots. There was no such thing, very few things as a half acre lot. People were farming but they went to work at canning mills. They went to work for the school system. They went to work for the state.
[01:00:07]
When they got off work, they came home and they had 50 acres of land or 100 acres of land that they tended to. And they might have had a farrowing house with hogs in it as a sideline. They might have had a group of cows as a sideline.
[01:00:26]
They might have had 40 acres of corn as a sideline, and it supplemented their income.
>> Tommy Warlick: They didn't treat the farming as their full-time profession. There were some full time farmers, but for the most part farming was what you did after work. And now I believe it's become more specialized that to, sure people do have jobs and then they have some cows at home.
[01:00:59]
People do have some chickens at home. But to farm now here, because of the price of equipment, because of the price of land, you have to be invested in it. You have to have a 1,000 acres to row crop, to make row cropping a viable option. Well a 1,000 acres becomes your job.
[01:01:22]
But to afford a 500,000 combine you better be running it. You can't have 20 acres of corn and buy a $500,000 combine. You can't afford that kind of equipment. So I do see people, and even some of the farmers that I consider bigger farmers, especially in our area, are running other businesses or running fairly decent-sized businesses.
[01:01:54]
And farming is not another, not a supplement to their income, but it is another business entirely that perhaps dovetails in with what their other business is. You see a lot of farmers with grading companies. That's the typical one. I can name three or four people that run large scale grading operations but farm fairly large scale besides that, but they're not actually out there running bulldozers anymore.
[01:02:28]
They're paying employees to do this. They're just managing the companies.
>> Anson Eaves: So if you had to take a step back and look at the whole farming area in the greater Charlotte/Piedmont area and all that kind of stuff, where do you think it lands? How do you think the health of the whole food shed and all the agriculture and livestock around here is?
[01:02:54]
>> Tommy Warlick: Not sure, there will be an answer, but I'm not sure. What I do see is that I see a lot of younger kids,
>> Tommy Warlick: Kim and Connor are great examples, but smaller scale than that. I see some people, okay, well I've inherited 25 acres from my grandfather or my parents.
[01:03:16]
We've always had cows here, I'd like to keep cows here. I think that that will continue. I see perhaps more people coming out looking for five acre tracks that they can have a garden on. Moving out of the urban areas because they want some chickens. They'd like to have a couple of chickens, or they'd like to have their own garden.
[01:03:41]
I think that that's doing very well. One of the big curiosities I have is over the next ten years what cash crops are going to become available for these people. Once again, coming out here and, even myself, if I wanted to farm, if I wanted to call myself a farmer today, And use the family lands.
[01:04:06]
I'm going to take over the family land. Usually we've had a cow calf operation going, but I'm going to farm it. I don't believe that I could afford to become a farmer today. Even though I might meet the threshold on available land, I will be blessed by that, but I don't believe that I would feel comfortable going out and taking on, starting with none of the equipment, I don't believe I would be able to take that on.
[01:04:38]
Questions that I answer for a lot of people is, we have family land, what do I do with it, how do I make this pay, how do I make this a viable option to hold onto? You get a lot of questions about, well, what do you think about farming truffles, what do you think about farming pistachios, what do you think about, and they're all good questions, and I think that the answer lies in those questions is what can pay the taxes on your 20 acres or your 50 acres?
[01:05:13]
It's not going to be corn, it's not going to be soybeans, it's not gonna be cotton, but is the answer, okay, the answer for everybody is not gonna be goats, but maybe the answer for two people is going to be goats. The other people are gonna have to come up with their own solutions, and it could be strawberries, it could be tomatoes.
[01:05:37]
I see more farmers markets coming up. I think that's neat. Once again, that's not my definition of the traditional definition of farmer, but yeah, you can probably grow five acres of tomatoes and turn a profit on it, if you're willing to get out there and hoe them.
>> Tommy Warlick: I'm looking for where the next market is, because farming is market driven.
[01:06:08]
If there is an outlet, people will grow it, if there's not an outlet, there's no point in growing it, and I think that becomes one of the big, I'm not sure where it's gonna be. If you go farm to tables, I see a kid down in Oakborough that five to ten years came in here wanted to get into the hog business, and he was wanting to grow a hog that tasted good, and he's been relatively successful at it, and he's marketing.
[01:06:44]
He has a store front. He's also marketing a lot online. And it seems like he's figured out his niche as to how to make this go. There's gonna be some other niches that show up. I had a kid, super bright kid, that had a proprietary way to grow edible mushrooms.
[01:07:11]
Was super impressed with what he was doing, he should have been able to make it work, and he had some of it. He had the restaurants in Charlotte willing to, but the market was not enough for him to support that enterprise, and also bad partnerships played into that.
[01:07:33]
So we'll see what people come up with, but I do believe a lot of people are asking the same questions. It seems like I'm answering the same questions to a lot of people. It's not backyard chickens. Backyard chickens are going to be a hobby, and yes, they might be a self-supporting hobby, but I think as people look farther down the line as to what markets are coming, what markets are going to exist, there are going to be some opportunities.
[01:08:14]
The micro breweries have popped up everywhere in Charlotte. That means there's a market for hops. That means there's going to be a market for malted barley. Who's going to step up to the plate on that? It's probably not gonna be the guys who had traditionally farmed 1,000 acres of land.
[01:08:38]
They're not going to venture into, they're not gonna get off of their tractors to do that, but there's some 25-year-old college grads that can take their 20-acre inheritance into a viable operation, and I think that that's going to be fun. I think that's gonna be fun to see.
[01:08:58]
>> Anson Eaves: I didn't ask you before, but the milling that you're doing here it's all self-animal feed, right, there's no flour, anything like that?
>> Tommy Warlick: No, no, no, no. I have a gristmill over here in the corner. It's a traditional gristmill, to grind cornmeal at one point. At one point, my grandfather, my dad, and uncle did grind some cornmeal for people.
[01:09:25]
I wouldn't be able to do that now, once again, because of health regulations. I'd like to set, this is a mill that didn't come from here, a man came in here wanting to sell his grandfather's gristmill from the mountains, I ended up with it because its a neat the piece of history.
[01:09:48]
I would love to have it set up behind the barn, independent of this operation, and a weekend or two out of the year, yeah it would be great to grind some cornmeal for a buddy or two, just to see it run, to keep it so that my kids can see what it actually looks like to grind cornmeal and eat cornmeal.
[01:10:13]
>> Anson Eaves: And I know I've already gotten your grandfather's name, your uncle's Jimmy. What was your father's name?
>> Tommy Warlick: My dad is Edward, but he goes by Gene. He goes by Gene.
>> Anson Eaves: So I know I've taken up a lot of time here. I got two more questions for you then I'll leave you be.
[01:10:30]
So you mentioned earlier that there are a lot of misperceptions that people have. They don't quite understand, not just farming in general, but feed mill, and the whole nine yards. What are some of the big misperceptions that you've seen folks have, or just not understand what's going on?
[01:10:47]
>> Tommy Warlick: I'll try not to be cynical about this.
>> Anson Eaves: [LAUGH]
>> Tommy Warlick: This is an easy one because you do get to deal with some, I had a girl come in here, what should I feed my horse? I suggested the sweet feed, she didn't wanna do that, and I put her horse on straight oats, which makes a very good feed.
[01:11:10]
For a month she came in here, my horse looks better than it's ever looked. I can't believe the changes that have been made. It's wonderful. I felt good, then she came in here, and she's like, I shouldn't be feeding my horse oats. Why not? Well, I saw on the computer that so and so said that wasn't the right feed.
[01:11:33]
What do you think, I said, no, no its your horse what do you think? And when I asked her what she thought, she got a very blank look on her face, because she was unable to think for herself. And I tried to, you're looking at your horse, you know more about your horse than anybody else.
[01:11:55]
If you think you're doing the right then you probably are. Don't worry about somebody in Minnesota in a chat You have to make your own decisions and that becomes a hard one, that becomes a hard one. I see it, I see some things that I disagree with. I disagree with people's opinions but maybe their opinions are not wrong.
[01:12:24]
People asking questions about fertilizer, well it's not, I was told I need a 12-4-8, well do you know why you need a 12-4-8 fertilizer? Well no, but that's what I want. I can sell you a triple 17 for a third of the price you're gonna pay. No, no, it's a 12-4.
[01:12:47]
And people come in with a lot of ideas that they, people come in with a lot of pre-conceived notions. The easiest ones to deal with are the ones that will listen, the ones that, and not that I'm always right, that's not the case. I like to learn also.
[01:13:08]
yBut sometimes the way that Your grandfather did things there was a reason for. Maybe your granddaddy didn't know what he was doing, you know? And so maybe, maybe let's let's look at that. Let's look at the traditional way of doing it and maybe there was some answers there.
[01:13:25]
Maybe there's some improvements we can make, but maybe they're worse, the answers.
>> Anson Eaves: I've jumped around a lot, I've gone all over the place. Is there anything that I've left out? Is there anything that we should have covered that you think is important that we need to address?
[01:13:45]
>> Tommy Warlick: I would, no, but to put, the one of my concerns,
>> Anson Eaves: Is this the safety 6450?
>> Tommy Warlick: Yeah, one of my concerns is, not necessarily status of the farm, but this status of land in general, the availability of land. What is going to happen to the land?
[01:14:26]
Okay, as the big tracks disappear and they are going to disappear and they are disappearing. Even with good intentions, if your grandfather owned 100 acres and it got split between three siblings and then between their three siblings, it's no longer a big tract.
>> Tommy Warlick: The questions we're asking about what's gonna happen to farming really become null and void if there's no place to do it.
[01:14:58]
Once again, I have a lot of people that are concerned that are interested that I have access to this or this is a traditional family farm. How am I gonna be able to maintain it? What can I do to keep the taxes paid? The taxes become prohibited as to just owning land.
[01:15:24]
Land in the 1960s, 1950 became a way to generate wealth. Now land maybe is wealth. Your great grandfather bought land because by adding more land to it, he had more timber to cut, he had room for more cows to graze. He had room for more corn. It was a wealth generator.
[01:15:54]
Today, money becomes tied up in land. If 100 acre tract's worth $20,000 an acre, there's a $2 million investment.
>> Tommy Warlick: Can I afford to have $2 million tied up in this, or do I have to liquidate it? And I really think that the key to all the farming in general is going to be what does happen with the land?
[01:16:27]
If you don't have the dirt, you can't grow it. Even if you want chickens in a garden, if your HOA prohibits it, you can't have chickens in your back yard. So people are looking for the five acre tracts. I get that but at the same time, it takes more than five acres to raise cows on.
[01:16:53]
It takes more than five acres to raise corn. I think that that's probably the biggest question that we don't have the answer to. If the major tracks of land are there and you can make it viable to grow stuff on it, then it will stay viable. If they become so expensive that it's prohibitive to grow stuff on, then it's not gonna be grown there.
[01:17:24]
>> Anson Eaves: Well Anson, I really appreciate your time, I don't think I did a good job early on of introducing Highway 34.
>> Tommy Warlick: Right [LAUGH].
>> Anson Eaves: [LAUGH] Being here, and I forgot the dog's name.
>> Tommy Warlick: Huxley.
>> Anson Eaves: Huxley, so Huxley thanks for having us out today, we appreciate it buddy.
[01:17:38]
But I really appreciate your time, I really appreciate your insights. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you think-
>> Tommy Warlick: I think we hit most of the high points. I'm sure there's always more, there's always more to talk about but I think we hit a lot of the hot ones.
[01:17:54]
>> Anson Eaves: Sounds good. I'm gonna turn thing off and
Fair Share Farm - Emma Hendel
Emma Hendel discusses her five years as a microgreens farmer and co-owner of Fair Share Farms, LLC in Pfafftown, North Carolina. Ms. Hendel describes why and how she and her husband Elliot Seldner came to North Carolina and started their farm. She explains what microgreens are and why she and Mr. Seldner decided to grow them. Other topics include organic farming methods, Organic Certified vs. Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) Certified, urban sprawl, distribution partners, environmental issues, and social media.
Emma Hendel was a 30-year-old woman at the time of interview, which took place at Davidson Town Hall in Davidson, North Carolina. She was born in Maryland in 1988. She was educated at Elizabethtown College and was employed as a teacher and farmer.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:07 | Beginning |
| 0:00:44 | Background of Fair Share Farm |
| 0:01:10 | Began with a CSA model |
| 0:02:06 | Beginning of Fair Share Farm |
| 0:02:43 | Working up to their own farm |
| 0:03:37 | Deciding what to grow |
| 0:04:14 | Organic methods, GAP, FSMA |
| 0:05:14 | Elliot's desire to work outside |
| 0:06:36 | Desire for a healthy lifestyle |
| 0:07:16 | Love of cooking |
| 0:08:08 | Emma's family from Winston-Salem |
| 0:09:15 | Coming to North Carolina to work on other farms |
| 0:10:50 | Negatives of urban encroachment |
| 0:12:01 | Potential for positive opportunities of urban encroachment |
| 0:13:44 | Makeup of farm land (greenhouses, etc) |
| 0:15:00 | Microgreens (what they are and how they are grown) |
| 0:18:30 | Type of customers |
| 0:19:39 | No till (soil care) |
| 0:22:13 | Organic farming |
| 0:24:23 | Organic certification |
| 0:26:07 | GAP certification |
| 0:29:07 | Getting into Whole Foods |
| 0:30:11 | Distribute to restaurants |
| 0:32:33 | Work with small distributers (Freshlist and New Appalachia) |
| 0:34:15 | Employees |
| 0:37:01 | Immigrant "guest" workers |
| 0:39:11 | Challenges as a woman |
| 0:40:23 | Social Media |
| 0:43:35 | Use of plastic |
| 0:45:51 | Call out culture online |
| 0:46:44 | Partner organizations |
| 0:49:58 | Future of the farm |
| 0:52:44 | Closing |
[00:00:10]
>> Sarah Wilds: Okay, today is April 20th, 2019, we are in Davidson, North Carolina. My name is Sarah Wilds, and I am interviewing Emma Hendel. And Emma is co-owner of Fair Share Farm with her husband, Elliott.
>> Emma Hendel: Seldner.
>> Sarah Wilds: Seldner.
>> Sarah Wilds: So Emma, can you just tell me real briefly, sort of a little background information about your farm?
[00:00:39]
Where it is, when you started, how it started and we'll go from there.
>> Emma Hendel: So my farm's name is Fair Share Farm, LLC, and we established it with the mission to feed as many people in North Carolina as we can, growing the best food possible, and being kind to the land and ourselves while doing it.
[00:01:03]
And so, the name Fair Share Farm actually comes out of the way that we started our business, which was with a CSA model, or a community supported agriculture. So people would purchase a share of produce, which they would receive weekly throughout the season, which is a great model for a farm starting up, because you get a lot of cash flow right away.
[00:01:27]
So usually in a CSA model, you would pay completely up front and receive a product throughout the season. And so that's where like the fair share came from, because the customers would be getting their share of our hard work. And it's a fair deal for everybody, because we're compensate, we're being compensated for the work and the effort that we're putting in.
[00:01:54]
And so that's really been important is always charging what the product is worth and not more and not less. And so we started our business in the fall of 2014, so we're actually coming up on our five year mark, which is a big deal in the small business world.
[00:02:16]
That sort of like you're not going anywhere, hopefully like usually up to year three is where it's like very, very crazy, and then sort of year five is like you can be looking at next steps. Where do you take if from here because you're established? So, we started in the fall of 2014, my husband was at the time working at another farm, and I was teaching.
[00:02:48]
>> Emma Hendel: And so, we'd actually been talking with the landowners a year or two previously, but we weren't ready to go at that time. And then, a couple years and a few months down the road, it was time. So, we reached back out and got in contact with them and set up a lease.
[00:03:12]
And really in the fall of 2014, that was all preparation, deciding what we were doing, preparing the land to grow things, figuring out the logistics of what's the soil type, what can we grow here, what do we wanna grow, what do people want, where can we sell our products?
[00:03:32]
And actually, one big deciding factor on where we were going to focus was the farmer's market and trying to get into the local farmer's market. And then being what's the hole in the market? So that it became clear that salad, micro-greens, people were doing some of that, but no one was really focusing on it.
[00:03:54]
So that's where our salad focus came from was to fill a void in the marketplace. And at the suggestion of the market manager to say, hey, I think you should focus on this. We did, and so that is where that focus came from. So we grow a lot of salad, we also grow specialty seasonal produce.
[00:04:14]
We are not certified organic, but we do follow all of the USDA and USDA guidelines and use only AMRI-approved methods and products. And we keep extensive records because we do have a GAP certification. And so although the FSMA, Food Safety Modernization Act, is not necessarily being applied yet, we are ready.
[00:04:42]
So we have meticulous record keeping. We believe that the goodness of the product comes from the soil. And so we like to take care of it. And so, I think I answered the question where it was like, where did it come from? What's our business based on? And so yeah, help me out.
[00:05:10]
[LAUGH]
>> Sarah Wilds: That's great. So from listening to a previous interview on a farming podcast or agricultural podcast, I know Elliott was sort of the driving force behind wanting to farm. Do you know where his passion sort of came from?
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, Elliott wanted to be outside. And so when we were in college, it’s really daunting to sort of see your whole life ahead of you.
[00:05:45]
And when you’re trying to pick and focus on what you’re studying and sort of like envisioning what is the next 40 or 50 work years, working years of my life going to look like? Am I going to be sitting in the cubicle all day? Am I going to be presenting in front of groups?
[00:06:05]
Am I going to be researching? What really am I going to be doing? And so, for Elliott, I think there was this romantic enchantment with the idea of working outside and forming a community that way and having movement in his life. Because like everybody, we want to be healthy and active.
[00:06:36]
But I also think, and I don’t think he would mind me saying this, but I think for Elliott, he doesn’t go out and seek exercise. So having exercise and activity built into his daily life was sort of the only way that he saw that he was going to be at all fit and healthy.
[00:06:57]
>> Sarah Wilds: That's a good sort of overall strategy.
>> Emma Hendel: [LAUGH]
>> Sarah Wilds: You have to physically move around to work, but then you also produce healthy food. And it's kind of win-win situation.
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, and I actually now that you say that, that's another thing I think that do Elliott and myself, too, we both love cooking, love eating.
[00:07:20]
Our teenage jobs and young adult jobs revolved around food. Both of us have worked as cooks. I've worked front of house positions, being a server and doing all sorts of different things, and so cooking is a huge part of our life and our relationship. If we're spending time together, we're probably cooking something or eating something or doing a food project.
[00:07:51]
It really is focused on that because it's one of the most, in our opinion, it's one of the most joyful and enjoyable things that we do.
>> Sarah Wilds: So how did you end up specifically outside Winston-Salem? You had contact with the previous owner of the land.
>> Emma Hendel: So Elliott grew up in Connecticut, I grew up in Maryland.
[00:08:20]
We met in college in Pennsylvania. I grew up visiting Winston-Salem, North Carolina because my mother's family is based in Winston-Salem. So I have tons of cousins, aunts, uncles. So school breaks were spent visiting. And although my mom moved away from Winston-Salem, she did maintain those relationships and come back and visit and spend time.
[00:08:49]
And so I grew up visiting Winston-Salem, and it's funny because I never really saw myself living in Winston-Salem because it wasn't necessarily a positive experience for me as a child. And by just after working at a couple different farms and moving around after college, we actually came to North Carolina because one of our acquaintances from college then, he was living in Durham, North Carolina and working for Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.
[00:09:30]
And so he was like, well, I know you guys are looking for maybe land to start your own farm, or maybe even an employment opportunity, send me your resume and I'll put it out on the CFSA list serve. And so we sent resumes, they were put out on the list serve, that's how we got in the initial contact with the land owners and really, like I said, at the time we were probably leaning more towards an employment situation.
[00:10:01]
And so another farm in Stokes County, North Carolina took us up and offered both of us jobs, and so that's how we ended up in North Carolina, and then just about a half hour south of that is Winston-Salem. And so when we first moved to North Carolina, we stayed with my godparents.
[00:10:29]
And while we were looking for housing, etc., and now actually our farm now is a couple neighborhoods over from where they live. So that's how I got back to North Carolina and Elliot came to North Carolina for the first time. [LAUGH]
>> Sarah Wilds: So are there any sort of urban issues of being, cuz you said you were right outside Winston-Salem's city sprawl urban development.
[00:10:59]
Is that sort of encroaching? Because here in Charlotte the city is really pushing out and devouring the counties.
>> Emma Hendel: It is, it is actually. There's a ton of farmland for sale all around us. They're putting in, actually, the new highway that's going to encircle Winston-Salem is going to, there's going to be an entrance and exit at the end of our street.
[00:11:30]
And so that's really gonna change things. There's all sorts of new construction, like the type of construction where it's like buy the plot and design true homes. There's a lot of true home developments. And so it's a rapidly changing landscape. But it hasn't really impacted our farm negatively, because we are still in the county and there is actually a lot of, it could be positive for us because there is a lot of potential for a roadside stand, or what if in the future we setup a demo farm on our current farm property and purchase more land further out.
[00:12:16]
I mean there's positives and negatives. I do see the loss of the rural areas as a negative for the area. And urban sprawl is, in my opinion, I don't find it very attractive and I like the idea of having an urban center but I do think there needs to be a more forward looking sort of vision into how things are going because it's difficult when you just have all these little suburban things and then there's chain stuff to pop up to service.
[00:13:12]
Cuz everybody because everybody wants their little piece of land. And it's a difficult issue because you want people to be empowered and have their yard and their house and feel a sense of ownership over that, but then at the same time it can be sort of a barrier to entry because there are large houses.
[00:13:39]
So anyways, that's sort of getting into a whole other issue.
>> Sarah Wilds: So I think, I found that you have about five acres of land currently?
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, probably about, I would say five acres of open land and then two with houses and outbuildings on them, and we lease that from a family.
[00:14:08]
>> Sarah Wilds: And you have green houses?
>> Emma Hendel: Yes, we have 20 caterpillar coop house structures, so 2,100 foot caterpillar structures. That would be the cheapest in low tech, and then we have two large,
>> Emma Hendel: Coop house structures or high tunnels. And so those are sort of a little bit more sophisticated.
[00:14:40]
They have the double inflated poly roof and roll up sides, and those are unheated and then we have one commercial greenhouse, which is heated, has electrical service, whole nine yards. And that's where we do our micro greens and our transplants for the field.
>> Sarah Wilds: Okay. So I guess going off of that, like can you talk a little bit more about micro greens like what they are as opposed to just, I don't know, collard greens, spinach, kale.
[00:15:13]
What's?
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, so there's sprouts, which we do not grow, but sprouts are not grown in the soil, they're just basically hydrated seeds, and they're not exposed to sunlight but, and so you'll see this often in the grocery stores as mung beans or alfalfa sprouts and things like that.
[00:15:38]
A micro green is grown in the soil and, well, at least how we grow them, they're grown in the soil and exposed to sunlight. You can also have hydroponically grown micro-greens that are grown with grow lights, but that's not how we do it. We do it solar, with soil, and all we do is after they have germinated we just supply water so they're not getting any other treatments essentially.
[00:16:06]
It's just soil, water, sunlight. And so most microgreens are between 10 and about 25 days old. And so a seed has all of the energy it needs to basically get to sexual maturity. So that's a lot of energy that's in a seed, and that's why people are like, seeds and nuts, they're so healthy for you.
[00:16:30]
So what a microgreen is, is it's all that seed and nut energy plus sunlight energy which activates all sorts of different chemical reactions. Which as I am not a biologist, I can't really explain all of that, but it's happening and it's really cool and it makes a really delicious and flavorful product.
[00:16:53]
And so if you are looking at a microgreen versus a full-grown vegetable depending on the variety, it can have 4-40 times the amount of available nutrition for you. And so it's a really great way to get a lot of vitamins and good nutrients in maybe a smaller package.
[00:17:16]
>> Sarah Wilds: Yeah.
>> Emma Hendel: So it's like kids really like them cuz they're cute. And then it's like you just ate a ton of really good stuff, why don't you have some more? But they're also because of that concentrated available nutrition, they have a very concentrated and powerful flavor. [LAUGH] And so that can be a really fun experience too where that is really arugula, that's the most arugula, arugula flavor-
[00:17:46]
>> Sarah Wilds: [LAUGH]
>> Emma Hendel: I've ever tasted. Another advantage is you can get, there's a lot of, especially in the legume and sort of more nutty things like sunflowers and pea shoots. There's a lot of available protein in that. And the University of Maryland did a study, I think, in 2012 with sunflowers and ounce per ounce, they have the same amount of protein as chicken.
[00:18:15]
So if you have an ounce of sunflower shoot, that's got the same amount of protein as an ounce of chicken. And so and I think I believe pea shoots are a similar sort of deal. So I mean it's really great. I'm not a vegan but a lot of our customers are vegan bodybuilders, there's a market for that.
[00:18:40]
And people that are really into the wellness trend and movement, a lot of people that are practicing yoga are really into that sort of thing. And so microgreen sorta helped expand the sort of vegetable life for people that are focusing on eating more vegetables and things like that.
[00:19:08]
>> Sarah Wilds: Yeah, and then that sounds very versatile for vegans, vegan bodybuilders but also those people who want their kids to eat good food or they're vegetarian or just-
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, cuz you can put it on a sandwich, you can basically put it with anything. Whatever you're eating, if you wanna grill a piece of salmon, just put a handful of stuff on the bottom of the plate, put the salmon on top.
[00:19:31]
And you can be done if you want [LAUGH].
>> Sarah Wilds: And it'll look pretty.
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, and it'll look pretty.
>> Sarah Wilds: Great, so I think I saw on your website, you use no-till?
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, whenever we can we like to use as little tillage as possible. There are farms that claim to be zero till like they're never tilling.
[00:19:59]
We do use tillage to break sod and break new ground. And every once in a while, we might need to till but we focus on trying to till as little as possible because it helps with carbon sequestration. So when you're tilling, you can be releasing a lot of carbon into the air.
[00:20:23]
And you're also disturbing the soil composition. So you're disturbing like the different layers of soil. You're chopping up worms, and there's all sorts of things going on on the microbial level that you're disturbing. And also tillage can create a problem called hardpan, where when you're tilling especially in the clay-based soil of the Piedmont, a tiller is probably gonna go about 6 inches down.
[00:20:56]
And it will actually create a layer of compacted soil underneath that 6 inches which can inhibit the uptake of the deep soil nutrients, so a lot of plants have roots that go down 12, 14 inches three feet. They have a big tap root. And so if they can't get through that layer of hardpan, they are not gonna have access to a lot of the micronutrients that are deeper down in the soil.
[00:21:26]
And that action of the taproot bringing up is also bringing up nutrients for later crops and later things. And so what we do is we use a tool called a broadfork, which goes down about 12 inches and that helps break up that layer of hardpan. I mean, it’s essentially like a large garden fork, or it might look like an oversized comb or something like that.
[00:21:54]
And so that helps break it up like how people have their lawns aerated, it's the same sort of action.
>> Sarah Wilds: Okay,
>> Sarah Wilds: So you mention before that your gaps are agricultural practi-
>> Emma Hendel: Practices, yeah [LAUGH].
>> Sarah Wilds: Yeah, what's the difference between that and working in a certified?
>> Emma Hendel: So being certified organic is about practices in terms of soil management and product use.
[00:22:34]
So that I'm talking about fertilizers and pesticides. So one thing that is a misconception about being organic is that pesticides and fertilizers are allowed. The restrictions come into play when you're looking at petroleum-based fertilizers so that would not be allowed under organic certification. But what is allowed is things like BT, which is actually like a cultivated bacteria or like a product that's called Azero, which is made from chrysanthemum concentrate or name oil or insecticidal soaps.
[00:23:25]
Or there's a product called Surround, no, not Surround. Well, there's a clay-based product that forms a physical barrier on fruits, for like tree fruit production. So pesticides which are derived from,
>> Emma Hendel: Chemicals and ingredients that are available in the environment that are not synthesized and that are going to be less harmful to the environment as well as the soil and certain insects like those are going to be allowed.
[00:24:07]
But of course, no Roundup, no weed killers,
>> Sarah Wilds: So it's not just organic, the food itself is being grown organic. It's the environment it's been grown in and the materials it's being grown with are all organic then.
>> Emma Hendel: So if you wanted to start an organic farm today, unless you had from the landowners a letter saying for the past three years either A, nothing has been done to this land.
[00:24:37]
Or B, this land has only been farmed using certified organic practices and it is certified organic by this other grower already. You're gonna have to wait three years with your practices. Now when we established our farm, nothing had been done for three years. We wrote an organic plan but it didn't It didn't seem worth it to us to invest the money in that.
[00:25:06]
And then there's other issues I have with the USDA's certified organic program just regarding, organic is supposed to be about growing in the soil. But now, they're allowing hydroponics and all sorts of other things. II don't really want to go too much into it, because I am not here to trash certified organic at all.
[00:25:32]
Because being certified organic is what can help people enter into the marketplace. It can be a third party stamp of approval. There's a lot of positives to being certified organic. For us, it just wasn't the right fit. Now, certified organic is about soil management, soil practices as well as what products you can and can not use are on your crops and on your soil.
[00:26:08]
GAP certification is all about food safety. So organic and GAPs probably line up at about 80%. In terms of there is rules about when you can and cannot apply manure based fertilizers, for reasons of food safety. If you are growing a salad green, you can't go in and spray liquid fish emulsion on it one day and then cut it for market the next day, that doesn't work.
[00:26:47]
There's different rules about when you can apply certain products which overlap. And then where GAPs diverges and has almost, maybe even more stringent guidelines is about signage, employee training, paperwork. I have a whole shelf of paperwork and for every activity on the farm, there's basically a task ticket.
[00:27:16]
And it describes exactly, you as the farmer or somebody else that's our employee. They're gonna write down, I did this in this field on this day. We have a little diagram that they can circle what part of the field, they write exactly what they did. Sign and date it at the bottom, it goes into a record book.
[00:27:37]
If somebody injures themselves, you need a band-aid for a cut, you gotta fill out injury and illness report. We have hand washing stations all over the farm available. We have SOPs, standard operating procedures for everything and so it's just very procedural based. And for certified organic, there's a lot of records that you have to keep but it's just not quite at the same level.
[00:28:15]
For certified organic, it's more about what are you doing to the soil. What is planted, and for certified organic you have to keep harvest records. There's just a couple extra pieces of information that are required for GAPs beyond.
>> Sarah Wilds: So that's how you do organic method? So you're using all those methods, you're taking care of the soil?
[00:28:40]
>> Emma Hendel: With the systems we have in place, we could go and get certified organic really tomorrow or as soon as the certifier could get out there, it would be no sweat.
>> Sarah Wilds: At this point, it's just a stamp for you.
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, and we talk about it and we go back and forth all the time, like right now we are in the process of trying to get into Whole Foods.
[00:29:08]
Whole Foods sells conventional stuff, that's what we are, is a quote-unquote conventional grower. And they sell conventional things, and they're like, yeah, great. Your products look good, and it would be sold in the conventional section. It's like a chicken or the egg situation. I don't know if we would make enough additional business because of being certified organic to offset the cost in the first year.
[00:29:42]
But maybe five years from now, that's the reason that we got a contract with Whole Foods. Or that's the reason that we got this customer over here, or that's the reason that we got into this new farmer's market or something like that. So that's it's tough to figure out what is the right path.
[00:30:11]
>> Sarah Wilds: Who all do you distribute and partner to? I know you're here in Davidson, I know you're at the farmer's market in Old Salem, in Winstom-Salem. What else do you do?
>> Emma Hendel: We actually started our business with restaurant customers and we were delivering living micro green trays to restaurants in Winston-Salem.
[00:30:37]
Which was something that the chef's there hadn't yet seen like other parts of the country, like New York and New England and California like that. That wasn't a new thing. But in North Carolina, particularly where we were that was something, everyone had seen the cut micro greens. But to bring in a fresh Living tray that a chef could play with and baby and keep around, and that was a new experience for people.
[00:31:09]
So that was really great to see. And so we started with restaurants, restaurants still make up about 70% of our business. We do the farmer's market which actually helps drive a lot of restaurant business too. People like to connect and see where their food comes from. So if we had a product at the farmer's market, people would come up and be like, I saw that at such and such restaurant.
[00:31:35]
Was that you? Do you sell to them and you can be like, yeah that's our product. Every time you eat at that restaurant, you're also supporting our business, and people are like, yeah!
>> Sarah Wilds: We're like ten miles outside.
>> Emma Hendel: Exactly, and that's actually why we wanted to expand and have a market in Davidson.
[00:31:56]
Because we've been coming down to Charlotte for the last couple years doing restaurant deliveries. So we wanted to have that connection with the community, and then also We're hoping to see that when our customers at the farmers market are going out to eat, they are able to tell the wait staff or the chef, yeah, I met Emma at the farmers market.
[00:32:22]
I’m really glad that you have their product in here. And so, we also work with a couple of small distributors in the area New Appalachia, and also Fresh List. And so, there's some customers that we have that I find out new ones every day. Because once you sell it to a distributor, you don't necessarily know where it ends up.
[00:32:52]
Even if it has your name on it.
>> Sarah Wilds: Yeah, so I've heard a little about Fresh List, but can you talk about New Appalachia?
>> Emma Hendel: So New Appalachia is a company that's actually based in the Asheville area. And so, they collect from small and medium sized growers from western, central, and all over North Carolina.
[00:33:19]
They also go in to South Carolina for fruit. And so, really, just bringing all sorts of flavors from the mountains to the Piedmont, and from the Piedmont all over the rest of North Carolina. And so, he's just picking up things from various producers that are in different little micro-climates.
[00:33:43]
And so, he was delivering bamboo shoots and things like all sorts of foraged items, rare items. And so, just taking the search off the plate of the chef and saying this is the 300 item product list that you can choose from this week, coming from all these different farms.
[00:34:09]
>> Sarah Wilds: That's cool.
>> Sarah Wilds: So how do you, obviously the business is owned by you and your husband and you have a few full-time employees. How do you find those employees? Are they all locals from North Carolina?
>> Emma Hendel: All of our employees right now live and have their own lives in Winston-Salem and Kernersville, which is another little nearby town.
[00:34:37]
Previously, we have employed people that have come and relocated. And this year, we were like we want all local employees. Because we don't have housing, and we felt it was difficult to have people come and relocate. Because it's well, how do you jump into a new city life, and maybe it hadn't really seemed to work out.
[00:35:15]
But we found that we'll put ads on Craigslist or Indeed. Actually, we get a lot of employees through word of mouth. And so, we haven't had trouble finding employees yet, and hopefully we won't. A lot of time, people that work on the farm work on farms anywhere. They might be just out of college, or on summer vacation from college, or just out of high school.
[00:35:54]
So young people. And so, most of the time, people that are being employed by farms aren't necessarily going to spend the rest of their life working at a farm. So what we are striving towards right now is paying people more, giving people more responsibility. And trying to figure out how do we retain people for longer than just a season or a year, and how do they continue to grow with us so that we can have some institutional memory.
[00:36:27]
>> Emma Hendel: But that might be the way to go. We might find out that that's not how it works. But we're willing to give it a try. But most farms that we know of that we've worked for that we have contact with, go with the internship model. Sort of like turn and burn sort of deal where it's like maybe about the experience for the person as opposed to the success of the farm.
[00:37:00]
>> Sarah Wilds: So I know at least a few firms around here in the Concord area use the H2A labor force. But you said you don't have housing, and I know that's part of the program.
>> Emma Hendel: In the future we might have housing, and that could be a route that we go you.
[00:37:19]
There's also certain, it's also I feel like there's this misconception around the guest worker program. They are compensated at a very good hourly rate, which is more than we pay some of our employees. And so it's-
>> Sarah Wilds: It's an internship model?
>> Emma Hendel: Right, and so, that is perhaps a more expensive way to import somebody, but those people that are a part of this program, they are here to work, they are here to make money, and that's what they're here to do.
[00:37:57]
So you're going to get what you pay for essentially.
>> Sarah Wilds: Yeah, I talked to another farmer and he's his farm has been employing H2A people.
>> Emma Hendel: Did you talk to Barbee Farms?
>> Sarah Wilds: Yes.
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, did you talk with Brent or you talk with his dad?
>> Sarah Wilds: Tommy.
[00:38:15]
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, Tommy.
>> Sarah Wilds: He's so sweet. But yeah, he had nothing but good things to say about the program.
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah.
>> Sarah Wilds: And he said basically the same thing. They come and they have one mission. They wanna work, and so they have to satisfy you.
>> Emma Hendel: Exactly
>> Sarah Wilds: And you show them once, and they do it.
[00:38:32]
>> Emma Hendel: And it's not, I mean, like a lot of times it's not about they may have seen it done a different way. Doesn't matter. This is what you want, this is what I will do sorta deal. And I've worked around, not on a crew that has guest workers, but nearby farms with guest workers.
[00:39:01]
They are getting stuff down. They're like whoa. [LAUGH]
>> Sarah Wilds: Yeah, they don't mess around.
>> Sarah Wilds: So I guess sort of moving away, I guess, from the nitty-gritty of the farm.
>> Sarah Wilds: Are there any challenges that you face as a woman, or you have seen faced by women in general as farmers?
[00:39:28]
>> Emma Hendel: Me personally, nothing really beyond surface stuff. Or maybe some machismo or whatever where it's like you grew that, really? You're doing that, or you're driving that big truck? Or how did you do that, where's your husband? Blah, blah, blah. Just stuff like that. But I mean, honestly, for me personally, no.
[00:39:56]
Just beyond maybe a verbal questioning, but nothing ever where it's like a complete road block or like we're not going to give you a loan because you're A woman or we're not going to talk to you or let you into this space because you're a woman.
>> Sarah Wilds: Mm-hm, well, that's good.
[00:40:18]
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah.
>> Sarah Wilds: Glad to hear that.
>> Sarah Wilds: What about social media? So I know your farm has an Instagram and you send out newsletters. How important is that to your market? Your marketing?
>> Emma Hendel: That's a good question. I don't actually know for sure because we've always had the social media aspect.
[00:40:46]
Like it didn't really exist without it. I started doing the newsletter last year. And I actually think that that has really improved community engagement. I think it gives people a sense of ownership over the products that they're purchasing because they know what's going on with the farm in that week.
[00:41:07]
With Instagram and stuff, you can get a lot of inspiration from other farms. There's also, I think there's also a lot of anxiety that can come with putting stuff out there. And I would say 90% of stuff is positive. But that 10% stuff where people might message you, or people might ask a question and be upset that you don't want to share your proprietary knowledge.
[00:41:39]
Or something like that where it's like, you know it's really great that you're asking me a question but I think that you need to pay me for the answer. Like that can spark some really negative feelings in people. I mean we share a lot online, maybe even what some people would say are secrets.
[00:42:02]
Some people are like you share too much, some people are like you don't share enough. We really try and focus on the positive with what we share. And that is actually something that also draws criticism where people are like everything always looks so great at your farm, and there's never any rain, and you never talk about any of the problems.
[00:42:26]
But that's not what we're trying to share. We're not trying to share a pity story. We're not trying to share negative things, and that's not what our mission is on Instagram or on Facebook or whatever. But I think that there's a disconnect where people don't, sometimes people don't seem to remember that it's not the whole story.
[00:42:58]
And, so even if you might know that, on my social media I don't share every, well some people do share everything. But if you're on my social media I don't share everything. But sometimes people can forget to apply that other people's sharing on social media. So it's like maybe I don't wanna share that or maybe that's not what I want this page to focus on.
[00:43:22]
And so that 10% of people that might get catty, or might say weird things, or just might leave a comment where it's like, eff you, or something like that. A comment that we get a lot on social media is about use of plastic or whatever. And I'm like you're making this comment on a device with rare earth materials, like I don't think that we need to go there everybody.
[00:43:56]
>> Sarah Wilds: Yeah, a little plastic [INAUDIBLE]
>> Emma Hendel: I mean the plastic is what is enabling a lot of small farmers to do really great things. And so there is the argument of you're going to buy produce in the grocery store. That produce was produced using plastic, it's packaged in plastic.
[00:44:18]
But the difference between the produce in the grocery store and the produce that you're getting from your local farmer be it at the same grocery store, a farmers market or restaurant is yes, plastic was used. But a whole ton of fossil fuels weren't. And say some things like flown from California or driven from California.
[00:44:41]
Or even coming from Chile or wherever. I think it can be hard to sort of step back, because there is a crisis going on. But it needs to be more about coming together as opposed to trying to call people out or whataboutism. So there has to be a balance and you have to remember behind every action there’s a reason and a story and a journey that led people there to take it.
[00:45:16]
>> Sarah Wilds: And one small farm in one small location versus major corporations.
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, it's gonna take corporations, governments, small farms and the individuals all working together. It can't just be like I feel called to tell everybody how they are living life wrong. In my opinion that's not going to inspire the change that we need.
[00:45:52]
>> Sarah Wilds: It's interesting sort of these call out cultures affecting farms but-
>> Emma Hendel: I would say, I think that's sort of again like an 80-20 sort of deal. Where it's 80% of people are going to listen to your story and form their own opinions. 20% of people are already going to have their opinions formed and there's not going to be much change to that opinion.
[00:46:20]
>> Sarah Wilds: And they're just going to let everybody know regardless of who's sort of on the end.
>> Emma Hendel: That's right.
>> Sarah Wilds: The other end?
>> Emma Hendel: Right.
>> Sarah Wilds: Yeah.
>> Emma Hendel: Because that's more about a personal need to do that sorta thing for your own improvement of your self-image. [LAUGH]
>> Sarah Wilds: Or whatever is going on.
[00:46:40]
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah.
>> Sarah Wilds: With that person.
>> Sarah Wilds: So what are those some other organisations that you partner with? I know you were saying that you were talking with Whole Foods or working with Whole Foods?
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, we work with Lowe's foods, we work with Barbee Farms under Lowes food CSA program.
[00:46:59]
We also [COUGH] we're trying to form a relationship with Whole Foods, we're in our local Lowe's Foods on the shelf there. We work with Organic Harvest, which is a small grocery store in Charlotte. We also work with Let it Grow Produce and Colony Urban Farms store in Winston and Salem.
[00:47:25]
Those are two little local grocery stores that sell local products. We also, I'm a member of the Piedmont Culinary Guild. We're members of Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. And I'm actually a member of a Piedmont Triad Food Council. Which is just forming this year and so those are organizations that we work with.
[00:48:00]
>> Sarah Wilds: And how did you sort of get started with all these organizations? Like a lot of word of mouth, sort of knowing people who connected you or?
>> Emma Hendel: Well CFSA was Our friend Ben and so we became members of CFSA and they actually gave us a grant to pay for our first year GAP certification.
[00:48:23]
And they offered, as part of our membership we had access to consultation about getting a template for GAP's paperwork. Having a great woman named Patricia actually came out and looked at our farm and said, these are the changes that you need to make. And so that's a great organization.
[00:48:45]
They also have a conference every year for farmers that's usually held in Durham, and so that's a great way to connect. Piedmont Culinary Guild I got involved with because of our relationship with chefs and other food and beverage industry members. And so that they also have a conference, a symposium every year that's held in Johnson & Wales, the culinary school.
[00:49:14]
And so I'm a part of that organisation to stay in touch on a deeper level with our customers. And then also staying up to date on what's going on in the food and beverage world. And the food policy council, I actually, I don't know who necessarily invited me to that, but that was something that I go invited to do.
[00:49:45]
So I'm excited to see what direction we're going to go with that.
>> Sarah Wilds: Well, just sort of a wrap up question. Where do you see sort of the future of your farm now that you've hit that five year or about to hit that five year mark?
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah, so I would eventually, we're in the process of hopefully purchasing the farm that we lease now.
[00:50:13]
And in the future I would love to purchase some more rural land. And I would love to hand over management of that farm to another farm manager. And design a whole new project in the future, like maybe we'll grow acres and acres or broccoli, or maybe, who knows what we'll do.
[00:50:40]
And maybe even having our farm now becoming like a model farm or an incubator farm, or maybe an agrotourism farm, just because of its location. And so that's maybe one direction it could go. It could also turn in, we're still not quite done developing that property in terms of how we're gonna use it for farms.
[00:51:12]
Maybe we put in a tree nursery or maybe we put in some cane fruit, or there's a little bit more that we could do there. One thing that we've talked about doing with our land that is unoccupied right now is doing a more serious composting effort. And so we create a lot of compost, which we manage and reuse for various farm things, because we're doing the microgreens, and that's in trays.
[00:51:49]
And then once we use that we dump it into a compost pile and compost it. Anyways, enlarging a composting effort, perhaps even taking in materials from other places maybe, but that presents its own complication because it's difficult to figure out what you're taking in and you don't want.
[00:52:16]
But the compost that we generate, we know what it is, cuz we use a lot of potting soil. And so a lot of that great organic matter is really good to put back or used to build new growing areas. So that's one thing. So starting new projects, buying more land, growing more food, that's what I wanna do.
[00:52:42]
>> Sarah Wilds: All right, sound like a good goal.
>> Emma Hendel: Yeah.
>> Sarah Wilds: Right, well, thank you so much for your time.
>> Emma Hendel: You're welcome.
Food Connection
Mendy Godman, Sue Hawes, and Kim Aprill founded the Charlotte chapter of Food Connection in September 2018. Prior to beginning Food Connection, Godman worked in sales, Hawes in the nonprofit sector, and Aprill was a social worker. Hawes attended Northeastern University and Aprill completed her Masters of Social Work at the University of Buffalo. The trio knew each other prior to establishing Food Connection; their children attended the same preschool. Kim, inspired to act by her research into food insecurity in the Charlotte area, posted a FaceBook status asking if anyone would be interesting in her idea of establishing an organization dedicated to distributing food to those in need in the Charlotte area. Godman and Hawes jumped on board, and with the help of other NC Food Connection chapters, opened the operation in Charlotte. Since coming to fruition, Food Connection has rescued and delivered over 100,00 fresh meals to people in need. Godman, Hawes, and Aprill are currently focused on bringing in new donors and expanding their operations to reach more people in the Charlotte area.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:07 | Opening remarks and introductions |
| 0:05:20 | How Mendy, Sue, and Kim became friends |
| 0:07:18 | The history of Food Connection and the creation of the Charlotte chapter |
| 0:13:24 | How Food Connection functions |
| 0:15:22 | Kim shares story about Saint John's and how Food Connection reevaluates its programs regularly |
| 0:18:29 | Meals are delivered to recipients once a week |
| 0:19:52 | Sanitation practices, how the food is packaged, how food is stored |
| 0:25:16 | The clientele/areas in Charlotte Food Connection serves |
| 0:28:17 | Volunteers, Food Connection's community partners, food distribution network in Charlotte |
| 0:35:02 | Food waste, how Food Connection reduces food waste |
| 0:38:08 | Food Connection's partners and connecting Charlotteans who want to help with other nonprofits |
| 0:41:18 | Donor and recipient eligibility criteria |
| 0:42:27 | Good Samaritan Law, legality of food distribution |
| 0:45:29 | Resistance from donors and recipients about getting involved |
| 0:48:20 | Spreading the word about Food Connection, concluding thoughts |
[00:00:07]
>> [MUSIC]
[00:00:14]
>> Speaker 1: Today is Wednesday, March 27th, at 10 o'clock in the morning. My name is Rachel McMahon, and today I will be interviewing Mindy Goddman, Sue Paws, and April-
>> Speaker 2: Kim April.
>> Speaker 1: Kim April, okay, threw me for a loop there, I'm sorry.
>> Speaker 2: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 1: All three are co-founders of the Charlotte Chapter of Food Connection.
[00:00:36]
This interview is part of the Queen's Garden Oral History Project, a project collecting oral histories of local Charlotte teens involved in food distribution, urban agriculture, and community gardens in the Charlotte Area. Food Connection is a non-profit organization that collects surplus fresh meals from restaurants, caterers and institutions and community partners who feed those in need in order to reduce waste and ease the pain of immediate hunger.
[00:01:02]
Food Connection operates in Charlotte, North Carolina, Black Mountain, North Carolina, and Asheville, North Carolina. Thus far, Food Connection has rescued and delivered over 100,000 fresh meals, and delivered them to people in need. So first I'd like to begin with some basic questions. So if you could each go around and say your name, introduce yourself, where you grew up, how you got to Charlotte, how you got interested or involved in Food Connection.
[00:01:29]
>> Speaker 3: I'm Mindy Godwin. I'm actually from Spartanburg, South Carolina. After college I got a position doing Hospitality Management sales in Charlotte. So I moved here. Gosh, it's been 19 years since I've been in Charlotte, so I feel like a Charlotte team now. Coming from sales, I actually stopped working when I had my first child.
[00:01:53]
So I have been out of that corporate environment, gosh, for 13 years. And this past September, we kinda came together and realized there was a need in the city and we just wanted to do something about it. So we started researching and digging. Kim actually spearheaded the idea.
[00:02:10]
And Sue and I just kind of jumped on board cuz it sounded awesome. And so we just want a connection, and we go into institutions of caterers, restaurants, and rescue their unused food. Previously they were just throwing this food in the trash. And then we did look at some numbers.
[00:02:29]
40% of all waste in the US is food waste, and that blows our mind. And we even dug deeper and realized one in three families in Mecklenburg County are food insecure. So it just seemed like a normal thing, why are we not doing this? Why is this not happening in the city besides Charlotte?
[00:02:49]
So we just decided to make it our mission and start rescuing food and getting it to those in need.
>> Speaker 1: Okay, who's next?
>> Speaker 4: My name is Sue Hawes. I moved here from Boston in 2004. So I've been here for quite a while now. I was in the marketing world and my previous job before Food Connection was doing marketing for a nonprofit.
[00:03:11]
So I knew I wanted to stay in the nonprofit world. And when I heard about this opportunity, it was something I was very much interested in. I've helped at a lot of different nonprofits, volunteering in Charlotte, and I knew there was such a need. And because there is so much food waste, there is no reason for people in Charlotte to not have three meals a day.
[00:03:36]
>> Speaker 2: I am Kim April, and I am from Buffalo, New York, originally. I moved to Charlotte in 2001, actually September 2001, right before 9/11. I have a master's in social work, so when I graduated from graduate school I just moved to Charlotte. No job yet, but I wanted to be in warmer weather basically.
[00:04:01]
And so yeah, so I did social work, counseling and case management with children for a long time, until I had my two children. And then I was a stay at home mom for a little while and then I started my own business doing sort of sensory play with children.
[00:04:25]
And then I'd just been searching for a few years. I was searching for my niche that I really want to be in. And my husband took a trip to California and came back and talked about how some of the restaurants there have these stickers in the window that said, we are a 0% food waste restaurant.
[00:04:47]
So he got back and told me about that, and that's just what got me thinking about food waste. I honestly hadn't really thought about it that much before, to tell you the truth. But I talked to Mindy and Sue. We also started doing research and the statistics were very sad.
[00:05:09]
So yeah, and now I just feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing and my calling.
>> Speaker 1: That's sweet. So how did the three of you get connected? Were you friends before Food Connection or how did this partnership kind of begin?
>> Speaker 4: Kind of a crazy story, but all of our kids went to the same preschool.
[00:05:30]
So I knew Kim in passing. We were acquaintances, I would say.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah.
>> Speaker 4: Mindy and I were friends because our littlests were boyfriend and girlfriend.
>> Speaker 2: At the age of two.
>> Speaker 4: At the age of two? So Mindy and I were friends, and Kim and Mindy were friends..
[00:05:50]
And one day Kim posted on Facebook about this great idea. And I had commented and was very serious, but I didn't know if she I was serious at the time. Just saying Mindy and I wanted to help out with this. And then I think it was just a few days later we met.
[00:06:09]
We were doing some brainstorming of ideas, of what we could call this nonprofit. And I had come up with the name Food Connection. So I actually went online to purchase the domain, so we could start our own website, nonprofit, get our 501(c)(3) paperwork done. And we came across a place in Asheville called Food Connection.
[00:06:31]
So we figured why reinvent the wheel? We went up to Asheville to meet the director. Her name is Flory. And we had a great meeting. And we were aligned on the same mission. So that's sort of how it took off. And so rather than spending time creating a new nonprofit, we wanted to just become our own chapter, so that we could just start helping people quicker and fulfilling the need quicker.
[00:07:01]
>> [BLANK AUDIO]
>> Speaker 1: That's awesome.
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a pretty wild story.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, Facebook, it's interesting how social media connects us.
>> Speaker 4: Yes, yes, it is.
>> Speaker 2: It can be great and also not so great. Definitely good things.
>> Speaker 1: Really, though. So I sent Mindy a questionnaire prior to this interview, and on the sheet you answered that the Charlotte operation began in September 2018.
[00:07:27]
So roughly six to seven months ago. And I just have some basic questions about Food Connection in general. So is Food Connection specific to North Carolina or is it part of a larger nationwide organization?
>> Speaker 4: Well, it was created in Asheville. They created it in Asheville and then.
[00:07:52]
I wish I could give you more specifics, exactly when, but then they launched a Black Mountain Chapter. So when Sue had Googled the domain name, we just realized that there was already a Food Connection going on. And it wasn't in Washington Or California was in our state two and a half three hours away, so it just made sense.
[00:08:12]
So right now it's kinda Statewide thing, but I'm pretty sure the goal is to expand as big and as far away as we can get just because it makes sense.
>> Speaker 2: When we are doing our research, there are a lot of other organizations in the country, that aren't Food Connection but are doing a similar thing.
[00:08:33]
So we have found other organizations out there in big cities mostly, that do the same kinda food recipe, but just Food Connection is just in North Carolina right now.
>> Speaker 1: Sure.
>> Speaker 2: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 1: Does the Charlotte chapter have contact with the black mountain in Asheville chapters? Do you guys do regular meetings or events or what is that relationship like?
[00:08:58]
>> Speaker 3: We're all very close, everyone we've met, they are just so sweet and they have the biggest hearts. So we're actually going there next for a couple days for an event they're putting on so we can support them. They have board meetings once a month that we try to be a part of with weekly calls, we're very much a a big team.
[00:09:19]
>> Speaker 1: That's great, and Mandy, you mentioned that one in three families in Mecklenburg County are food insecure? What, when you got interested in Food Connection and this need for food, this hunger, what was some of the research that you were looking at? Was it the Chutti Study for example, or how did you find this information?
[00:09:48]
Or what kind of information were you looking at?
>> Speaker 4: We weren't specific to families or children, we were just doing research. For a couple of years a volunteer to Urban Ministries serving in the soup kitchen on Mondays. And when I realized that they serve 300 trades every day at lunch, and that's not including all the other organizations, the rescue mission that serve.
[00:10:10]
That's just a tiny population. So you know there was a need, because then you think about all the people who weren't able to make it to these shelters. All of our churches used to do room in the Inn. And actually, you can just drive down the street, and you become aware of how much there is a need.
[00:10:30]
At my children's school, I've also volunteered, teared up buildings elementary until they merged. On Fridays, they do these little red backpacks, and so these children go home with foods. And there's Pop Tarts and crackers and a box of mac and cheese, which is great to fill their tummies, but it's processed box, cans.
[00:10:47]
So it really isn't the most nutritious. And when I went to second heart Harvest to pick up these bags one time, and I picked up 100 for this tiny school. And as you're delivering them, you're realizing that 50% of the class are getting these bags, it's absolutely heartbreaking.
[00:11:05]
So we researched and did more digging, but you can just look around, and it is in your face. So those who are oblivious or aren't aware just really aren't looking up because anywhere you go in our city,there are and everyone has their different opinions. But there are people holding signs or you see them sleeping and these encampments under bridges, so there's just hungry people.
[00:11:29]
Not to mention these communities that are food deserts and there are no grocery stores right within walking distance, or they're taking three buses. So that was eye opening because I think sometimes we take for granted. I have a hair cedar and a public across the street half a mile from my house.
[00:11:47]
So of course that's that ego-centric mindset that everyone has what I have, but they don't. So when you started rally we read some articles about the food deserts, and realized how many different places and ways these families were having to go just to get groceries from a grocery store.
[00:12:04]
And that's not good wholesome fresh produce for nutritious meals, they're buying what they can afford. I'm sorry, I keep breaking up.
>> Speaker 1: No.
>> Speaker 4: But even when you think about if I go to the grocery store, I bought grapes one time. And a lot of times, I hate to say this out loud, but I will take some out cuz they rang it up as $17.00 for buying crisps.
[00:12:24]
That I'm forcing my kids to eat and whenever I saw that I go, good. But Masha I didn't want to say it cuz you know what? Let me just put this back. So I paid for them but I can go to McDonald's and get a double cheeseburger for a dollar.
[00:12:37]
And when you open that double cheeseburger all you see is grease and fat coming out, but it's what people can afford. I can't even get into the whole other topic of healthcare and how we're taking care of our bodies and obesity. Cuz we don't know until you're in that position what you do to survive.
[00:12:54]
But there are families doing this,and so I think our mission is to get fresh, nutritious, good, viable food into these families and children's tummies. And because why not? Eating an healthy nutritious meal shouldn't determine how much you have in bank account. It's a human right living in this world we should all have that right.
[00:13:20]
>> Speaker 1: My gosh no please the more the better I love it So,
>> Speaker 1: Food Connection receives surplus food from this healthy, nutritious food from food donors, and then delivers it to the community partners, who then transport it to the recipients, correct?
>> Speaker 3: Sort of, so we have several different donors, the bigger ones are large universities.
[00:13:52]
So Johnston and Wales for example we would pick up once a week from there, and we transport the food ourselves to other nonprofit in need. So we take it from A to B, which is really exciting to load our trunks and see how much food there is and what kind of food.
[00:14:11]
And then give it to the recipients who are, they're so grateful and so thankful and it's really something special to be a part of, it's a great feeling.
>> Speaker 2: All our recipients for now thus far places where people actually resides. So we are taking directly to them .The non profit doesn't to have then distribute it out another lace.
[00:14:38]
The people that we are feeding actually lives in that place where we are giving them the the food.
>> Speaker 1: Okay, so how much shelter-
>> Speaker 3: We have transition shelters, yes, the transition housing. Ken has some great stories of one of our recipients. We do take to Salvation Army Center of Hope, so the women and children shelter.
[00:14:59]
And that's probably the largest one, but then we have a lot of smaller other partners. We actually recently started taking food to a place called Camille's House. And it's a house on Clayton road with just three bedrooms, and so she takes women and children, so we go from these small places to these huge places.
[00:15:18]
But Kim really should share about St. John's Place, that's amazing.
>> Speaker 2: So we have St. John's, that's a transitional regional housing with supportive housing communities. And I think there's 34 small apartments there. And the people who live there just have a tiny refrigerator, they don't have a full kitchen.
[00:15:38]
And so every other day of the week, they're responsible for buying their own food, and making it on a very limited income usually. [COUGH]. So yeah, I go there, they know that I'm gonna arrive Thursdays at around 3 PM. And find out people start coming out of their apartments to help me get out of the car, and they're so excited when they see the food.
[00:16:04]
They're like, do you have the food? And they've just been so pleased with the food and they all helped me. And we've recently created a survey on Survey Monkey for recipients to make sure that everybody was enjoying the food and that it's not going to waste there as well.
[00:16:21]
And the comment that I received from one of the social workers there was that day, that's probably the only full meal the residents there eat all week, cuz they're just doing what they can to survive the other days. So we saw that, and we thought, okay, let's find [LAUGH] another donor that maybe we can bring them food twice a week instead of once a week, just because they're so grateful and they really need it.
[00:16:53]
So, yeah.
>> Speaker 1: That's sweet, that's tough to see. It must be difficult sometimes. So for that location, you delivered food twice a week?
>> Speaker 2: Well, we talked about starting to do that if we can. We're not in the position yet to be able to do that. So right now we're still just once a week but we have a new donor that's probably gonna be starting in the next couple of weeks.
[00:17:19]
So we might be able to start bringing them stuff twice a week. I don't know. We're just doing our best to distribute it around to [LAUGH] the most needy people. So we're also focused on some more recipients that we might start with. It's all a process, and we kind of reevaluate every month or so where the food is going.
[00:17:47]
Is that the best fit for the donor and the recipient? The kinds of food we're getting, are those the kinds of things that those people will eat at the recipient location? Cuz sometimes the food, well actually, we've gotten all pretty standard food. But if you got something that people weren't familiar with, that they didn't grow up eating, we would just worry that that would then go to waste a little bit, too.
[00:18:13]
So we're constantly reevaluating to see if everything is the best fit and if we can get the food there as quickly as possible so the locations have to match up and things like that.
>> Speaker 1: So do all the recipient receive meals once a week. Is that pretty standard?
[00:18:35]
>> Speaker 3: That's pretty standard right now.
>> Speaker 1: Right now? I'm assuming there's plans to expand.
>> Speaker 3: Yes, that is our goal. We tried to start small so that we could get a feel and figure out how it all works and who's in need and who's donating. So we've kinda gotten it down to the science at this point, with what we have.
[00:18:55]
So our next step is reaching out and grabbing more donors. And as we get more donors, we need more recipients, and sometimes it's hard to find. In the beginning, we had a lot of resistance from recipients. No, we can't take your food, we have X, Y, and Z standards.
[00:19:11]
And we just had to overcome those obstacles, and in same way we had resistance from donors. There's lots that they were worried about, liability or somebody getting sick. So in the beginning, and we're gonna start facing this the more we grow and the more we do is overcoming the obstacles of why people automatically say no.
[00:19:28]
But when you talk about food, sometimes it's kind of tainted. It's no, someone's going to get sick. But you know what, if you're hungry, you're gonna eat the food. And if you're willing to serve this food to your clients and to your students, then I'm pretty sure it's good food.
[00:19:43]
As long as it's prepared in good faith, we're able to distribute it to others in need.
>> Speaker 1: And are there, I don't want to say sanitation practices, but are there any measures to ensure that that food is prepared properly, or stored properly, or maintained so that it preserves the quality when it gets from A to B?
[00:20:07]
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, so at the university, if it's food that's been out in the buffet and it's had a sneeze guard on it. And so the excess food is then stored in the cooler until we're able to come pick it up, because we need to make sure everything is the right temperature before we take it and give it to the recipients.
[00:20:28]
So there are a few measures in place that have to be followed in order for us to be able to accept the food.
>> Speaker 2: It also has to be dated with the date that the food was prepared and labeled with what's inside. And we try to have everything less than three days old, three days old or less.
[00:20:53]
So we don't really have anything that would be a week old, let's say. So usually if the university starts collecting the food on a Monday, we would pick it up on Wednesday or Thursday, so usually about an average of two or three days old.
>> Speaker 1: Right, and how was this food packaged once its,
[00:21:15]
>> Speaker 1: I guess obtained from these institutions. Cuz I know just from my experience of friendship trays, then again they prepare it themselves but they have special cartons and a sealing type of plastic machine. So what does that transport container look like?
>> Speaker 3: They kind of remind you of to catering trays.
[00:21:40]
So they're these big foil pans with lids that are tightly sealed. So as long as it is behind a sneeze guard and kept warm, I wish I could tell you the certain temperature.
>> Speaker 1: That's okay [LAUGH].
>> Speaker 3: As long as it goes straight from there to the pans to cold storage.
[00:21:53]
Now, they can't take it from the hot bar and leave it on the counter for two hours, it's kind of an immediate process. So it's just actually large foil trays with tightly covered lids. And then it's put in the cold storage and we just pick it up and we have to go from point A straight to B.
[00:22:11]
We can't ride around with it in our car, take it home, sit in our fridge. It's just kind of a smooth process.
>> Speaker 1: And where do you store that because, if I remember correctly, we're meeting here, at Playbook because you guys don't have a central location. So do you have freezers?
[00:22:27]
I'm assuming you have to have freezer space, somewhere. So where is that?
>> Speaker 3: Well, I'm sorry-
>> Speaker 2: No, we don't, yet. That is one of our goals. But the donors store everything for us cuz they're such large operations, large kitchens with the walk-in freezers and refrigerators. So they keep it stored there for us until we come get it.
[00:22:50]
And then they just kinda roll it out on one of those rolling carts, when they see us come in the kitchen. And so we haven't had that yet, that we've had to have cold storage, but we do hope to get it. So that if a caterer for example has food leftover at 11 o'clock at night, and we can't bring it somewhere right away, we can still take it and put it in our own storage, and then bring it the next day.
[00:23:16]
We're not at that point yet but we hope to be, yeah.
>> Speaker 1: And so when the food is delivered, is it still in those large containers or are they individually packaged?
>> Speaker 3: No, they are still in the large containers. So institutions are taking it right from their cold storage, put it in our car, and most of our deliveries are within 10, 20 minutes.
[00:23:40]
So we're not driving an hour away. And we take it straight there and they either put it in their cold storage or it's served immediately, either reheated or the recipients or the residents come and take the food to their rooms to cook, warm up.
>> Speaker 2: Right, that's the only, St. John's Place, where I was talking about going on Thursdays.
[00:24:05]
We provided the social workers there up front with a lot of Tupperware. So what they do is we bring it to the office and immediately the social workers dish it out into individual tupperware containers and then basically the residents kind of line up at the door and they hand it out to them and then they have to bring their tupperware back the next Thursday so that it can be reused.
[00:24:30]
But aside from them, everybody else basically keeps it in the aluminum pans and then either just dishes it out from there, or whatever they, a lot of times supplement the meal they're already making with some of our food, because we never know exactly how much we're going to get.
[00:24:48]
So places like Salvation Army Center of Hope will take any amount we can give them. So they might already be making dinner that night and they might say, okay, we gave you a lot of macaroni and cheese, we can add this in to what we're currently making or else refrigerate it for the next day and add them to the lunch the next day.
[00:25:10]
They all do it a little bit differently. So, yeah.
>> Speaker 1: So you never really know when you're going to an institution or a caterer how much food you're going to get? So, I'm just wondering how do you ensure that you distribute food amongst these different groups, I don't wanna say equally, but to ensure that they're all getting their meals if you're kind of up in the air guessing what you're going to get?
[00:25:43]
>> Speaker 2: So, when we start with a donor, we usually call it a trial period. Probably like a two week trial period. And they start seeing how much they're gonna have on average. We usually say that in order for us to come pick it up it has to be more than 50 pounds.
[00:26:00]
So we can kinda can assess the general situation and then each week we come up with an average of how much they'll give us. And then, if we need to switch the recipient to a different nonprofit based on how much that donor is giving us or the type of food, we'll just reassess and switch it up.
[00:26:25]
But we wouldn't come pick up like ten pounds, for example. And all the donors pretty much know that. They're going to put everything into these aluminum pans for us. I would say our average maybe is, would you say 70 pounds? That's what I was thinking, yes. Probably an average of 70 pounds.
[00:26:44]
And so like I said most of the recipients for now are happy with any amount of food. They're not like, okay, it's less than a hundred pounds, we don't want it, because that can't feed everybody. They're just happy to get whatever we bring them usually.
>> Speaker 1: Right, and so, the food insecure clientele, how far reaching are these recipients?
[00:27:10]
Is it only in the south part of town or is it?
>> Speaker 4: We're trying just to stay in Charlotte, we were picking up in Gastonia and Belmont. And actually, what worked out really well was we handed off the food from Belmont Abbey to a local woman, who is picking it up there for us and distributing close by.
[00:27:33]
Because we also want to be environmentally conscious of what we're doing, and so we don't want to be wasting all of this gas to drive 45 minutes away, if there's somebody locally that can do that for us. So I would say we're trying to stay within a 20-mile range.
[00:27:49]
>> Speaker 1: And do you have any trouble reaching any specific areas within that 20-mile range?
>> Speaker 4: We haven't yet, no. And as we continue to grow will have more volunteers that will be helping to drive and distribute the food.
>> Speaker 1: Sorry I'm just looking at my questions.
>> Speaker 4: That's okay, go ahead.
[00:28:14]
>> Speaker 1: Speaking of volunteers that I know I do have questions about that, but how many volunteers do you have? And how do you recruit volunteers or get the word out about Food Connection since you are a relatively new organization in this area?
>> Speaker 4: So we had a big launch party, was that three weeks ago now?
[00:28:40]
Three or four weeks ago. So when people entered we had a big signup sheet, asking if people would like to volunteer. So we had maybe 12 people sign up for that. We had a few people contact us through social media that they heard about us. So we've had one volunteer and they've been doing some research for us on new donors and creating a spreadsheet.
[00:29:05]
We had another volunteer who baked cookies for us for an event. There's just so many ways that they can get involved and so we don't wanna turn anybody away if they don't feel like driving and dropping off food. So we can find something for everybody.
>> Speaker 1: Now do you have drivers on a regular basis?
[00:29:28]
>> Speaker 5: I just wanna say hi, thanks for all you guys are doing.
>> Speaker 4: Hi!
>> Speaker 5: I follow you on Facebook.
>> Speaker 4: Thank you!
>> Speaker 2: Thank you.
>> Speaker 5: See you.
>> Speaker 1: I guess that's proof of the social media reach right there.
>> Speaker 2: So right now we we haven't had a need for drivers yet because the three of us have been able to handle the pickups and deliveries so far.
[00:29:55]
But we are about to start using volunteers for that. So we are at that point, we have a volunteer list. And once we start, I believe with this new donor we are going to create, probably a assign a genius for people to plug in the days and times that we need food picked up and delivered and see if people can fill in some of those for us so that we can start focusing on more growth and things like that.
[00:30:26]
>> Speaker 1: That's awesome.
>> Speaker 3: We also have on our website a link for anyone who wants to volunteer, so they can go and fill in the information and it automatically sends us an email. So then we can follow up with them. So there's lots of ways to get involved.
[00:30:42]
>> Speaker 1: Great. That's awesome. So the website, it displays the list of food donors, the recipients, the community partners, I think that the role of the donors and the recipients is kind of self explanatory but could you guys explain what the community partners do? Are they similar to donors or what does that mean?
[00:31:08]
>> Speaker 3: Some partners maybe donate financially, they allow us to use their space. There are so many other ways that they help. So they may not necessarily donate food but they support our mission and back us up.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, so, two examples I can think of are Town Brewing, that's where we had our launch party and they were great helping us get that started and letting us have a silent auction there.
[00:31:37]
And they were big supporters and then, what was the second one? And then Cataba Heights Baptist Church, that's the organization that has taken over our pickup from Belmont Abbey College. So they're picking up and delivering food to local organizations in Belmont or Gastonia. So we consider them a community partner cause they're not a donor or a recipient.
[00:32:02]
But they're helping us out.
>> Speaker 1: Right.
>> Speaker 2: Basically.
>> Speaker 4: Some of the other ones sort of help with networking. So there's Share Charlotte. Which is a nonprofit. And they sort of get together and share other nonprofits, if they have event coming up they'll share that, they offer different networking events, grant writing classes like that.
[00:32:27]
So also people that help us spread the word, that would be considered a community partner for us.
>> Speaker 1: Has it been hard to find those community partners since you guys are new?
>> Speaker 3: I've been honestly dumbfounded and amazed. There's not been on person that I have mentioned, either personally or at these events or networking opportunities, where when you tell them what you're doing, how can I support you?
[00:32:51]
What can I do? And a lot of people the first thing they say is, well I work full time but I would love to support you in any way because it makes sense. It's just a genius idea, that again, we can't really know until we're already doing it.
[00:33:03]
So I haven't encountered one person, when I explain to them what are our mission and our goal and how we're doing this, when they were like, that's never gonna work. What are you doing? Are you all crazy? So the community and those we have spoke with have been so supportive.
[00:33:18]
Just because it's a good thing that should have already been happening here actually.
>> Speaker 1: It's so nice to have that support.
>> Speaker 3: I heard an interesting fact the other day that they said if we took all of the food waste in America, so that 40%, and fed just the hungry with it, all of those hungry people would be getting 9,000 calories a day.
[00:33:42]
>> Speaker 1: That's incredible.
>> Speaker 3: So there's no reason for this to be happening.
>> Speaker 1: Well it's interesting you say that because when I interviewed Lucy Carter Bush she said it's not a problem of food, it's the problem of distribution because we have plenty of food to go around but it's getting it to those who need it.
[00:33:58]
>> Speaker 2: Right, exactly, yeah. So we always think, try to come to us before you do a canned goods drive or something like that. Try to see what's already made out there, what's already prepared that was gonna get thrown away.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah.
>> Speaker 2: By amazing chefs by the way [LAUGH]
[00:34:16]
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, this isn't food we're cooking.
>> Speaker 2: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 4: We're actually going on Monday to speak with the school just about little simple things they can do at home. Because it's not even that you have to go rescue hundreds and hundreds of pounds of food, it can start at home.
[00:34:34]
So if you're gonna have rice for dinner, you don't need to prepare a whole box of rice. So whatever you're gonna eat that night, if you don't eat it you save your leftovers, and there are other things like planning your meals out ahead so that you don't have food waste.
[00:34:53]
Even composting at home. There's just so many little things we can start with.
>> Speaker 1: Right, and so I actually have I have a question regarding that.
>> Speaker 4: Sure.
>> Speaker 1: So since you brought it up I'm gonna go off track a little bit and we can come back to the partners.
[00:35:08]
But so the reducing waste part is a unique component to Food Connection. And you are going to a school on Monday. So the waste reduction, reduce part, is that something that you guys regularly advocate or educate or is there any sort of outreach to teach the public about proper food waste practices, I suppose?
[00:35:36]
>> Speaker 4: I would say our number one goal right now is to be helping to feed the hungry and collect the surplus food. I think we're very passionate about teaching the younger generation about food waste and how we can help in the future. Right now there are just not enough hours in the day to do all of that.
[00:35:56]
But I would love to be speaking with more schools and educating people more on how we can reduce waste.
>> Speaker 2: I think an educational component is down the line somewhere once we're a little bit more established, putting together something like that would be something we'd love to do.
[00:36:15]
For now we just occasionally have social media posts that will give tips, tips for reducing food waste at home or statistics, little things here and there, but right now it's just social media. [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 4: And sometimes I think we're even creating new habits in our own children, or and it's just bringing awareness of things that you can do.
[00:36:38]
If we have leftovers my daughter and I make brown bag lunches, and we just go out and find them. There's people everywhere who are hungry, on the streets, or even when you go out to dinner, get that half a cheeseburger and fries you didn't eat and put it in a to go box.
[00:36:52]
There's always someone who's in need. And so if we start those practices with our kids, and it's just gonna catch on, and that's going to become their habit. They're not gonna know any different. So when they're our age, they're gonna do the same. When it's just starting that ball rolling.
[00:37:08]
>> Speaker 1: Right, right. So does Food Connection reduce waste in any other ways?
>> Speaker 1: On my questions I put such as environmentally friendly packaging, but that's not. But what are the other ways that you guys strive to reduce food waste in your day to day operations?
>> Speaker 4: Well it's funny you say that because that's one thing that we have really started to think of and become more aware of.
[00:37:33]
Right now we're transporting food and these big tin foil pans. And one of our donors had asked for us to use the metal ones, just wash them and bring them back. Because we're trying to end food waste, but how many now aluminum tins are we throwing or recycle?
[00:37:49]
So it's a cycle, and so we're trying to tackle one battle, but there is so many other ways that maybe we're creating waste in other ways that we're trying to figure out and create a solution to correct.
>> Speaker 1: Awesome. Okay, I just have a couple other questions about the community partners.
[00:38:08]
I'm gonna go back to that now if that's okay. So are you guys partnered with any other kind Meals on Wheels services in Charlotte or Mecklenburg County?
>> Speaker 2: Not yet, no, but we're always reaching out to find more partners all the time. And so tonight actually we are participating in an event at Free Range Brewing that's put on by the Food Policy Council.
[00:38:35]
And there will be some other organizations there who are tackling food waste in Charlotte. So we're always looking for how we can all partner together. So I know there's a woman there who has a mobile food truck, she rescues produce.
>> Speaker 1: Is it the Bulb?
>> Speaker 2: Yes.
>> Speaker 1: Yes, yeah.
[00:38:56]
>> Speaker 2: So I mean, we might try to talk to her about getting some of the food we get maybe onto her truck, where she would drive it to the food desert neighborhoods. We're just always looking for how we can all kind of work together.
>> Speaker 1: Right, and so how can, you mentioned the website for volunteers, but how can those interested in donating, receiving your partnering, get involved with Food Connection?
[00:39:20]
>> Speaker 4: There's a link for that too. Yes, we have links on the website for everything. Volunteers, donors, recipients, so they can go there and let us know. I guess a lot of our social media has really hit home [COUGH] sorry, and maybe a month ago I had an organization have a catering training event all week.
[00:39:39]
So they contacted me about picking up their food. [COUGH] sorry, I'm getting all choked up. And it was maybe total 200 pounds, it was a one time event, but because of social media they knew to reach out to us. So we just hope that we can start getting our name out there and more awareness so that when these opportunities happen they know who to contact, instead of throwing it in the trash.
[00:40:02]
And if we're not able to pick it up, it's kind of the point of our name, we wanna connect the dots. So contact us and we have a list, we'll be happy to tell you. Where to take it, or how to get it to those people. So, yeah, our website has lots of good stuff.
[00:40:16]
>> Speaker 2: I do love that connection component to it, because we work with several people. And while we're just focused on prepared foods, I've had people call and say, I have all this extra ice cream, I have all this extra milk and eggs, do you know anyone that can use it?
[00:40:31]
So we will have that person connect, so and so. Or we knew someone that had lots of extra fruits and vegetables so we put them in touch with the bulb. And so even though it's not part of our mission because it's not prepared foods, we love being able to connect other people in the community.
[00:40:49]
>> Speaker 1: I think that really speaks to the strength of the Charlotte community involved in food distribution that you touched on a little bit ago Mandy. The support seems like it's really there and that there's a lot of passionate people in this area about getting food to those who need it most.
[00:41:06]
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. And just the size of our city with the number of restaurants, universities, catering companies, there's just so much we can be doing.
>> Speaker 1: Right. And is there any eligibility criteria for donors or recipients?
>> Speaker 2: There is no eligibility criteria for recipients. We definitely don't want anything to hold anybody back and we don't want the food to go to waste.
[00:41:33]
So we don't have anything, you have to have below low a certain income level. No, there's nothing like that and for donors it's just basically can you package it the way we need to packaged? Can we get more than 50 pounds per week on average? Is the kitchen staff on board with doing it all for us?
[00:41:56]
And we weigh the food and then provide the donors with how many pounds they've donated for tax purposes. So sometimes it's good if they have a scale they can weigh the food on. It's not a criteria, we can weigh it ourselves too. But we like to just go in and talk to the kitchen staff and make sure everybody's on board and they understand the procedures.
[00:42:19]
They understand the labeling criteria and stuff like that. I'm going to switch gears on you guys, looking at the website, there's mention of a Good Samaritan law.
>> Speaker 1: So I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about the Good Samaritan law and kind of the legal aspects of food distribution?
[00:42:41]
>> Speaker 3: So in 1996, Bill Clinton passed the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act. And this is to protect restaurant's caterers, the donors in our case, from any liability. So as long as they prepare their food in a clean environment in good faith, then it can go to feed those in need.
[00:43:03]
And as long as again, it's prepared in good faith. And because of health regulations and the health department, all these places are or they're gonna get shut down. So we really couldn't go into Kim's house and take 25 pounds of her fried chicken to someone because just it's not up to code.
[00:43:22]
So thankfully, because of that legislation as long as it's prepared in good faith then it can go to feed those in need. But now we do have to take it straight from point A to B. And that's the only really regulation.
>> Speaker 1: Great.
>> Speaker 3: Or, I guess, protection for those companies, which are some of the obstacles because, in their mind, it's, no, it's a liability.
[00:43:44]
So we just kinda have to educate them and inform them that it's okay. You're feeding hungry people and they're hungry.
>> Speaker 1: Is that some of the resistance that you receive from donors that you mentioned earlier?
>> Speaker 2: Yes, there are various scared of liability.
>> Speaker 1: Really?
>> Speaker 2: I mean, it's understandable.
[00:44:00]
>> Speaker 3: Absolutely.
>> Speaker 2: There are a lot of [LAUGH] lawsuits out there. So we just again have to talk to them about that and make them feel comfortable with what they're doing. And then we like to provide updates with where the food is going to. Some stories about how the food was received, just to make them feel more comfortable.
[00:44:20]
And Johnson & Wales University has asked for an update on the amount of pounds donated per month. So that makes them feel good, and they like to report that.
>> Speaker 2: But yeah [LAUGH].
>> Speaker 4: We're really trying to give donors, there's no reason for them to say no. It's really a win-win cuz once we take that food off their hands, we're taking on the liability and it's tax right off for them.
[00:44:53]
So there's really, we are sometimes confused as why there is pushback. And I do think that the past has sort of scared people little bit away from it. And I think that's why we do have so much more food waste because of lawsuits that have happened in the past.
[00:45:13]
But if they're going through us, it's really a win-win and we're trying to make it as easy as possible for them.
>> Speaker 1: What's some of the resistance that you receive from the recipients?
>> Speaker 4: We've had a couple who go back but we have these standards and it has to be x, y and z.
[00:45:38]
But I just don't think they're quite aware of what we are bringing. We try to show pictures but literally until they get their first delivery they just have no idea. They just can't comprehend that this is what we are doing. So and I don't wanna name names but yeah, we've had a couple who just, they have enough, but you know they don't.
[00:45:59]
But again, it kinda goes back to what we were saying about our partners and working with other nonprofits. We have tried, in the beginning we worked with some larger nonprofits who feed the hungry and we came to realize they do have funding and they are getting resources. So our mission is to kinda get those underneath that scale.
[00:46:19]
Those who maybe aren't aware, or don't have funding, or they're doing it themselves. The supportive housing communities are a great example, a couple of the other ones that we picked up. They're not getting large checks from all these corporate sponsors and donors to prepare the food, it's them on their own.
[00:46:35]
So there are so many wonderful nonprofits who do feed the hungry. And if we need to, we can help supplement. But they're up and rolling, they're well-oiled machines. So we like to find the one or two single guys who really are hungry and maybe don't have any support or funding coming in.
[00:46:54]
>> Speaker 1: Right.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, I think maybe the recipients have a picture in their head maybe of soggy sandwiches or leftover, stale subs or something like that. So I think until they see what it is that we're bringing to them, it's hard for them to say yes and try to figure out what they're gonna do with this food every week.
[00:47:18]
One of our new recipients is a homeless shelter for teenagers. And so they feed them lunch every day. And there are some organizations that volunteer to bring in lunch. But if no one has volunteered for that day, the staff actually cooks at home to bring food in. And these are social workers, so these are people that are not making a lot of money, probably don't have the time to be cooking for these teenagers.
[00:47:44]
But they do it because they love them. And so we have been bringing in barbecue for them weekly. And I'm hoping to bring in more food to them so maybe two or three times a week. Because it's amazing what they're doing and they don't get a lot funding.
[00:48:03]
So we don't want people to be using their own money and their paycheck To feed these people that they're working with.
>> Speaker 1: Right, that is difficult. So, I told Mandy it would be a 45-minute interview and we're approaching actually 48 minutes. So in respect for y-all's time, because I know you're very busy woman, I just have some concluding questions.
[00:48:31]
What would like the public to know about Food Connection that you think they don't know, or is a misconception?
>> Speaker 2: That's a good question. Yeah [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 3: Good, we're here, maybe that's just creating awareness that there is an organization. That's willing to rescue food and feed those in need, because again, it hasn't happened here.
[00:49:00]
So people are oblivious that it's going on, I would just say maybe letting them know we are here, give us a call.
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, if they attend an event, or go to a restaurant. Or have something catered at their own home, just that they can call us with excess food.
[00:49:17]
I had a friend the other day that was working on a photoshoot and they had a ton of leftover food. And she called us and I was so glad she did, because the people that were also working on the set. Were like, I'd love to have your card when we have excess food from these other events.
[00:49:33]
So just helping spread the word about what we're doing, agreed?
>> Speaker 1: Agreed, [LAUGH] nothing further to add. And lastly is there anything else I should have asked you or sweet memories you'd like to tell me? Or anything in general, gonna kinda open the floor for concluding thoughts from you.
[00:49:55]
>> Speaker 3: I think when we first started talking about this idea, we had no idea how quickly it would take off. Like the number of donors and recipients. And everybody we've met, especially in the nonprofit world, they have the biggest hearts. And I've just loved meeting everyone, we just have the best conversations.
[00:50:16]
And it really gives you a lot of hope for our community that there are so many people out there trying to do great things. So it's made me love Charlotte even more which has been a really, really cool part of what we're doing.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say I realized and I'm a news junkie, and sometimes I have to walk away because it makes my blood pressure rise.
[00:50:39]
Sometimes when we get so zoomed in and only hear what they're feeding us. You think the world is going to hell in a handbasket. But I've realized, actually getting out and talking to people and helping those and see in the love and passion. There's a lot of good in this world, you know?
[00:50:54]
So I've actually turned off the news a lot, because I would rather an encounter and meet these people. And see the good that is spreading, lots of people out there being the change they wanna see. But sometimes you don't hear their stories. So it's actually given me more positive vibes about my children future, about our future.
[00:51:12]
Where we're going, and how we get here. That's so exactly true, I feel like I was starting to get hopeless. Yes, for we did that I was getting in a bad mood after reading the news. And I also similarly have turned off the news a little bit more and like this is the thing to do.
[00:51:34]
Get out there and do something to make the world a better place as opposed to just reading all the bad things that are happening. [LAUGH] and getting angry about them from your own health [LAUGH] like I was. But yeah, I agree, I mean I get chills during these meetings with these amazing people.
[00:51:52]
The world is a great place, I feel so much hope now, yeah, just what they said.
>> Speaker 4: And you always hear, I mean you have just heard it a few years back. Is that instead of judging or being quick to descend on people, I realize we all have a story to tell, if we will only listen.
[00:52:08]
And I think once you hear and know other stories, it makes you love them so much deeper. So it's like Kim, and I'm very emotional, so I try to keep it in check. But sometimes you're talking to these, and hearing these stories and my eyes are welling up.
[00:52:22]
And I'm thinking be professional, be professional, but it's like it just gives you more hope, there is so much good.
>> Speaker 1: That's one thing I can say from this class and interviewing the people that I have, like Lucy Bush Carter. She, in her interview, tugging at my heartstrings.
[00:52:41]
She was saying we have more responsibility and it's our duty to feed these people. Because there's plenty of food and it's getting it to them, and you can't just watch your neighbor suffer. And so getting to know people like you guys, I agree with the news, it's very sad.
[00:52:59]
But it is reassuring to know that there's people like you guys out there.
>> Speaker 2: I have a good story about meeting Lucy Bush Carter, that I was wearing that T-shirt, that Food Connection T-shirt. And I was waiting for my daughter to get out of theatre class at ImaginOn, and I guess she was sitting behind me.
[00:53:17]
So I just heard somebody say Food Connection, what is that, can you tell me about it? So I walked over to her table and started telling her, she’s like, well, I’m kinda in that business too. And I was like, really, where do you work? And she said Friendship Trays, so we started chatting, exchanged cards.
[00:53:34]
And it was just so funny, it was just because I basically forgot to change.
>> Speaker 4: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 2: We had to wear the T-shirt earlier in the day for something, and I would normally change, actually. But it was just meant to be, because it was seven o'clock at night and I was still wearing the T-shirt, and I was just, hi, [LAUGH].
[00:53:53]
It just was just a really cool meant to be kinda moment.
>> Speaker 1: Well, thank you guys so much for sitting down and talking to me, you guys have been such a pleasure.
>> Speaker 2: Thank you, I enjoyed that. Me, too.
>> Speaker 1: So much fun.