Cherry Hill Farms

0:00:01	Introduction and Location
0:00:12	Year started (2011)
0:00:20	Farm in family for five generations, renting the land
0:00:39	Original crops and progression into produce (2014)
0:00:52	Cause of shift to produce, land market
0:01:18	Process of downsizing, food safety classes, GAP certification, growing for Walmart
0:02:30	Building the house, mention of buying land from uncle, downsizing in 2020
0:03:30	Classes through Southern Piedmont Farm School through NC State Extension, benefits and process of that
0:04:22	Lack of other produce farms, pros and cons of location in Davie County
0:05:33	Working with 4 farmers markets a week
0:05:53	Distribution of staff at farmers markets, son leading stall independently
0:06:32	Children’s involvement on the farm, benefits, children’s interest in the farm, flower business
0:07:43	Independence of youngest
0:07:54	“Justin reflects on his father’s small cattle herd, his prior experience being in farm equipment and
0:08:33	Steep learning curve of shifting into produce, lack of family knowledge beforehand
0:08:52	Family farming on the same land in the past, uncle was half owner, purchasing when he passed away
0:09:34	No name for farm until Justin took over, childhood nickname of “cherry hill” inspired business name
0:10:01	Diverse produce definition, description of a year’s crop rotation
0:11:17	Attempt to be frugal and reuse of plastic mulch, rotation of crop locations each year
0:12:01	Drip irrigation for majority, frost protection of strawberries and cold crops
0:12:36	Strawberries as most lucrative but risky crop
0:12:49	Specifics of strawberries challenges, costs invested into strawberries and long return span
0:13:33	2024 strawberry crop, average yield
0:13:48	Biggest challenge: lack of resources and people to help in learning curve of produce production
0:14:51	“Farm Bureau Young Farmers & Ranchers, friends met through the program. Reflection on network growth through
0:15:55	Biggest aid in learning curves and challenges was growing a personal network
0:16:19	“Rise in minimum wage to H2A workers, use of H2A starting in 2017, specific increase of minimum
0:17:29	Only year-round workers are Justin and Holly Miller
0:17:49	Annual process for H2A with the North Carolina Grower’s Association, technical processes surrounding H2A workers.
0:19:27	Pre-H2A workers/employees, constant roation of employees from 2011-2016
0:20:06	Justin’s workload shifting due to H2A benefiting the business, familiarity with workers
0:20:35	“Conventional, not organic farming, used by Cherry Hill Farm. Justin’s take on organic produce as marketing,
0:22:12	Consumer interest in organic produce frustrating Justin, frustration with labeling hurting the industry
0:23:10	Confirmation of statement that it becomes a competition of labels instead of production itself
0:23:30	Advice to beginning farmers to work for someone else for a few years to gain experience. “Cheap
0:24:41	Significant loss and crop failures over the years, had to “learn the hard way”. Near-bankruptcy in 2018.
0:25:37	(Brief Pause in Recording)
0:25:43	“Summary of 2018 learning curves: first year with H2A workers, first year of making mortgage payments on the farm,
0:26:16	“Elaboration on selling to Walmart– located through the USDA website. Initial interest in cucumber production,
0:28:04	Expectations of Walmart. Failures and successes throughout their work with Walmart.
0:28:50	Justin’s feelings on missing growing hard squash, details of Holly and Justin’s work surrounding the squash itself.
0:29:59	Cherry Hill Farm branding in Walmarts, sold under the farm’s name.
0:30:14	No longer selling through Walmart, truck driver crisis (lack of) in 2020.
0:31:13	GAP certified in 2016, started selling to Walmart in 2017.
0:31:41	Justin’s pride in the branding of Cherry Hill Farms, interest in seeing firsthand which of their produce was in which stores.
0:32:49	Fairly consistent source of seeds from Clifton Seed Company (NC), loyal nature of the farm industry.
0:33:50	Justin’s elaboration on the nature of loyalty in the farming industry
0:34:43	Lack of noticing a large shift in farming culture, Justin feeling newer to farm-related spaces and the culture itself
0:35:49	Fuel and labor as largest expenses– on-road fuel being the largest expense.
0:36:10	On-road gas elaboration, farmer’s market and H2A worker pickup etc.
0:37:13	Impact of higher H2A minimum wages leading to less ability to hire workers
0:38:14	Clarification on rules around “sharing” H2A workers with other farms
0:38:45	Justin elaborates on having worked a job “in town” until May of 2024.
0:39:06	Justin elaborates on what his job in town was, and what went into his decision to focus entirely on the farm.
0:40:20	Improvement of crops and working environment with Justin working full-time on the farm.
0:40:45	Division of tasks between Holly and Justin.
0:41:19	Consideration of year-round opening the store; milk production and sale year-round
0:42:13	“Social media within Justin’s work, emphasis on Facebook Marketplace and their audience there. Youtube as a way
0:43:26	Lots of positive feedback received via YouTube.
0:43:40	Early frost in 2024 affecting the current day-to-day practices in late October
0:44:36	Elaboration as to how the frost affected the various plants
0:45:17	Deer as a major problem within Justin’s work, major losses
0:46:07	Methods to counter deer problems on the farm.
0:47:00	Experience with walking through and actively protecting from deer
0:47:25	Deer as the largest issue, raccoons as well.
0:47:55	A lack of much room to experiment with new produce, lack of customer support in the region.
0:48:44	Elaboration on variety experimentation as opposed to entirely new plants.
0:49:25	“The next steps for Cherry Hill Farm, interest in potential blueberry production in 2025. Prospective growth of greenhouse
0:51:05	“Amount of produce that is from greenhouses, number of greenhouses in use. Focus on growing their own vegetable
0:52:13	“Tissue culture propagation, interest in strawberry growth with bare root cutoff plants. Feels an opening in the market to grow
0:54:19	Want to establish practices with strawberry plugs before selling to others.
0:54:52	Thanks and statement of date.

MM:  00:01

This is MaryEvelyn Murray interviewing Justin Miller from Cherry Hill farm in North Carolina. We’re at Cherry Hill Farm one recording, and we’re just going to go ahead and get started. So how long have y’all been farming like in this area? 

JM:  00:14

We started farming in 2011.

MM:  00:18

Why did y’all like set up in this area? Were y’all already here? 

JM:  00:21

This farm has been in my family for five generations, so when I got the opportunity to rent some of the land from a cousin, that’s when we started. And we started with soybeans and wheat, and then we moved into produce, about 2014.

MM:  00:52

What caused the shift into produce?

JM:  00:57

We didn’t have enough land to really make a living growing grain. And the land market around here is so competitive that finding more land to tend is not really feasible. So we were just trying to make do with what we had, to try to make living on what we had available.

MM:  01:18

I know you mentioned online some, I think there was a process of downsizing a little somewhat. Do you want to talk about that some? Tell me a little bit about how that looks like practically as well. 

JM:  01:28

So when we started produce farming, we, my kind of goal was to be wholesale, because I wanted to be bigger. I thought that was better. And so we started going to all the food safety classes and everything that extension offered. And we ended up in a lot of food safety oriented classes, and we ended up getting gap certified about a year in, and so a lot of produce brokers started calling us, and we ended up to about two years after we got started, we were growing for Walmart, and that was really good for us, because it brought a lot of cash flow. We didn’t necessarily make a lot of money. We would have got to that point if we’d have kind of got over the hump, but it allowed us to build this packing house we’re sitting in. It allowed us to buy half of this farm. We were able to purchase 66 acres from my uncle passed away. But ultimately, when logistics got really tight in 2020 they were no longer able to backhaul for us, and so we weren’t really given we didn’t really have an option about downsizing. So in 2020 we just be kind of because we didn’t have any other options. Fortunately, we had just built this store, and so we just started growing a wider variety and started retailing virtually everything that we grew that was kind of a long way to get to the question you yeah, 

MM:  03:25

That’s, that’s definitely good. I’d like to hear all you have to tell. I wanted to ask about the classes you mentioned that you took for this. Was that before 2020, and how do you feel that helped, as well?

JM:  03:37

We went through the southern Piedmont Farm School, which is offered through NC State and extension. And it was very helpful. It’s kind of like taking AG business at NC State, but very, very condensed. So we learned about creating a business plan and a budget, which was very helpful. I learned a lot about that and getting to go to different farms around our area and tour them and kind of see how they do things.

 

MM:  04:18

When you first started, how many, I guess compared to now, how many other farms were in the area, or, like, at least nearby, within a certain radius?

JM:

as far as produce farms? 

 

JM:  04:33

So there’s none that I’m aware of in Davie County that do like we do now. There’s some folks that have smaller operations, like a really large garden that they sell as farmers markets. But as far as a produce farm, there’s, I don’t think there’s any others in Davie County, there are several across the river.

 

JM: 04:59

Rowan County wood leaf, but that would be our closest 

 

MM:  05:04

Do you feel like that’s a strength for y’all or do you feel like it’s something that maybe it’s challenging?

 

JM:  

It has it’s pros and cons I guess, because there’s not a lot of markets around because of that. Like, if you’re in Hendersonville, North Carolina, you’re you’ve got plenty of places to sell produce, because there’s a lot of produce there, but here, there’s not. And I guess that’s an advantage and a disadvantage. 

 

MM:  05:32

Do y’all ever work with like farmers markets and things like that? 

 

JM:  05:36

We do. We actually go to four farmers markets a week, I think right now. And that’s a, some of them are really, really good, and some of them are not so much. 

 

MM:  05:53

Do y’all go yourselves and like, have a stall yourselves, or do you have someone else go for it, and represent y’all? 

 

JM:  06:02

On Saturdays Holly goes to the Clemmons farmers market, and during the busy season, I have to go with her, because it’s that busy of a market. On Saturday mornings, our youngest son goes to the advanced farmers market because it’s at the same time, and he either he’s- He’s 11, so he has to be dropped off, or someone goes with him, but he is, he does a very good job of running it.

 

MM:  06:33

Are the kids all like, very like, into the whole experience of it all? Or do you feel like it’s benefiting them?

 

JM:  06:40

I absolutely think it’s benefiting them, the work ethic. My oldest son is not… I wouldn’t say he’s into farming, but he doesn’t have an option. He is very good at running the store. He runs the store quite a bit. We’ve just this year started paying them while they’re working, so they have the opportunity to make a little money, yeah, but my younger son, he is, I think he has a fair bit of interest in agriculture. He started a flower business three years ago, and we gave him a little area to start growing in, and basically I laid him a row of plastic, and so he started planting flowers on that, and every year since then, it’s grown. I think this year he had five rows of flowers, and he sells them here and at the farmers markets.

 

MM:  07:43

So he’s taking that initiative, do you feel? 

 

JM:  07:45

Yeah, he does everything himself. He starts the seeds in the greenhouses, and everything.

 

MM: 07:52

That’s cool. Do you- I know you mentioned being, I think it was fifth generation, right? Did you grow up in a similar environment to that? Or did you not? 

 

JM:  08:00

No, so this is fifth generation farmland, but my dad just had a small herd of beef cattle, and so the only real experience with agriculture that I had prior to starting this was just helping him make hay. I mean, I was familiar with driving tractors and that sort of thing. Farm equipment fixing things. But as far as the produce world, I didn’t have a clue. Neither one of us did.

 

MM:  08:30

How was that learning curve for you, I guess, and what was your like family able to help like who had experience in different areas? Or was it a very different shift into that? 

 

JM:  08:39

Yeah, we didn’t really have any family that had any experience. We were totally blazing a trail, and it’s been a very steep learning curve. 

 

MM:  08:51

I wanted to ask specifically, did your family farm in this area with livestock? 

 

JM:  09:00

Yep, so my dad actually used to have cattle. Where we are currently growing produce here, and well, the whole farm pretty much had his cows on it. And then when my uncle passed away, he was half owner of the land, so we kind of had to either step up and buy it or let it be put on the market, at least part of it. Yeah, so that’s how we kind of ended up where we’re at.

 

MM:  09:33

 Did they have the same name for the farm, or was it a different company altogether? 

 

JM:  09:38

No, actually, the farm didn’t really have a name. But when I was a kid, my dad always just referred to it as we’re going to Cherry Hill. So that’s kind of where it came from. And I guess we kind of hijacked that name when we got started, we started calling it Cherry Hill Farm. So yeah, 

 

MM:  09:58

I like that, that’s interesting. Did you… So I looked online a little bit, and I saw that you specifically say you focus on diverse produce. Could you explain what that means a little bit to you?

 

JM: 10:11

So I would define diverse produce as we start in the spring with our first crop that comes off of these strawberries. Shortly thereafter, we’ll be picking all the cold crops, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, collards, and then we move into picking tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and sweet corn. We do a lot of green beans, half runners and bush beans or snap beans. By sometime in June, mid to late June, we start picking blackberries, and then we pick watermelons and cantaloupes and continue we have succession plantings of tomatoes and cucumbers and squash. So it’s pretty much a fixed produce, and it can be grown in this area. 

 

MM:  11:16

With the land y’all have, do you rotate out those like based on each year in each season?

 

JM:  11:20

I do, yeah, I try to, I guess, be as frugal as possible, like where I have sweet corn on plastic mulch for early production. I’ll go behind it and plant green beans, and I try to reuse my plastic mulch like that, especially on crops that require a lot of fertilizer. But yes, I try to put things in a different location every year, like strawberries were closer to the road this year, and then they step back one section further the coming year.

 

MM:  12:01

Do y’all use irrigation, or do you use a different sort of process for watering and purposes like that? 

 

JM:  12:07

We drip irrigate 90% of everything that we do. The exception to that would be frost protecting strawberries and some of our plants that we do not put on plastic mulch, which would be part of our cold crops. In the spring, we run sprinklers on those, but virtually everything is drip irrigated.

 

MM:  12:35

What crop would you say is your most lucrative I would say…?

 

JM:  12:38

Strawberries can be. But you can also lose a lot of money on strawberries. 

 

MM:  12:48

What’s the potential to lose there?

 

JM:  12:50

So strawberries, my numbers are a little bit old due to inflation, things have changed quite a bit over in recent years. But I used to always say that strawberries cost 10,000 an acre to plant. That cost 10,000 an acre to pick, and if you’re lucky, you make 10,000 an acre. So you’ve got 20,000 invested. And if they do really well, you can make 30 and that’s a crop that you’re planting at the end of September and you don’t see any return until May. A lot can happen between September and May.

 

MM:  13:32

Yeah, this year has How did that go for you? 

 

JM:  13:34

This year… we had an average crop. It wasn’t, wasn’t great, but it was pretty good.

 

MM:  13:45

What would you say was the biggest learning curve with that sort of, like technical aspects of different crops and different timing and things like that, when you first started?

 

JM:  14:02

I think the hardest learning curve, or the steepest- biggest challenge, would be not really having anybody to go to and ask questions. Extension in our area, they will help try to find you answers. But we’re not really a produce producing area, so it’s not something that they’re extremely familiar with, commercial produce. And I didn’t know, and didn’t have any family to ask, and I didn’t really have any friends to ask when we were getting started. So I think that was probably the hardest thing, a lack of information.

 

MM:  14:50

Who would you say are your biggest like maybe either partner, or at least like farms that you work with now a couple or like, several years into this process? Who do you feel like you’ve built relationships with or in the area, or further, even?

 

JM:  15:04

Tons. We have I guess one of the first things that we got involved with was the Farm Bureau’s Young Farmers and Ranchers. And we met a lot of farmers our age across the state. And so I’ve got friends that raise produce in Nash County. I’ve got friends that raise produce in Surrey County. One of my best friends is someone I met through the young farmer rancher program, Josh Watson, and they’re in Dobson, Surrey County. But since then, I’ve graduated from the agricultural leadership development program, and got a whole lot more friends that I met through there. So your network just grows as you get involved. 

 

MM:  15:55

Do you feel like that’s the best way that that challenge was kind of slowly changed, or do you feel like it’s other factors that also played into that that’s?

 

JM:  16:12

Yeah.Thats the biggest thing growing, growing my network of people that I have to ask questions.

 

MM:  16:14

Have any, and this goes for you, or anyone you’ve talked with about this as well in the area. Have any recent laws or similar like even just environmental changes impacted your work at all?

 

JM: 16:32

The biggest, I would say, challenge on that front would probably be the adverse effect of minimum wage that we are required to pay our H2A workers. They get a- well, I’ll just put it this way. We started using H2A labor in 2017 and the minimum wage was $10.72 an hour. This year, it is $15.81. Next year, they’re saying it’s going to be $17.10. There’s not many of us that have gotten that kind of raise in that short amount of time. And it’s not that they’re not worth it. We’re very appreciative of our guys. They’re like family to us, but the price of food has not kept pace at all.

 

MM:  17:24

Yeah. Is that the main source of like, your like, manual labor as well? Or do you have like, like, year round workers? Do you hire someone other than H2A or something? 

 

JM:  17:37

No, as far as year round, it’s just me and my wife, Holly.

 

MM: 17:44

How I guess, what does the process look like for you annually with H2A? Like, what does that look like for y’all? I know you just talked with me over email a little bit about how last week there was some process with wrapping up for the season, or something like that. Just- anything you want to elaborate on there?

 

JM:  18:07

So we go through the North Carolina Growers Association, and it’s kind of a co-op. It’s supposed to be a nonprofit, but we pay a $200 membership fee, I think, and they do all the recruiting for us. They get our workers to do all the paperwork. There’s a lot of bureaucratic red tape that comes with the H2A program. You have to file for them to get their work visas, like within 60 days of arrival, but not before 90 days. I mean…

 

MM:

 It’s a very specific window, would you say?

 

JM:

Yeah, but we use the North Carolina growers associate Association. There’s other avenues you can go through. But our guys come in typically around the first of April, and they’re here until the first of November. We have to provide housing and transportation while they’re here, and we have to provide transportation from Mexico to here, and then back to Mexico. And the season’s over. 

 

MM:  19:26

I know you mentioned it was 2017 right, that they started working with y’all. Um, I feel like there were a couple years before that that y’all didn’t use H2A, am I right? 

 

JM:  19:37

Mhm.

 

MM:  19:37

What did that look like for y’all back then? 

 

JM:  19:38

Hmm, a lot of stress, yeah, so we had so many people come and go. I don’t even have a lot of high school help now, I don’t know if I’d call them help. Employees. And a lot of long hours.

 

MM:  20:05

Yeah, do you feel like your personal workload has shifted a little bit to different areas at all since starting?

 

JM:  20:11

Yes, now I’m able to manage because I don’t have to worry about my employees and what they’re doing or if they’re accomplishing what they’re supposed to be doing. Our guys have been with us…. Both of these guys have been with us since 2017, so I don’t have to tell them anything. They just show up and go to work to get stuff done.

 

MM:  20:32

That’s great. I was gonna ask about your produce specifically as well, circling back a little bit. But um, would you call your produce organic? And what would that mean to you, whether it’s your produce or someone else’s?

 

JM:  20:47

No, our produce is not organic. We are conventional. To me, this is just my take on it, organic produce is a good marketing. That’s basically what it amounts to. Because everybody wants to know, is your produce sprayed. Yes, it is. Not as much as organic produce is, but we do spray our produce. In organic farming and I don’t, I don’t put down organic farmers. I have friends that are organic farmers. Because I think there’s such a small amount of farmers, we all need to stick together. But organic produce, the chemicals that they’re able to use are not very effective. They use a lot of heavy metals because they’re organic compounds, and they’re labeled to spray. So we use synthetic chemicals that are very effective, and we just don’t have to apply them very frequently. So that’s, that’s my two cents on that.

 

MM:  22:11

I was gonna ask, How do you feel about the like, I guess, consumer interest and the label of organic, and how did you feel about that, or maybe why it’s happening, even. If you have any speculations on that or anything.

 

JM:  22:24

That drives me crazy. I hate seeing organic, gluten free, non GMO, all these jazzy labels that they’re putting all over everything that’s not even applicable, like gluten free orange juice. Yeah it’s, it’s kind of like- no, no added hormone chicken. Well, that’s not legal in the United States. So, yeah, I think they’re hurting the industry as a whole a little bit on a lot of that stuff. 

 

MM:  23:06

Do you feel like that’s and correct me if I’m wrong, but do you feel like that’s kind of turning it into a comparison of labels versus what you’re actually making and giving to consumers? 

 

JM:

Yes.

 

MM:  23:17

Okay. 

 

JM:

Yeah.

 

MM:  23:21

So, what advice would you say you’d give to a beginning either family or just young farmers starting out in this kind of journey? I guess, I know it’s been many years for y’all now. 

 

JM:  23:41

My nature, reaction, would be, don’t. I would say, go work for somebody else and learn all you can. But find a good, successful farm that you could work for for a couple years, because even if you’re making less than you’d like to be, or less than you were at a regular job, you’ll still be making far more than you will if you start farming on your own, because of the steep learning curve, there’s so much money to be lost when you don’t know what you’re doing, and if you go work for somebody else, that’s real cheap education, and you’re far more likely to succeed if you have a little bit better feeling of what you’re doing.

 

MM:  24:41

Do you feel like that’s advice you would give from personal experience? And I don’t- do you mind me asking, did y’all see significant loss until a certain point at all, or anything like that?

 

JM:  24:50

Oh yeah, yeah, we- well, we’ve had a lot of crop failures over the years, and a lot of the things that we do now we’re learning the hard way. There’s some basic things you can learn, but sometimes you just don’t realize you have spider mites into your strawberries, there’re nearly dead, that sort of thing. We just about went bankrupt in 2018 So, yes, from a steep learning curve.

 

JM:  25:40

So there was a lot of learning curve, a lot at all at one time in 2018. It was our, I guess second year with H2A workers, second year selling to Walmart, and first year of making mortgage payments on the farm, and it was we had just really bit off more than we could chew. So, yeah, that was stressful year.

 

MM:  26:16

You mentioned selling for Walmart. Do you mind going into that a little bit? Because I didn’t know about that, just kind of what that looks like? Related to when you started? 

 

JM: 26:24

So Walmart, our broker that we dealt with for Walmart, had lost a huge greenhouse cucumber producer in our area, and it left a big hole in the market. So they were really looking for somebody to grow greenhouse cucumbers. And they found us on the USDA website, because they were looking for something central North Carolina, or Northwestern, I guess, North Carolina. And they found us, and they called and we said, No, we’re not capable. I mean, unless you’re wanting, you know, 50 cases a week, we can’t grow cucumbers for you. And they said, Well, we’re gonna, we just want to come out. We’re in North Carolina anyway. We’re gonna come out there. So they flew from Arkansas, and they not just to meet us, but they met other farms, and they got out here, and at the time, all we had was this 114 by 100 greenhouse. And then they said, okay, yeah, we see that you weren’t lying. You can’t grow that many cucumbers. What else do you grow? So we started kind of going through some things we were growing at the time. And it’s kind of funny, because we- we told them we grew winter squash. We had never grown more than, like, a couple 100 foot rows at the time, a very small amount. We brought that up, and they just lit up, like, “We need a hard squash grower”. So the next year, we had a contract to sell them 300 bushels a week, and we failed miserably. We probably shipped them somewhere between 150 and 200 boxes a week. Might have had some weeks we missed. Fortunately, they didn’t penalize us, and they didn’t drop us. And the next year, we kind of figured out what we were doing a little better next year, I think. We were doing, we signed a contract for 500 and actually did a pretty good job of producing what we said we would the following year, which was our last year, we were shipping tractor trailer loads every week.

 

MM:  28:51

Wow. How did that feel for you to have that increase there? 

 

JM:  28:55

I loved it. In hindsight, I do really kind of miss the hard squash. It was, I just enjoyed it when my entire parking lot was sitting full of- we used to have these wooden bins, about, like those cantaloupe bins, and I probably have 50 or 60 of them. And we would, my guys, and Holly too. But Holly would drive a tractor a lot. They would go pick and she would drive a tractor for them to pick up. And by the time I’d get here, the entire parking lot would be sitting full of these bins. I’d get here from work at 3:30 and we would start washing. So the squash went into that dump tank and through the washer. And we used to have a conveyor, and we would just, it was like a well, oiled machine. When it came down the conveyor, somebody was putting stickers on them. We had these nice little stickers, like you see ’em in the grocery store, it said Cherry Hill Farm. I was proud. To walk into a Walmart and somewhere like South Carolina and see a Cherry Hill Farm spaghetti squash on the shelf.

 

MM:  30:07

So y’all sold under your name then, too, right? 

 

JM:  30:07

Yeah.

 

MM: 30:07

That’s impressive. I didn’t realize. You said you miss growing that and like selling that. Do you not sell that through them anymore? Or do you not sell through them now?

 

JM:  30:07

I don’t. So when, when logistics got so tight and they couldn’t, I don’t know where all the truck drivers went in 2020, but when COVID hit, there is- like there were no more truck drivers anymore. And so we were getting ready to sign our contract, and we were trying to up our numbers for 2020. And, they told us that unless we could find our own logistics to haul it for us from here to Greenville, South Carolina or here to… they’ve got another distribution center somewhere around Norfolk, Virginia. Unless we could provide transportation, we weren’t going to be able to do business anymore.

 

MM: 31:11

So did you stop around then? 

 

JM:  31:13

Yep. So that was the end of that.

 

MM:  31:17

And what year did y’all start again? Just to find that date real quick. 

 

JM: 31:21

So we were GAP certified in 2016 and we started selling to Walmart in ’17. 

 

MM:  31:29

Okay, so the same year you started using the H2A, right?

 

JM:  31:32

Yes.

 

MM:  31:32

Interesting. I wanted to ask, well, I guess I already- you already answered my question about selling under your own name. Was that specific aspect of it something that felt rewarding in itself? 

 

JM:  31:45

Oh, yeah, absolutely yes. Yeah. I love to, like, if we were in Young Farmers and Ranchers at the time. So we traveled quite a bit. And when we were traveling in North Carolina, I would always, it didn’t matter what town we were in, I wanted to stop at Walmart just to go look at their hard squash and see if it was ours. 

 

MM:  32:08

So did y’all not have any way of knowing before going to a different location? Did you know roughly where it was or anything? 

 

JM:  32:13

No, because we didn’t really know. Like the range of we knew our our squash went to Greenville and the one in Virginia, but we weren’t quite sure the range of distribution from that distribution center.

 

MM:  32:28

You just. You just knew it was someone around there. And so you go looking?

 

JM:  32:32

Yeah.

 

MM:  32:36

I was going to ask, um, with all of your crops, even nowadays, right, whether it be, I guess, in whatever form you start growing at the farm. Where do you source those sorts of things, like whether it be seeds or anything like that?

 

JM:  32:56

Well, our seeds, most of them, I buy from Clifton Seed Company in Grayson, North Carolina. Once in a while, I’ll buy from another company, but I really like my seed guy. Man this, this business is really, I don’t say, clicky, but people are pretty loyal, like, I’ve got my box guy, and I’m pretty loyal to him. I’ve got my chemical guy. He is very intelligent. I can call him and ask him any question. He knows lots. He used to be a produce farmer, so I’ve got my chemical guy, and I just seem like everybody is that way in this business. 

 

MM:  33:46

Do you feel like that might have added to when you were first getting in, getting advice from anyone, or making connections? Do you think that affected that, like, that loyalness or even cliqueness?

 

JM:  33:58

Yeah. Could you elaborate on the question a little bit? 

 

MM:  34:01

Yeah. So like, do you feel like there was an already established, well, I helped this guy and, like, kind of, like, that sort of loyalty before you entered to where it took a couple of years to find your own way?

 

JM:  34:14

No, I don’t think it’s like that people won’t help someone else. It’s just, I think once a farmer gets starts doing business with somebody that takes good care of them, I think it’s kind of, 

 

MM:  34:31

There’s that loyalty instead of opposition, right? 

 

JM:  34:35

Yeah. 

 

MM:  34:36

Okay, good. Thank you for clarifying that. Because I wanted to ask, have you noticed any significant change in which this is kind of connected to that? Then any significant change in the culture between farms or like around farming as a whole?

 

JM:  34:58

Not really. Me, I wouldn’t say, but I don’t. I don’t feel like I have been in the circle, so to speak, for long. And the North Carolina Tomato Growers Association, for example, we went. We used to go to meetings years ago, and we were just getting started and trying to learn, but I didn’t know anybody. We were just there at the meetings, and nobody saw us. Nobody knew us. Now I go to that meeting. I know people, but I haven’t known them that long, so I don’t know that I’ve been…

 

MM:

 in it long enough to really observe a big change. 

 

JM:

Feel for that. Yeah.

 

MM:  35:44

What are your largest expenses? Would you say in either like material or anything like that that goes into the farm,

 

JM:  36:00

Fuel and labor. Believe it or not, it’s on road gas. 

 

MM:  36:06

Oh, really? 

 

JM: 36:07

And labor.

 

MM:  36:10

Why would an on road gas? If you don’t mind me asking?

 

JM:  36:14

That’s an excellent question, but this year is the first year that I’ve tracked our finances like really, really close, and something that breaks it all down. But I guess, I mean, I don’t have a job in town anymore, so all I drive is back and forth to the farm, but my wife drives to the sand hills every week to get peaches while they’re in season. And she drives to all the farmers, all those farmers markets, and then we have to buy our gas for our H2A guys. Yeah, 

 

MM:

I feel that adding up, I suppose.

 

JM:

yeah, I guess that’s… but labor is definitely a top expense.

 

MM:  37:13

How do you feel about that rising minimum wage? I guess it is. Do you think it’s going to mean you’re going to have to hire less in the future, possibly, or…?

 

JM: 37:21

We’ve kind of already started cutting back. And it’s very unfortunate, because these guys are like family, and I hate it. The two I’ve got now, I’m not going to separate them. I’ll keep them until they just price us completely out of business. But used to, I would find work for them, like if it was a slow week, and maybe say they’ve only worked 30 hours and we’re getting towards the end of the pay period, I’m gonna find something to do, even if it’s weeding and fence row. Now I just can’t, I can’t do that anymore. It’s, we got to get the tomatoes picked and go home. 

 

MM:  38:12

Yeah, um, you mentioned you find them like different work, right? Like different places. Would that be on different people’s areas? Or would that be different things to do around here? 

 

JM:  38:23

Different things to do around the farm. Yeah, we were actually not allowed to share them unless it’s another H2A. 

 

MM:  38:29

Okay.

 

JM:  38:30

Another farm that’s in the H2A program. 

 

MM: 38:39

Oh, one I was going to ask that I wanted to ask that I wanted to circle back to as well. In addition to the H2A wages, as you mentioned when you were working with the hard squash, you’d come back from work and it’d be there. Were you working different jobs while maintaining the farm as well? 

 

JM:  38:54

Yep, I worked a job in town until about May of this year.

 

MM: 39:04

Congrats. How do you feel about that?

 

JM:  39:07

 I enjoy it. I don’t dread Sunday evenings anymore.

 

MM:  39:14

Do you… Do you mind me asking what you did in town? 

 

JM:  39:16

Yeah, so I ran. I was in the foreman department at Fuller welding. So we- My job was metal that took a shape other than flat, whether it was rolled or bent or formed. That’s what I did.

 

MM:  39:38

What went into the change to in May stop working both and just fully go to the farm?

 

JM:  39:47

Well, I’ve been wanting to for a long, long time, and it just had reached the point where I didn’t feel like I was doing a good job at either place, because I wasn’t fully invested here. But. I was I was there 40 hours a week, and I wasn’t fully invested there, because I was always thinking about this or on the phone with somebody selling produce or whatever. So it was time to get off the fence.

 

MM:  40:19

Yeah. Have you felt an improvement in your work here? 

 

JM:  40:21

Absolutely, yeah. My guys have told me things are much better with me here full time. 

 

MM:

That’s great. 

 

JM:

They said the crops are better.

 

MM:  40:31

 Oh, that’s good. Have you seen more crops? 

 

JM:  40:33

Yeah, I think the yields are better because I’m here babying things and walking and scouting and running irrigation more consistently. 

 

MM:  40:42

And I was going to ask, how do you divide up tasks between you? And it’s Holly, right, How do y’all divide tasks between you?

 

JM:  40:53

So she is in charge of the retail. Anything that’s sold out of here by the pound is her territory, and she kind of manages the packing house, so to speak. I do everything in the field. Field Operations is my domain, and wholesale customers call me.

 

MM:  41:16

And is your store… Is that seasonally open? Or is it open year round?

 

JM:  41:22

We have considered opening it year round. We’re still a little bit on the fence. We already open year round on the weekends. I call it charity. There’s a small dairy farm where we sell their milk, and if we stop selling their milk in the winter time, that’s a pretty big problem, because cows don’t stop giving milk in the winter time. Yeah, so we originally started being open Saturdays, really just for our milk customers and to help out this dairy so that they can keep milk moving. But we’ve, we’ve we sell other things now on Saturdays, but we’re considering staying open longer.

 

MM:  42:13

Oh, that’s what I was gonna ask, um, in terms of, I know you have someone with a social media presence, when did that start? And how has that, do you feel, impacted at least you personally?

 

JM:  42:26

I’m really not sure when I started the YouTube, the Facebook, has been a huge deal for our business. Most of our business is driven by Facebook. I sold seven pallets of tomatoes over the course of a couple weeks off marketplace. So just our following on Facebook is a huge deal. We can post stuff, and we have a large enough following that we can really make an impact on our sales. The YouTube I started because there was nobody on YouTube. There’s a lot of YouTube farmers, but not produce farmers, and I had such a steep learning curve and a hard time getting started that I just wanted to make videos that maybe help people. 

 

MM:  43:25

Yeah, I’ve noticed some of those have views up in the thousands. So do you feel like that’s hopefully reaching the right people? 

 

JM:  43:30

Yeah, I think so. I get a lot of positive feedback about it. 

 

MM:  43:35

That’s great. Congrats for that. 

 

JM:  43:37

Thank you. 

 

MM:  43:39

I was gonna ask, what would a day in the life possibly look like in this part of the season, in late October, maybe? 

 

JM:  43:45

Maybe, so if we hadn’t had a frost, there’s always it’s really, really dependent on a lot of different factors. If we hadn’t had a frost, we would be lifting plastic, probably, because I’m on the countdown from my guys work visas running out, and they’re ready to go back to Mexico and see their families, but really just getting plastic up, cleaning the Fields up, and hauling the plastic to the landfill, disk in the fields down this year. We’re going to start laying plastic in the fall and so on, cover crop over them. So we’re ready to go in the spring. No matter what the weather is, we’re ready to plant when it’s time to plant.

 

MM:  44:35

So does the frost speed it along then? Or how does that work with it? 

 

JM:  44:38

Yes. So we had a frost unseasonably early for us maybe two weeks ago. And I mean that we have some means of frost protection, but you can’t frost protect everything, and so we had pretty much stripped our tomato plants prior to that. To keep them from getting damaged. So the frost didn’t really hurt them that bad, but we were pretty much stripped them, so we started pulling sticks and cutting the tomato vines down,

 

MM:  45:17

As far as other factors that might affect the crops, like, have you had to deal with any animal-like interference at all in this area or anything like that? 

 

JM:  45:26

The deer are a major problem for us. So I have, we started, we raised our planted our first strawberries, I think in 2015 so I guess maybe for the 2015 season, I think I’ve got my 10th crop planted, and I have had, I know, two total losses on strawberries so far. So 20% on deer and deer are just completely decimating them.

 

MM:  46:07

How have you countered that? I guess, or tried to counter it. So far. 

 

JM:  46:11

We put up a poly wire, which is like this ribbon with fire in it. Fence around the strawberries. We put two of them three feet apart, because deer don’t have depth perception, so they can’t tell. It messes with them, and usually they don’t go through it if you put electricity on it. It helps a little more, but eventually they tear through it. When everything else is dead there is pretty green rye grass in the strawberry field as a cover crop and there is those pretty green strawberry plants. I don’t know what it is about those pretty green strawberry plants but they love to eat them. But when they do find them and start eating them, we just have to start shooting them. 

 

MM:  47:00

Oh, yeah. Do you have to have someone like, watch them out for that? Or how does that work on a daily kind of basis?

 

JM:  47:06

 Yeah, I try to walk through the strawberry field in the winter time at least twice a week. I didn’t used to be good about that, and that’s how I lost crops. Because if you don’t walk through them in a month and deer find them, they can eat them to the ground.

 

MM: 47:25

Was that always a problem with deer, any other animals, or is that something that’s found better or worse?

 

JM:  47:33

The deer are the biggest issue. They’re very destructive on a lot of crops. Raccoons are a pretty big pest on sweet corn. But other than those two, we don’t really have a lot of predation.

 

MM:  47:54

As far as specific crops, like strawberries and stuff like that. How often do you get to experiment with new crops, or how much room do you have to experiment in terms of diverse produce?

 

JM:  48:07

So there’s not a lot of things that we don’t grow. So there’s not a lot of room for trying new things. We have had the opportunity to do some different stuff. We grew some rhubarb a few years ago, and nobody here, other than a select few people that have moved here from up north, nobody wanted it or had any interest. So a lot of, when I experiment, a lot of it’s varietal, just trying different varieties of tomatoes, different varieties of strawberries.

 

MM: 48:51

Do you feel like, What Works, works kind of in this area, or do you feel like, like, do you feel like, that’s why maybe trying different things like the rhubarb and things like that. Is it more of a regional thing?

 

JM:  49:01

No I mean, they’re always improving as far as varieties, tomatoes and such. It’s always they’re always improving the genetics and getting them better. So I think it’s important to be trying new things regularly.

 

MM:  49:21

Where do you see, like, what do you see the next steps? Or, like, what crops maybe you’re going to be doing in the next year, things like that. What do you see? The next steps being for y’all,

 

JM:  49:33

We’re going to plant some blueberries, hopefully in January. We used to have blueberry bushes, and the deer ate them off, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna try that again. That’s a pretty big deal. We used to sell a ton of blueberries. They weren’t ours. We were buying them from a lady locally, but she either sold the four. I’m not sure what happened, but we lost our source of blueberries, and everybody has been highly disappointed. So we’re gonna try to start producing our own. So that’s one of the things that’s coming.

 

JM:  50:15

I hope to keep growing our greenhouse business, because it’s not quite so labor intensive. There’s a lot of labor, a lot of hand labor goes into it, but it’s it requires a lot of work in January and February and maybe half of March, but it’s something that me and Holly can kind of manage with a little help here and there, and the dollars of return versus the labor that goes into is astronomically higher than any produce. So that’s kind of the reason we’ve started down this road, or it’s not the reason we started it, but that’s the reason we have tried to grow our greenhouse business. We’re up to five greenhouses now, and so that’s become a big segment of our income. 

 

MM:  51:10

How much would you say? Like, if you had to make it, a percentage? Would you say, it is grown in the greenhouses versus not, as a whole? 

 

JM:  51:20

Well, we actually don’t grow. We grow very little produce, to completion, in the greenhouses. We have one high tunnel, and I just planted my first crop in it. So mainly in our greenhouses, we grow our own transplants. We don’t transplant very much, only tomatoes and peppers, but we grow a ton of vegetable transplants that we retail in the spring. And then we do somewhere around 750, hanging baskets to a lot of Petunias, a lot of beds and plants, four inch cups, six halves, a lot of flowers.

 

MM: 52:05

Um, I just wanted to ask, are there any other things you wanted to add or talk about? Maybe that is something personal to you that you wanted to share about the farm, or something you’re currently working on? 

 

JM:  52:17

Well, I kind of got off a little bit on a rabbit trail on greenhouses. That’s kind of something that I’ve been really jazzed about lately, is the greenhouses. I’ve gotten into tissue culture, propagation. And there was actually a new disease in the strawberry industry this year, and it infected virtually all the strawberry nurseries on the east coast. So there were very few clean strawberry plants to be found. So we planted bare root, cut off plants out of California, which means they grow a field like grass. Basically, strawberry plants, they go through and Bush Hog them so there’s nothing but just sticks, and then they dig them so that you’ve got these little sticks with roots hanging off of and that’s what we planted. But typically on a part of a strawberry plug nursery, they’re started from daughter plants. So before those daughter plants put down roots, they go through and cut them loose from the mother plant, and I did a few of them this year in the greenhouse. We ordered some strawberry tips in and stuck them and grew our own plugs. And I really enjoy that. And I see a hole in the market a little bit because of this new disease. I think people are going to be looking for new places to buy strawberry plugs. So I might dabble in trying to grow strawberry plugs for people, for other farms. Yeah.

 

MM:  54:16

Do you see that as something that y’all will be able to really do hopefully in the next couple years? 

 

JM:  54:22

Um, maybe. I kind of want to get a little bit more, a couple more years of production under my belt, and get a little bit more confidence that I can before I’ve I don’t want to next year say, alright, I’ll grow 150,000 of these things because LA Rios, yeah, that’s a big jump. I feel 

 

MM:  54:44

Yeah, well, I feel like that’s all I had to ask. But thank you so much for talking to me. 

 

JM:  54:52

Thank you.

 

MM:  54:52

I do want to clarify as well for the recording that this is Wednesday, October 30, 2024. Yeah, thank you.