Below is a summary of local interest stories that have recently been highlighted on the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ In the Field Blog and social media sites. Please feel free to use any of this content or contact us if you have any additional questions.
Eastern:
(Bladen) N.C. grape growers play vital role in state’s wineries
When you reach for a bottle of wine, you might not think about the agriculture behind it, but it’s worth at least a passing thought. Behind the North Carolina wines you love are many grape growers operating their own vineyards and supplying the wineries. “A lot of work went into that bottle of wine, and people don’t realize it,” said George Barber who grows grapes for Duplin Winery. Duplin is a good example of a North Carolina winery that sources grapes from independent vineyards. Those vineyards supply about 90 percent of the company’s grapes. Barber is one of 54 growers – all family operations – contracted to grow grapes for Duplin Winery. His White Hall Vineyards operation is in the Lisbon area of Bladen County, and he’s been growing grapes for Duplin Winery since he started a vineyard in 2001. He’s added more vines over the years and now tends about 80 acres. He said it’s allowed him and his wife to have a better life along with their three sons. The vineyard business has helped pay for two sons so far to go to college, with the third likely to follow soon. ...
(Brunswick) Livin’ Local at Indigo Farms
One family in Calabash is founded on deep agriculture roots and a true heart for farming. Sallie Bellamy, fifth-generation farmer at Indigo Farms Market, has always loved farming and learned the trade from her parents and grandparents. “I knew that I loved farming from the very beginning and it is a part of my family heritage,” she said, “I tried other career paths for a while, but the calling of my heart always led me back home.” With part of the farm based in N.C. and part in S.C., the Bellamy family can grow a variety of fruits and vegetables, including strawberries, blueberries, beets, okra, beans and eggplant. “I try to grow many varieties of eggplant each year like white, black, neon, and Indian,” said Sam Bellamy, Sallie’s father, “every year with the eggplant is different and you almost have to know how to use it in order to grow it. Although he loves watching all his crops come to fruition, Sam’s favorite crop to grow are his variety of beans because they are a challenge. “You have to figure out when it likes to grow, which can be very interesting,” he said, “but I enjoy growing the colorful ones like wax beans and the Red Swan.” ...
(Harnett) Pandemic brought unexpected demand for N.C. beef producers
The coronavirus pandemic has certainly presented challenges for people in all walks of life, and those in agriculture are no exception. However, it also brought an increased demand for many local agricultural producers across the state – producers like Honeycutt Farms in the Coats area of Harnett County. When stay-home orders and supply chain issues just began affecting people last spring, Curt and Ashley Honeycutt had just begun some direct-to-consumer selling of beef from their cattle. Demand for their beef immediately skyrocketed. They got so many orders, that in March of 2020, they were backlogged to January and February of 2021. They relied on in-state meat processors, which were also seeing a huge increase in demand. So it took until this April to fully catch up and deliver beef that was ordered during the backlog. The boost in business was a pleasant surprise for Curt who grew up with uncles on both sides of the family farming. He started helping the uncle on his mother’s side around age 14, when his “granddaddy” hung up his farming hat.
(Lenoir) Automation keeps research stations moving into future
North Carolina’s 18 research stations are often thought of as a big piece of agriculture’s future. The research done on the stations helps farmers find better, more productive ways to produce more food and fiber for a growing population. To keep moving agriculture into the future, the research stations are implementing several technologies that involve automation. That includes automated steering of tractors and even some automated planting and automated application of insecticides and fertilizers. Automation also helps milk and feed calves while also regularly weighing them and detecting other elements of their health. The automation helps create better data for research, make work a bit more manageable and improve the way livestock and crop health are monitored. Most stations now have at least one GPS-guided tractor. The Caswell and Lower Coastal Plain stations in Kinston use five tractors with steering guidance, commonly called auto-steer. The technology is so important for research stations, there’s a precision agriculture committee to help the stations stay abreast of advances and how to implement the technology. ...
Piedmont:
(Lee) Faith and Farming at Gary Thomas Farm
In 1973, Gary Thomas started a tobacco farm that would grow and expand far beyond his imagination at that time. Although he did not grow up in a farming family, Gary worked for four different farmers growing up and it established a love in his soul that has kept him rooted in agriculture ever since. “My wife Pam and I started the farm as a tobacco farm in 1973 because there was more money to be made with it than anything else at the time,” Gary said, “but the industry and our farm has changed a lot since its inception and my love of farming and agriculture is what has made me stay with it.” With more than 2,500 acres today, Gary Thomas Farms in Sanford grows a variety of fruits and vegetables, including sweet potatoes, corn, beans, broccoli, strawberries and asparagus. ...
(Rowan) Automated machines bring numerous benefits to dairy research
Automation in agriculture has revolutionized some of the work on farms, including North Carolina’s 18 research stations. Automated features on equipment can improve accuracy and consistency, from tractors in fields to operations in barns. There’s also a benefit in the aspect of labor because automation can save lots of man hours and essentially do more with less human labor. These are all important benefits in a world where fewer people are farming but the population continues to grow. So automation has become an important part of the state’s research stations, which aim to help farmers find better, more productive ways to increase food and fiber production. At the Piedmont Research Station in Salisbury, a robotic calf feeder has automated feeding of young dairy cows. As a calf stands at one of the automatic feeder’s nipples, it can read an RFID tag on the calf and adjust the amount of milk it dispenses. The feeder also has a scale in the ground to weigh each calf.
(Rowan) A growing passion for agriculture at Patterson Farms
Farming is one of those things that often gets in your blood and stays there. At least, that’s the story for Randall Patterson, co-owner of Patterson Farm Market & Tours, Inc. in China Grove. In 1919, Randall’s grandfather, James A. Patterson, started the family farm on 200 acres by growing cotton and tomatoes. “I started helping on the farm when I was about seven years old and learned a lot from both my grandfather and my father,” Randall said, “I always knew that I would come back after college because farming is what I love to do.” Currently operating on the fourth generation of farmers, the Patterson family truly has made it a family affair. …
(Stokes) Passion for land leads Sabrina Shaffer to NCDA&CS
Sabrina Shaffer brings a personal perspective to her work in the NCDA&CS Farmland Preservation division. Shaffer, who joined the division as a Farmland Preservation Specialist in December 2020, is responsible for helping review the many documents needed for farms to enter under conservation easements. Those easements are critical to the division’s mission, as they limit or outright prohibit new development and help landowners maintain their land as working farms in production of food, fiber or forestry. “I review documents needed for the legal closing of the easements, like surveys, maps, appraisals and all sorts of other information about the farmland,” she said. “We review those to make sure we know exactly what is being protected so that future monitoring can occur. We make sure all the facts about that farm are correct so exactly what is supposed to be protected in perpetuity can be legally recorded. These documents are the framework that will allow others to evaluate if the land is being protected as intended at the time of the easement closing.” A North Carolina native, Shaffer grew up taking trips to her family’s farm in Stokes and Rockingham counties. She took over management of the farm when she got older, and also began working in private land management. ...
Western
(Surry) Blossoming Beauty at Davis Boxwood & Daylily Garden in Lowgap
Rebecca Davis grew up in the evergreen industry, learning the trade from her father who raised boxwoods and her mother who made wreaths. After she was married, Rebecca’s husband, Clinton, also took an interest in the industry, learning from her father, and their journey toward Davis Boxwood & Daylily’s began. “Clinton grew up on a farm just like I did, so I guess you can say we both had farming in our blood,” said Rebecca. They started selling products as a business in 1987, but it wasn’t until a vacation in Cherokee that they fully discovered their passion and focus for the nursery itself. “We went to a place called The Lilly Patch on our way home and the owner had a hill where he grew many varieties of daylilies and they were absolutely breathtaking,” Rebecca said, “we bought a few from him to grow at our nursery. We fell in love with the huge variety of colors and sizes as we worked with them and learned about them.” Today, Rebecca grows 990 varieties of daylilies, including her favorites the Alabama Jubilee, Laughing Giraffe and Franklin Gem boxwood. ...
(Yadkin) Century Old Farm Turned Wedding Venue
The Barn at Cranberry Creek is an incredibly stunning wedding venue located in Boonville in Yadkin County. It opened just four years ago in the spring of 2018 by three brothers, Darin, Dwayne and Neil Brown. The three brothers, however, are not the first generation of Browns to make use of this property. This land has been in the family for five generations and was a farm long before it was a wedding venue.
In 1898, the farm was bought by Thomas and Polly Ann Brown, the great-great grandparents of Darin, Dwayne, and Neil. They farmed the land until 1920 when they passed the farm down to their son, William D. Brown. “Papa Willie,” as he was called, and his wife Nettie settled down on the farm and had four children. One of those children, ND Brown, would be next to take over the family farm. ...
(Yancy) A Step Back in Time at The Center for Pioneer Life
Some people were born for a time such as this, others were born with an old soul that seems to date back to a previous era. Dylan Wilson, Farm Manager at The Center for Pioneer Life, has a true love and passion for the pioneer life in the North Carolina mountains and believes his soul was born and bred in that time period. “I often can’t believe that I get paid to do what I do every day because it’s as if I was trained my entire life for this position,” he said, “even though I love the pioneer time period and lifestyle, I know I was born in the right era to help keep their legacy alive for years to come.” Although the Center for Pioneer Life looks like a dream come true today, it actually started as a coincidence grown on a simple family farm. In 1845, a mountain farmer named James Ray built a log house near Shoal Creek where generations of his family were raised until about 15 years ago. Before the building was torn down by the current owner, a man named Ralph Young, who recognized the buildings significance, purchased it, took it apart log by log and transported it to where the center is now located in Burnsville. “There wasn’t really a true plan for this farm before then,” Dylan said, “the family had always grown crops on this land, but once the log cabin got here the idea for the Center for Pioneer Life developed and has continued to grow ever since.” ...
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