Rowland Row farms – Mark and Mindy Robinson

Time	Subject
0:00:07	Beginning of interview
0:00:24	How he got into the farming/ Incubator program
0:00:49	Finding out about the Incubator program
0:01:15	Been farming for 9 years and focused on growing produce over livestock
0:01:49	Daily life of a farmer is always changing
0:02:19	Workload changes as the season’s change
0:03:38	Spent summers on grandparents’ farms in Indiana
0:04:17	Grandfather farmed as a hobby
0:05:03	Farming as a career is similar throughout America
0:05:29	Smaller scale farming in operations is different to larger scale farms
0:06:16	Young/new farmers begin with a lot of idealism
0:06:30	New farmers face a realization that farming is fundamentally a business
0:06:56	Big learning curve for new farmers without a background in the industry
0:07:20	Gives an example of carrots to underline the long process of learning from your mistakes for the next harvest
0:07:54	Expands on the claim that they use “unconventional farming” and the process of certifying organic
0:08:33	Identifying his farm is not conventional agriculture and the perks of having a small scale farm
0:09:30	Reasons why he no longer gets his produce officially certified organic
0:11:45	New farmers embrace organic growing but it cannot meet the needs of the country
0:12:24	Doesn’t want to use GMOs in his farming but believes they have a place in agriculture
0:13:24	Process of accessing farmers markets
0:14:17	Harsh reality of living within the means of being a farmer
0:14:55	Lack of interest in organic products at the cost they need to charge in his local area
0:15:30	Having to travel to gain access to a big affluent customer bases
0:16:05	Small-scale farmers face issues of access to the communities that are in need and cannot do more due to their own need to stay in business
0:16:42	Business with wholesale accounts that include local restaurants and that they are moving away
0:16:58	Experience with CSA programs
0:19:00	Local CSA based on community supporting the local farms and included a lot of outreach and communication between both parties using social media
0:19:25	Doesn’t use social media for his own farm although would love to
0:19:58	Offered more of a subscription box service and CSA has moved away from its roots
0:20:45	Looking into other avenues due to the expansion of his family with a young daughter
0:20:58	Positive and negative effects of farming on your perspective of life
0:21:41	Looking at other areas of agriculture that they could explore in order to make a bigger difference in the community
0:22:35	Set up a partnership with a local small-farm
0:23:35	Why he set up the partnership and the pitfalls many fellow new farmers fell into
0:25:55	The partnership was a success and focus their efforts on producing vegetables
0:26:40	What is important in a partner, and having to deal with his “ego” and other farmers
0:27:00	The importance of building relationships with your customer
0:28:41	Continuing the partnership with the neighboring farm and the positives the relationship
0:29:15	Socialism and experiences with discussing partnerships with farmers
0:30:13	What he learned from his mentor and the inherent differences between larger, generational farms and newer farms
0:30:59	He is the first generation of farmer building the infrastructure for future generations
0:31:48	[BREAK – Joe’s three-year-old daughter, Eleanor, joined us at the table]
0:31:15	The various opportunities available in nonprofit, and educational agriculture programs
0:32:58	Still looking at various options for where to take his farming career
0:33:42	There are changes in your interest the longer you farm
0:34:14	Interests have changed towards more scientific focuses such as getting the soil ready for growing
0:35:17	Also interested in taking his knowledge and experience of farming to an organization to make more change
0:35:55	Soil types in North Carolina and the issues he has faced
0:37:40	What cover cropping is and what weeds can tell you
0:39:23	Timeline of his farm moving from part time to full time
0:39:57	Support systems for new farmers
0:40:30	Sometimes there are things he needs that he cannot get from the community
0:41:14	Steep learning curve of new farmers and what they need to focus on to be successful
0:42:15	What public programs he used to set up and run his farm
0:43:54	Farming as a huge topic to cover and various skills required to be successful
0:44:29	Public needing more education on the many facets of the agricultural industry and how it affects them
0:47:04	Interview ends

[00:00:08]

>> Laura Burgess: Hello, my name is Laura Burgess, and I’m a graduate student at UNC Charlotte. The date is the 20th of March, 2019 and the time is 4:15 in the afternoon. I’m here with Joe Rowland in Gold Hill, North Carolina at the Rowland’s Row Farm. Hello, Joe.

>> Joe Rowland: Hi, how are you?

[00:00:24]

>> Laura Burgess: So I’m just gonna begin off with, how did you become a farmer?

>> Joe Rowland: Well, about nine years ago, I started at an incubator farm program here in Concord. It’s about 15, 20 minutes from here in Concord, North Carolina. The idea is, they give you access to equipment, to some education, to a land base, and young individuals.

[00:00:47]

It’s kind of like a business incubator, just for agricultural businesses, farm businesses, and so that kinda got me started down this track.

>> Laura Burgess: How did you find out about those program?

>> Joe Rowland: There was actually just an ad, or no, a story in the Charlotte Observer that my father-in-law happened to see.

[00:01:06]

And at the time I was interested in agriculture and kind of looking for land and wanted to buy something, and do something. I assumed it would be a hobby. I didn’t think I would go into it full time, but I found out about the program, and started going for it and here I am, yeah.

[00:01:21]

>> Laura Burgess: So how long have you been farming?

>> Joe Rowland: This is my ninth season.

>> Laura Burgess: And what kind of crops or livestock do you produce?

>> Joe Rowland: Right now we are just solely produce, so fruits and vegetables. Over the years, we’ve done turkeys, chickens, ducks, rabbits. We’ve dabbled in mushrooms, we still do a little bit of that, honeybees.

[00:01:43]

We still play around with some of that stuff, but more on kind of just a personal level. But commercially, it’s all produce right now.

>> Laura Burgess: It’s amazing. So can you describe a typical day on the farm for you?

>> Joe Rowland: That is tough, it depends. The cool thing about farming is, well, it’s cool to some and it might be nerve-racking to others, it’s kind of always changing.

[00:02:05]

It’s a lot of repetition, and when we get into a task, there may be a lot of repetition for hours or days at a time, but then a few days later you’ve shifted into another aspect. And with the seasons changing, it’s really different. What I’m doing now is very different from what I’m doing in July, August.

[00:02:23]

The work loads change as the crops change, as the stages of development in a crop. You need different things when a plant is two weeks old than when a plant is two months old, so there’s things like that. But typically we get going early, as early as we can.

[00:02:38]

We’re out in all weather and all times of year. And there’s a to-do list that is ever-growing longer and longer, and we just try to tackle and try to prioritize and try to figure out what. Sometimes it’s putting out fires. Hopefully we’ve planned ahead, we have what we need, and we’re just dealing with the next thing on the list.

[00:02:59]

But equipment breaks, you’re juggling things and trying to figure out, well, now we can’t do this. So let’s move down the list and hit this thing and get that piece of equipment fixed and try to come back to that in three days. And so it’s hard to give you a day in the life of.

[00:03:16]

It would depend on what day of the year and what’s going on. So like October 12th.

>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]

Okay, so I’m just gonna quickly rope back to, you spoke about incubator programming, is it Concord? So did you have any previous experience with agriculture before you began? You said you were interested, but I just wondered, was it something brand new to you, or did you have some ideas of what it would entail before you began?

[00:03:44]

>> Joe Rowland: A little bit of both. So my family, in Indiana, I was born in Indiana, I’ve been in North Carolina since I was two years old, other than a few years I moved up to New England and Boston, lived up there. So I spent summers on the farm in Indiana, but those are different farms than the tiny organic vegetable farm I run.

[00:04:02]

Those are really big dairy operations and beef cattle operations and corn and soybeans and hay and those kinda things. And so I would just spend the summers with my grandparents helping them out on the farm, helping out in the garden. I thought farming was the best job, because my grandfather was retired, and he did this as a hobby.

[00:04:23]

So I would just hang out with him in the morning, and then likely to go fishing in the afternoon. So I thought, well, this is a pretty good job so I always kinda thought, I wanna be a farmer cuz you just get to hang out outside in nature, work with your hands that kind of thing.

[00:04:35]

So I was around it, but I never really lived on a farm or did consistent farm work until nine years ago.

>> Laura Burgess: So is there anything else that’s different about your experiences elsewhere in North Carolina in terms of farming? You said that obviously in New England they are much bigger, and you’re doing something very different here, but is there anything else that you recognize as different?

[00:05:03]

>> Joe Rowland: I mean, in a lot of ways, farming is farming across the board. It’s hard work. You gotta be diligent, you gotta be self-motivated, you gotta be determined. There’s a lot of ups and downs, there’s a lot of variability in income and weather, and you’re dealing with a lot of elements.

[00:05:19]

So I can sit down and commiserate with I got a gross thousand acres of corn in Iowa. We understand the tractor broke, or you can’t get good help, but some of that is running a business and running an agricultural business. But then when you get down to the brass tacks of it, my little vegetable farm is night and day different than bigger farms.

[00:05:41]

The tasks that we have to do, the crops that we’re growing just entail a lot of different things, so.

>> Laura Burgess: So let’s talk a little bit more about your operations in terms of, so from where you are now to where you were when you first began, is there anything you changed, you had to adapt to anything in terms of running your farm?

[00:06:02]

Any external factors that kind of change what you anticipated you would be doing?

>> Joe Rowland: Yes, without having a strong background or I think a consistent upbringing in farming, I see a lot of people like myself come to it, and with a lot of ideals and kind of the symbol of frolicking in a meadow on your farm.

[00:06:29]

So you’re up against that, and the more and more you get into it, the more you realize that it’s a business like anything else. And there’s a lot of logistics and dealing with employees and labor and the financial aspects of it. And it’s not just going out and growing the thing that you love and you’re passionate about.

[00:06:46]

Actually running the farm, there’s a lot more that goes into it in the marketing and the sales that really maybe aren’t the fun side of it that you got into it for. There’s just a huge, steep, vast learning curve of if you don’t have a strong background, I didn’t go to ag school, so I just jumped into this and had to kind of learn it from the ground up.

[00:07:09]

And so just figuring out some of these crops we grow, we grow something like carrots, we’ll grow some in the spring, some in the fall, a couple of times a year. So in nine years, I’ve only really grown carrots, let’s say, 20 times or something. Or you may mess up the first three, four five, years.

[00:07:28]

And the thing is you have to remember from one year to the next what you did wrong, and have a plan to correct it or you make the same mistake again. And then it’s like all right, well, now we got to wait until I’ll try again in August or September.

[00:07:41]

And so it takes a lot of time to hone your skills, which is interesting.

>> Laura Burgess: Yeah, sounds it.

>> Joe Rowland: Challenging.

>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH] So I looked at your website, you mentioned that you do unconventional farming. Could you expand a bit more on what you mean by that?

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah, so basically what I mean is we were certified organic for a long time.

[00:08:04]

We no longer pay for the certification and file the paperwork. And therefore I can’t say we were an organic farm. And I just want to somehow get the point across to my customers that we are not just conventional, that we are closer to organic. Or we basically are organic other than the fact that I don’t write a check and fill out the paperwork.

[00:08:23]

So the crops were grown the same this year as they were three years ago when we were organic, it’s the exact same product, it’s just that I’m not paying to have that symbol anymore. And so I just thought unconventional also is kind of a fun way of saying it, cuz it’s like we’re not conventional agriculture.

[00:08:41]

Nothing against them, but we’re also unconventional. A little quirky, a little different, and that’s what we kinda like about being small scale, local sustainable food system type stuff is, we’re a little bit different. It’s weird to say I want to grow vegetables for a living. There’s not many people that want to do that, and not many people that do it on a really small scale.

[00:09:04]

I mean 1% of the population lives on farms now or something like that.

>> Laura Burgess: Wow.

>> Joe Rowland: It’s something ridiculous when 150 years ago it was, well I don’t know, the majority of the population.

>> Laura Burgess: Yeah, depending on where you lived, yeah.

>> Joe Rowland: So we are just in that respect, people that do this are pretty unconventional as far as mainstream culture goes.

[00:09:24]

>> Laura Burgess: So it’s the reason why you no longer do get the certification, I wasn’t aware that you needed to pay to get a certification.

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah, absolutely.

>> Laura Burgess: That’s very interesting. So is the reason you no longer do that literally just because you have to pay? But then,

[00:09:38]

>> Joe Rowland: Well, yeah.

>> Laura Burgess: You don’t agree with the-

>> Joe Rowland: No no no, there’s bureaucracy in it. Which gets annoying and cumbersome but that’s just bureaucracy in general. I agree with it. It’s the best system that we have out there. There’s some plus sides and some down sides to it, but for us it really came down to logistics.

[00:09:57]

It’s a lot of extra paperwork. There’s a lot of hoops and hurdles to jump through. And in certain situations like if I couldn’t find a certain seed or if a certain plant, I couldn’t use it. Or it wouldn’t be allowed to be certified and so for us there was just some things that on a small scale with a small staff, it was just one more thing.

[00:10:17]

And it adds value in a lot of ways and puts customer’s minds at ease and gives them a sense of what exactly they’re getting. But my business, I’m so close to my customers, I look them in the eye every day. So I wasn’t as worried about them not trusting me.

[00:10:33]

Because I can tell them, they can show up at the farm. They see me every week at a farmer’s market, we’re talking. And so they understand what we’re doing, and they can just say to me, how did you grow this, and where did this come from, what are you doing?

[00:10:45]

So if I was in a different situation, if I was more in wholesale or a bigger farm to where I sold into direct markets and went to, I was just another line item on a spreadsheet. Then maybe having that organic symbol next to it, a USA symbol gets that buyer to say, let me try this product.

[00:11:05]

But I didn’t see the value anymore. Although I do see the value ecologically speaking and from a health and wellness standpoint, I believe in it and I think it’s the right way to go. So we need to move in that direction but it’s just limiting, and economically speaking, it’s tough.

[00:11:25]

>> Laura Burgess: Yeah, grinding, that was literally my next question in terms of, do you have to go by the USDA organic status? You also, that was great. So you say that you think, do you think that being, going organic is the future of farming, or is it the-

>> Joe Rowland: I don’t know.

[00:11:40]

That’s tough. I think a lot of it is, and that’s something that I think a lot of younger or people that are young to the business, they kinda take this on. And especially organic growers like, we’re the future and we’re saving the industry or something I think that sometime, and I fell into that, and I think it’s naive.

[00:11:56]

And it’s somewhat insulting to other farmers or to conventional farmers to say that they’re not doing, they’re doing what the market has asked them to do. And when you look around the world like it’s yeah and this country, it’s easy to say that a lot of us can just afford to go to Whole Foods and buy really expensive carrots but there’s a ton of people that can’t in this country.

[00:12:17]

And then you look around the world and you start talking about how do we feed billions of people in developing countries. My little organic carrot isn’t gonna do it and so a GMO and get into these whole debates and like, I don’t want them and I try not to use them or I don’t use them on my farm.

[00:12:36]

But, to say that they don’t have a place when there’s GMO rice or certain things that could save lives in Africa or something. I think it’s a bigger question than my pay grade. And so I do what I can do on my small scale for my family, my community.

[00:12:53]

But we need bigger solutions in the long term for all that but I don’t know how to resolve.

>> Laura Burgess: So you say that you’re very kind of involved in the community and you really, you’re into I guess community but you like the kind of meeting your customers. Could you tell me anything more about your process of going to farmer’s markets, like how do you choose where you go, things like that?

[00:13:29]

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah, so we’ve been really lucky in that we’ve been able to get into the markets that we’ve applied for. And that’s not always the case. So we’ve identified what we think are the best markets in a region, in an area that we would like to go after and we’ve been able to get in there.

[00:13:48]

And I have other friends in this situation that have identified markets, sometimes the same, sometimes different and not gotten in. And so that somewhat is upped the chance and updates like a job interview is like do you get it or do you not? And some of our success is directly linked to luck of or for what I mean hard work, but we got into a market that the sales are just going to be better.

[00:14:12]

It has a stronger following. It’s in a more affluent neighborhood and as much as you go into this thinking you’re going to grow food and provide for your community and the less fortunate and all these things. There’s this harsh reality that to make the economics work, they don’t really work, no matter what, like there’s not money to be made doing this.

[00:14:31]

Unfortunately, you have to just really love it and be able to live within the means. And usually you make enough. We think we’re successful if we make enough to get up and do it again tomorrow or next year. So savings and retirements and things like that aren’t really something that I see a lot of farmers in this situation, or probably even the larger farmers, being able to do.

[00:14:54]

But getting back to the farmer’s markets. We would love to do more in our local community. But on my farm right here, there is just not a strong draw for organic product at the price that I need to charge in a close area. And so what we’ve done from the start is we travel.

[00:15:16]

We travel an hour to all three of our markets. We’re actually getting away from some farmer’s markets stuff we’re changing a little bit, but over the last eight years we’ve had three farmer’s markets, and we drive 45 minutes to an hour to each one. To go to a larger metropolitan areas, to go to affluent areas where we have people that can afford that food.

[00:15:37]

And so in a way, we’re successful for providing for people. Is it the people that really need it? Probably not because if I wasn’t there, these people can afford to go to the next guy or to Whole Foods or to wherever it is. Whereas there’s a lot of people that can’t that we would love to cater to, and we just can’t figure out how to do that and then Stay in business ourselves, and keep doing it.

[00:16:04]

So we figure we’re doing as much good as we can with the situation we have. But access is a huge issue, and some farmers think about all the time. Well, farmers at this level and the ones that I know, think about all the time is how can we reach out, how can we do more for the right community and still watch our bottom line enough to be able to pay your employees and try to have some income of your own?

[00:16:30]

>> Laura Burgess: Fair enough. And so, we talked about farmers markets. Is there any other ways in which you get your product out there? Cuz you said that you don’t go to the big kind of wholesales-

>> Joe Rowland: We don’t.

>> Laura Burgess: Like that. Is there any other ways?

>> Joe Rowland: We do work with wholesale accounts.

[00:16:47]

We consider well of our restaurants and things wholesale accounts. So we’ve pulled back from that a little bit lately. But over the last few years, it’s been a decent chunk of our business. Majority of our businesses has always been farmers’ markets. And then we do CSA, community supported agriculture.

[00:17:02]

You familiar with that? The kinda the box subscription vegetable type thing. We’ve done that for a few years. We just decided to pull back from it this year. We’re going in a couple different directions right now and kinda looking at the future and figuring out what we wanna do moving forward.

[00:17:20]

>> Joe Rowland: But CSA, the last couple of years is a decent chunk. But farmers markets have always been 60, probably 75% of our business.

>> Laura Burgess: Since you brought it up, can you tell me a little bit more about CSA in terms of, I mean, you say you’re pulling back, but what what has been your experience of it?

[00:17:37]

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah, it’s been a good experience. There’s a lot of logistics and a lot of kind of dealing with, I mean, you’re packing multiple boxes. Ours was fairly small, like 50 individuals. But that means one day we were packing 50 different boxes, so we need 50 heads of broccoli, 50 heads of cauliflower.

[00:17:53]

And we’re individually, which is not something we always have to do is we don’t pack individual orders. We crate up all the cauliflower and take it to a market, or put it in a box and take it to a restaurant. So there’s a little more legwork in that respect.

[00:18:07]

It’s cool connecting with the customers. It’s amazing that they wanna support you in that way, and they’re willing to pay us up, so they pay us upfront. And so, if you have 50 people by you, $300 at the beginning of a season, it’s a big chunk of change.

[00:18:22]

At this time of year, we aren’t making a lot of money yet, and we’re spending a ton. And so, they’re willing to give us money in January, February, March that we use to buy season fertilizer and fuel for the tractor and pay employees and things like that. It is almost like a small business loan, with a promise that, hey, in May, when we have veggies, we’re gonna give you some great stuff.

[00:18:41]

They also accept some risk, because I don’t know when the hurricane’s gonna hit, or when the freeze is gonna happen. And so, there’s a little bit of risk shared between them, which is customers and the farmers. Which is good for the farmer, at least.

>> Joe Rowland: But yeah, it’s been good, we’ve enjoyed it.

[00:19:04]

I don’t have anything really negative to say. Ours is more, it started out as more of a real community rallying around the farm. And they had kind of a Board, if you will, or a steering committee. And some farms do really detailed, intricate e-mails or print newsletters, and they spend a lot of time really connecting with that base.

[00:19:28]

And I would love to do that. I’m not that person, it’s just not in my nature to go and do all the little blog stuff and that social media. But then also, it’s just a lot for a small operation to add that on top of everything else. You’re packing the boxes, you’re growing the food, you’re delivering it, you’re at the market, you’re at the pickup location giving them the box.

[00:19:50]

And then, you’re kinda having to sit down and journal. It was just something that I wasn’t really good at. And so, ours kind of was more of a vegetable subscription service, which you kinda see some bigger companies doing now. Blue Aprons and stuff, where you just get a box.

[00:20:09]

We’re more personal than that. But CSA, a lot of if has kinda moved away from I think the roots of where actually started of being a really close-knit true community that near the farm. To now, it’s like I grow stuff an hour and a half away and take boxes to a city and drop them off, and people pay me, and away we go.

[00:20:31]

And so, it’s a good, as far as the capital and the money, it’s a good situation for farms.

>> Laura Burgess: Is that the reason you’re planning away from it now because it’s kind of losing that community base?

>> Joe Rowland: No, no, no, we’re just pulling back from, we’re just looking at other opportunities, basically for ourselves, and thinking about our life moving forward with a small child, the logistics of the farm in general.

[00:21:00]

How the farm, the farm can take, and take, and take. And it’ll take, any form will tell you, it’ll take everything you can give it and need more. And so, it can put you in a really, although it’s such a positive thing to do, to grow food to try to provide, it also can put you in a really kind of selfish, self-centered kind of place where every day it’s all I’m thinking is what do I need?

[00:21:29]

When can I get it? Can I get it in time? How much? How off, like can you help me? Where are we gonna get this? And so, we’re trying to just kind of balance that with having a young child and figuring out what this is gonna look like in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years.

[00:21:45]

And so, we’re kind of pulling back, looking for some other opportunities in agriculture, in farming, in sustainable farming. Which is pretty amazing that 10 or 20 years ago, there weren’t half of these jobs out there. Now, there’s non-profits doing a ton of good work, community gardens, inner-city urban gardens.

[00:22:04]

And there’s so many different programs where people are growing food and growing produce and vegetables. And so, we’re kind of looking at other opportunities that can use the skills and the things we’ve developed over nine years to help people. And we just realized that we aren’t gonna be able to get to the place that we really wanna get and do the kind of good that we wanna do by ourselves, and with our money, our own labor.

[00:22:28]

And so, I’m just wondering if instead of so many people wanting to break out on their own, if seeing more of people coming together. We formed a partnership over the last couple years and brought two farms kind of together and two labors together and two sets of equipment.

[00:22:45]

And we’re able to see some good results with that and decrease the amount we were working and increase the amount of money we were making, and make life a little bit better. And so, I think it just kinda goes to show that there are ways to keep doing the local food and the sustainable organic farming thing without totally just martyring yourself to what a farm can do to you and your family.

[00:23:11]

And it can overwhelm every, emotionally, physically, financially, you name it. It can take control of all of those things.

>> Laura Burgess: Yeah, so you mentioned this partnership that you went into a couple of years ago.

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah.

>> Laura Burgess: Can you tell me a bit more about that? What inspired you to do that?

[00:23:29]

Did you see other people making these partnerships and good things coming from it? Or was that kind of something new and this I think other farm couple decided?

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah, it’s kinda something we decided, something I had thought about and talked about some other farmers for a number of years.

[00:23:48]

Cuz what I see is being close to an incubator farm, coming out of them myself, that means I was with a lot of other young or newer farmers trying to start out, and get started. And I’ve seen a lot of people fail. I’ve seen a lot of people just start and just give up, and realize this doesn’t make any sense at all.

[00:24:02]

I’ve seen people go and buy equipment, and go buy farms, and get in Over their head and realize wait, this doesn’t work and have to go get jobs and figure out how to unravel the debt and the stuff that they’ve taken on. And what I saw happening more and more is people get excited about farming.

[00:24:19]

They wanna farm, they wanna farm on their own. It’s kind of human nature where definitely the American spirit. I don’t know how it is in the UK but here, we’re like we’re patriots. We’re gonna like I can do it, I’m gonna do it, it’s my world, it’s gonna be my thing.

[00:24:35]

And so we end up like, the gentleman I partnered with, he lives one mile from here. And so I”m sitting here with a farm with infrastructure, with walk-in coolers, with a barn, with tractors, and all the equipment and greenhouses and high tunnels. He buys a property that has none of that stuff.

[00:24:52]

He’s by himself, he’s trying to figure out how am I gonna get all this stuff? How am I going to afford it? Who’s going to work here? Who’s gonna set it up? And I have all those things a mile away, and I need help and I can’t find good labor.

[00:25:02]

And I’m trying to figure out, man, can I do this without more help? Or how does this work? And I’ve seen so many people go and buy another tractor, and then somebody else will get like you bought a walk-in cooler. I’m getting a walk-in cooler. And instead we’re living like 30 minutes from each other and all these young farmers are just trying to go it alone.

[00:25:19]

And I’m just thinking to myself, man, if we took his tractor and my walk-in cooler and that person’s barn and did it all, and threw three labors together. The big question, the big gamble is can you really increase efficiency in sales and net profit from doing that? And so it’s something I had wanted tot do for a while, I had kinda talked to a few people and tried to start, and it really just worked out that he bought a place a mile away.

[00:25:46]

And it just seemed like why is he gonna buy tractors and all this stuff? Just come and use mine? And if you’re gonna just come and use mine, well, why don’t we plant some stuff at your house and plant some stuff at my house? And then if we do that, well, why don’t we just get up tomorrow and go to your place together and do some stuff, and then come here, and let’s just see how it kind of evolves?

[00:26:04]

And it was successful, we were able to, we dropped all of the poultry, we raised chickens for meat, chickens for eggs and ducks. We were able to drop all that which was 30 odd percent of our business, and go straight into vegetables, quadruple, or triple the amount of vegetable we were doing.

[00:26:27]

And then go out and increase our sales for the year and increase our net profit. And so pay him more than we’d ever paid out in labor and pay myself and my family more than I’d ever made. And so we see that it works, but there’s opportunities there.

[00:26:47]

You’ve got to find the right people and egos and all that stuff is hard, and whose farm name, who’s on the shirt, you know? That dumb stuff like that, that a lot of it’s pride, a lot of it’s ego, and I’m trying to get better about letting that stuff go.

[00:27:01]

Cuz it’s really just growing vegetables, it’s not, you hear people say, nobody’s gonna remember in 20 years how good my carrots were. It’s not gonna, you know what I mean? It’s more about the relationships that you create along the way. So we’re trying to kind of move towards a little more healthy way of life.

[00:27:20]

And we thought the partnership could do that, and it kinda did to an extent.

>> Laura Burgess: It sounds to me, throughout this whole interview, this kind of real importance. I know I keep saying it. Community and the, I know that a lot of people don’t really, I mean I came into this project not really understanding the importance of agriculture, even coming from a background that I’ve come from.

[00:27:44]

And we’re seeing it as like a young man’s game and, like I thought, coming into this and me talking to a lot of farmers that has kind of gone through generations And interested. But you said by the incubator and you lot of young farmers that really want to get started but-

[00:28:03]

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah, they were all first generations.

>> Laura Burgess: All first generations?

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah, yeah.

>> Laura Burgess: So, do you think for the future in terms of I’m trying to speak more specifically in incubative farming. Do you think there would be a positive to maybe people grouping up together a bit more?

[00:28:20]

Cuz you said that a lot of people fell.

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah.

>> Laura Burgess: Whether they were aiming too high, or wanting to go it alone. And it sounds like is this partnership still going on with you at all?

>> Joe Rowland: It is yeah yeah, and even we’re both looking at opportunities for the future, and he has a young daughter, a young family as well.

[00:28:37]

So we’re just thinking about how it works, but no matter what, at least we’re neighbors and we can help each other. Like, he wants to go out of town, we can watch his animals. So having that community, and that’s what farming communities came from. Have big families so they can work on the farm.

[00:28:54]

>> Laura Burgess: Mm-hm.

>> Joe Rowland: Have good neighbors. Be good to your neighbor because when your cow’s out, you need them to help or whatever the case may be.

>> Joe Rowland: And so, bring me back, where was I? Talking about community in terms of incubator farms, and you said previously that you saw that thing fail.

[00:29:13]

Right, so the thing about it is, is you have to say, like a very, very dirty word to really get to this thing, and that dirty word is socialism, right? And you can’t say that word. The idea that you and I can put our joint efforts together for the benefit of us, all of us, is just a foreign concept to Americans.

[00:29:36]

And so every time that I have this conversation with people I’m like yeah, but if we could just figure it out, and other people have those conversations too, and I push back on it. When they’re like, well, what if five of us got together and just decided, you grow this, and I’ll grow this, and you grow that, and then we’ll all put together and sell it?

[00:29:52]

And there’s buying clubs, and co-ops, and place that farmers should do in that. Again, it’s like kind of an ego pride thing. I would push back, but I wanna grow tomatoes too, I’m not gonna be stuck growing the whatever, you know? I don’t wanna be stuck growing the potatoes.

[00:30:06]

Like whatever the case may be. But I think for sure with younger farmers and like with incubator models, or with farmer training programs, or any of that stuff. I think it just makes sense from an economic standpoint. Well, my mentor, he lives about a mile and a half from here, he’s a retired extension agent, David Goforth.

[00:30:25]

He said something that I think about all the time, is it’s hard to do in one generation when it took others two and three to do. And so when I look at my neighbor’s farm up the road and I drop by like, God, he’s got eight or ten of these huge tractors and he’s got barns and buildings and so much.

[00:30:40]

Like man, that place is awesome. He’s been three or four generations to get there. Whereas me, to walk on a property without a barn, without this and that and start building, it’s gonna be hard to get it done. And so I think putting resources together, you can achieve more, and then I also think for farmers, we need to think about our new farmers.

[00:31:01]

We need to think about I may not be able to get there but I’m the first generation now that if I can set it up for my daughter, for her children, my grandchildren and great grandchildren. So, all these farmers are getting old and moving away from the farm, one generation of farmers that are first generation, they don’t know anything about farming are going to swing, sweep in, and save us.

[00:31:22]

But if they can save some farmland, get the farm paid off. Build a couple buildings, buy a few tractors. Leave that to their kids now that they have infrastructure, they’re not starting from nothing. And so we just need, I think, to build the farming community back up, and it just takes starting somewhere.

[00:31:41]

And so instead of looking at new farmers as knights in shining armor, which we wanna be, look at us as stepping stones, we’re just starting the process.

>> Laura Burgess: Okay, let’s just take a break for a minute.

>> Laura Burgess: And we are back. So I just wanted to kind of talk to you more.

[00:32:02]

You say that you’re gonna go into some different future endeavors that kind of connect more with community. Is there anything specifically going on in North Carolina in the area that you’re looking to go into in terms of organizations? Like you mentioned nonprofits, but is there anything in particular that has caught your interest?

[00:32:20]

>> Joe Rowland: There’s a ton of just great stuff going on around here, up in the Triangle area, NC State Chapel Hill, Duke, all those up there. There’s just a ton of ag-related, farm-related, some are nonprofit, some are through the schools, I mean A&T up in Greensboro. There’s Cooperative Extension does a bunch of stuff around the state.

[00:32:44]

And then there’s some nonprofits like the Organic Growers School. In Asheville, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association up in Pittsboro, that are kind of advocacy groups. But also doing a lot in the way of training and teaching and learning and connecting. In all that advertising, basically just building awareness, so I would love I’m not sure exactly where I’m gonna fall.

[00:33:09]

And exactly how we’re gonna keep hobby farming or keep farming as a part time thing. Or start working with some other growers or what, I’m not really sure at this point, I’m open to opportunities. I’m kinda seeing what happens and we’re still keeping the farm going, we’ve still got farmers markets every week, things like that.

[00:33:31]

We’ve just realized that we’ve got a, your priorities are changing, you’ve a little one. And we just gotta kind of think about what this job will look like in 20 years for me? And am I gonna be crawling up and down on my hands and knees like I do now in 20 years, do I even wanna be?

[00:33:48]

And something that’s really interesting to me. And I’ve heard it from other folks that have been doing it 5, 7, 10, 15 years, whatever, is your interest changes. Like going out and digging carrots and bunching carrots used to be like so amazing. When you watch that carrot come out of the ground, like it’s just the best feeling ever.

[00:34:07]

And more and more, I’m interested in cultivating, trying to keep weeds down. And doing fertility, making sure that cover crops, and making sure my soil’s right. And I’m getting more and more interested in kind of the management and the science stuff of getting the environment right, the soil right.

[00:34:26]

To make the crop grow the way you want it, and I’m really interested in getting the crops to grow to their best. And then the harvesting, and washing and packing and putting it into cute little bag and pack it up. Which used to be so fun and so invigorating for me, now is not.

[00:34:42]

And I hear that from others, and that’s a normal progression I think over the course of the decade. You change, I’ve started to learn more and get better at certain areas and that’s what challenging me. And so I want to go more for the things that are challenging me and less with the things that are kinda old hat.

[00:34:59]

And I just realized on my own I’m not gonna be able to do that as much. I’m always gonna be the guy at least involved in bunching the carrots and washing them, and that’s fine, I enjoy it a lot of the time. But I think I can take what I know and instead of having my cause, like go a little more towards.

[00:35:18]

Throw what I’ve learned in with an organisation that has some power and some backing. And see if I can help make more change in that respect, so I have no idea what that’s gonna end up looking like, but we’ll find out.

>> Laura Burgess: Sounds very exciting.

>> Joe Rowland: Yeah, I know it is.

[00:35:33]

>> Laura Burgess: So you mentioned kind of this process that you’re really interested in now, about treating the soil and making it ready. Is that something that you’ve had to work on a lot here in North Carolina, on a farm here, like what is that process? Because I would’ve never have thought that had to be something, I just assumed my the ground is water ready.

[00:35:57]

>> Joe Rowland: No.

>> Laura Burgess: But obviously [LAUGH] that’s not the case.

>> Joe Rowland: Not here, like in the Midwest, there with different soil types, but here we have a really old soil, heavy clay. It’s tough to work with, you gotta be careful, when it’s been raining like it has this winter, you just can’t.

[00:36:14]

What happens if you take clay and some sand and mix them up and like pack them really hard together and bake them? It turn it into bricks and so that’s what happens in our soils. If you go run and run a tractor through the fields when it’s soaking wet.

[00:36:25]

Compact it, all that red clay mushes together and then the sun comes out and it’s 90 degrees here in May and June. And you’ve just baked bricks and plants don’t want to grow through that. And so a lot of that is, we don’t have a lot of organic matter, so we’re trying to build organic matter in the soil.

[00:36:40]

Clay soils in a lot of ways are good, they hold nutrients better, they hold water better. That can be good, that can be bad, so when the crops are in, it’s nice that it holds some nutrient and some moisture. And it doesn’t just all run through like a sandy soil, but here we’ve gotta kinda play with some of those things.

[00:36:55]

And really a lot of it is organic matter, and so that’s what cover cropping. And doing things where we can put a lot of material back into the soil, get the life going, that’s what organic agriculture is. It’s soil-based, it’s living soil, and so those are the things, it just takes a lot of time.

[00:37:15]

And that’s one of the things that I stress about, and struggle with. Now it’s like, I’ve got to go get this harvested, I’ve got to get this packed and washed. But I really need to plant that cover crop, or mow that and till it in. Because right now it’s at the perfect stage, we’re gonna get the nutrient content.

[00:37:30]

We’re gonna get the stuff back in the soil that we want. Yeah, so there’s a lot that needs to be done around here for the soil.

>> Laura Burgess: Yeah, so you mentioned cover cropping, can you just clarify what that is?

>> Joe Rowland: Yes, so we wanna have something growing on the soil all the time, now a cover crop might be whatever weeds come up.

[00:37:56]

And a lot of people, the people that I was learning from, used to say, whatever is growing there, needs to grow there. There’s books that tell you like if you’re seeing this weed, it tells you, you may have a deficiency in this. So nature is really smart, and you’ll see it in a field, you till an area, and then a different weed will pop up there.

[00:38:13]

And it’ll be there for a couple seasons or something, and then all of a sudden, a new weed will start to take over. And so, they’re kind of figuring that stuff out on their own. But cover cropping is we grow a cash crop, the thing that we’re growing, let’s say broccoli.

[00:38:26]

We grow it for a season, three months, whatever, when that comes out, we need to let that field rest, right? Because that broccoli just sucked a lot of stuff out and then we cut the top off and took it. So we basically mined the nutrients out of that field and left it with the broccoli and we’re gonna eat it, and that’s great.

[00:38:42]

But that field now is low on those nutrients, and so you can just go buy them in a bag which we have to do. We buy organically used, organic products that came from living beings to creatures, organisms. Or you can grow things in place and basically mow them and till them back into the soil.

[00:39:01]

And send some of that nutrient back in and so there’s certain crops that do certain things, fixing nitrogen from the air, things like that. So there’s a whole fun science with that.

>> Laura Burgess: Sounds it, I just want to quickly clarify, so your farm, for you is a full time job?

[00:39:21]

Because I know there’s a few people that my colleagues have spoken to where it’s just like a part-time. As we mentioned, is going to be a hobby later in life, for you this is a full time?

>> Joe Rowland: It’s been full-time since 2014, the first few years we were doing a few other things on the side, make a little bit extra money.

[00:39:36]

And in 2014 we went full-time, so for the last five years it’s been 100% full-time. For a few years in the middle, it was my wife and I, it was our sole family income for a couple of years there.

>> Laura Burgess: Okay, so one thing, I know I keep coming back to it, but I think it’s a fascinating this topic of young farmers.

[00:39:55]

And do you think there’s a lot of good support systems in place for young farmers? I mean, you mentioned a few.

>> Joe Rowland: There are, there are a lot.

>> Laura Burgess: And deficits that could be filled.

>> Joe Rowland: Man, there’s a lot of organizations out there, like Carolina Farmers Association, I already mentioned both of them.

[00:40:16]

I’m sure I mean Cooperative Extension, as I mentioned, I’m sure there’s a ton that I’m not naming. But there’s a ton of people interested in it, and it’s always about helping the farmer, everybody wants to help the farmer. And sadly, what I come back to sometimes is what need, you can’t give me.

[00:40:38]

The community could give it to me, but it’s not realistic in a modern society, the way things go. And it’s not just money, time and money are the biggest factors in agriculture, right? If I don’t have the time but I got money I can pay you to do something.

[00:40:55]

But if I don’t have the money but I got time, well then I get to go and do it. And it’s always just balancing what’s worth doing yourself, what’s worth paying for and all that. Farmers, it’s knowledge, I really think the deficit is, it’s such a hard thing.

[00:41:11]

And what I said at the beginning about the learning curve is just so steep. That it’s gonna take you three or four years to figure out what questions really need to be asked, and to figure out how things grow and all that kind of stuff. So it’s just, they have a great system in place, everybody’s working to try to help them.

[00:41:32]

And I think just more and more resources are great, grant funding, things like that are great. I think education and more hands-on direct production-based knowledge. Because if you build it they will come is a true statement, all right? You’ve got to be able to grow a consistent quality product.

[00:41:52]

And then you got to be able to sell it for sure, you don’t wanna grow [INAUDIBLE] stuff and not sell it. But where I see people falling down is growing quality consistent products. And so to me that’s what it’s all about. If you don’t produce consistently quality stuff, then you’re in the wrong business.

[00:42:12]

>> Laura Burgess: Have you used any of these resources? You mentioned grants, things like that. So do you have any personal experiences?

>> Joe Rowland: I bought my farm with an FSA Loan, Farm Service Agency. Got a high tunnel grant through NRCS, got a well grant through Soil and Water, I think it’s an EQUIP program, Soil and Water Conservation does that.

[00:42:35]

I have had small nonprofit groups do benefit dinners, where they donated part of the proceeds to me to help build the greenhouse, Carolina Farm Trust does that kinda thing. So I have definitely taken advantage of a lot of those opportunities, and they’re great. Yeah, we need all the help-

[00:43:01]

>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]

>> Joe Rowland: Sadly, we need all the help we can get, and some people look at that and say, okay my tax dollars built him a greenhouse, or built him a high tunnel and put it in a well. But what,

>> Joe Rowland: What good is that ultimately gonna do, or my tax dollars, couldn’t we pay teachers more?

[00:43:20]

Still have some potholes in the road, does really need a well to grow his vegetables? And that’s true, I mean, that’s a tough argument.

>> Laura Burgess: So I’m just gonna end it now with this last question. So is there anything that you want to add, is there anything that you wish to expand on, do you think I should have asked?

[00:43:43]

In terms of kind of understanding farmers’ experience, especially young farmers’, or new farmers’ experiences in North Carolina and Piedmont area?

>> Joe Rowland: Yes and no.

>> Laura Burgess: [LAUGH]

>> Joe Rowland: I mean, it’s just such a vast topic. It’s an amazing thing, and once you get bit by, it’s something that I think you’ll always love and get passionate about.

[00:44:07]

But it’s just such a huge topic that any given day you need to know a lot about plants and horticulture, maybe a little bit about small engine repair, carpentry would be nice. Marketing and sales would be great, effective leadership and management skills would be awesome. So I mean, there’s thousands of questions that you didn’t ask that I don’t have answers to that, you know what I mean, but as the same time I just think we need more of it.

[00:44:34]

We need more consumers or just more average person buy in for understanding or knowledge about what’s going on and how it actually affects that. And I’ve thought a lot more lately about the way it affects and ultimately, of health and wellness, right?

>> Laura Burgess: Mm-hm.

>> Joe Rowland: And so, eating more fruits and vegetables, eating food that’s closer to the farm, knowing what’s in it, what you don’t want, choosing what’s important for you.

[00:45:07]

GMO, antibiotics, pesticides, making decisions for your family, but being, as a consumer, being able to be informed. Some of the labeling and the way they require things to be labeled or not to be labeled, I think leaves a lot to be, what’s the phrase, it’s just lacking. We need more understanding of labels and how that works.

[00:45:31]

I for example grew pastured chickens, right? I raised my chickens on grass, they lived their entire lives. When they came out of the brooder at two or three weeks old, they lived on grass. I wanted to put on my label pastured poultry so my customers could understand these chickens eat grass.

[00:45:46]

They live out in a field. The USDA or NCDA would not allow me to put the word-

>> [NOISE]

>> Joe Rowland: Bless you darling.

>> Laura Burgess: Bless you.

>> Joe Rowland: That’s my daughter, Ella.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Joe Rowland: Yes, she’s joining the interview, hi honey. They wouldn’t let me use the word pastured, but yet, a huge food corporation can take a product that is unhealthy that is high in sugar.

[00:46:11]

And reduce it by a gram of sugar and slap a huge label on the front, this is now reduced sugar, healthy. That to me is ridiculous. And so the policy stuff at the top would change, I think could maybe trickle down to small farmers. Just in people be more aware of what they want to eat.

[00:46:32]

And seeking out people that do things in alignment with their values. So I think educating the public and hopefully legislation at the top, which unfortunately, that’s a tough sell. You can’t get a lot of good stuff done and there’s a lot more important probably than food labels. But, to a foodie and to a farmer those are things that it seems to me like if we could fix food and fix health, a lot of other things would hopefully kind of settle and fall into place.

[00:47:06]

>> Laura Burgess: Completely agree. Well, thank you so much-

>> Joe Rowland: Thank you very much.

>> Laura Burgess: For your time.

>> Joe Rowland: Yes, absolutely.