The old days, the old ways

“This farm along the Tuckaseegee River at the foot of Clingmans Dome is located in an area that is called the ‘Cherokee Old Fields.’ It has been cultivated for as long as the Cherokee have been growing corn. This bottomland was my great-grandfather’s and at one time belonged to Will Thomas — one of the early Cherokee Chiefs of the Eastern Band — and included about 200 acres that was farmed in cattle, sheep, silage corn and tobacco. Now, the farm comprises about 80 acres, of which about 35 acres are actively farmed — in tomatoes, strawberries and greenhouse lettuce. We’ve gradually gotten out of the livestock and tobacco business completely.

“My great-grandfather plowed all these fields with horses and mules — mule-drawn teams that were renowned in these parts for building roads here in the mountains in those days. He worked 30 teams of mules at one point. When I was a boy, our family’s farm was one of the largest family farms in the area and, so, I thought that I was some kind of big farm mogul or something. My great, great, grandfather was a Conley and owned the entire Conley’s Creek watershed. Well, my bubble was burst years later when I saw my first cotton farms in the deep South — which are truly big farms. Our 10 acres of tobacco — which was a large tobacco field in these parts — paled in comparison to the hundreds, even thousands, of acres of cotton that went on and on ... out of sight.

“I was raised by my grandmother, whose house is over in the Qualla community between Gateway and Cherokee just off Highway 441. There are some old cabins and an old barn still standing on the property from those days. She rented out these cabins to travelers. I’m told that John Steinbeck, the writer, even stayed in Granny’s cabins. I was raised on goat’s milk that was delivered to the door by Biltmore Dairies. We had milk cows, of course, but I had some sort of illness that goat’s milk was good for, so I remember the dairy truck coming to our house in those years on a regular basis. During these years, I learned about subsistence farming. We had a milk cow, raised hogs, and had our own garden, from which we ate and canned food for the winter.

“My father was 42 when I was born, so between my parents and grandparents I was raised with Depression and World War II era values — which are much different than those of the baby boomers who were having children at the time. Consequently, my values are different from most people my age, and why I might tend to be a little more conservative concerning notions of family, responsibility, owning land and economics. I, maybe, haven’t taken some of the kinds of chances that others of my generation have taken. This upbringing may be, in the end, responsible for why I’ve decided to remain here at home on my family’s farm and try to make a go of it.

“But it wasn’t always that way. I did leave home to go off to college at the University of Tennessee as a liberal arts major. I had the notion of doing something different with my life — that is, until I came across the work of Kentucky farmer-poet Wendell Berry. Reading Wendell Berry caused me to re-evaluate my situation and my priorities, which ultimately led to a kind of epiphany resulting in the realization that I truly did want to stay on the farm. But then, of course, came the question as to how to make it work! In pursuit of that question I went on to major in Plant and Soil Science, finished my studies, and returned to Jackson County.”

The Present (Shelton Farms)

“Things are much different today from what they were when I was growing up and before. All the old-timers are dying out and farming, at least what there is of it, is more about making money than self-sufficiency. When I was growing up, when we killed the hogs, for instance, my uncle would butcher the hogs and put the heads up on top of the pumps of his gas station — so folks would know that there was hog meat for sale. Can you imagine that sort of thing happening today? Things have changed.

“Last year I stopped growing tobacco. In 1986, I implemented a year-round hydroponic greenhouse operation exclusively for the production of bibb lettuce. So now Shelton Farms is a year-round operation with the hydroponic lettuce, a spring crop of strawberries and about 25 acres of tomatoes with a small supplementary crop of half runner beans in the summer. I try to be as organically conscious as I can, but to this point I haven’t seen the math that would convince me to make the wholesale conversion to organic growing. As much as I’d like to, the numbers just aren’t there. I really don’t like pesticides, but I think we need them to be able to feed the American population, especially with the mass migration from the farms in the past two generations. Someone has to feed all these folks, and without the pesticides and fungicides I’m just not convinced that it can be done — or at least done economically — especially here in the Western North Carolina mountains where we have so much rainfall. Water is the number one disseminator of disease. Unlike arid California, which has a long, dry growing season, here in Western North Carolina we’ve got a big problem with regard to trying to grow organically. Our main battle, as farmers, is to try and keep ahead of all the resistant strains of disease, etc. To do this, we have to keep dipping deeper and deeper into the well of synthetic engineering — which takes us farther and farther away from the organic alternative.”

Wendell Berry and the Local Economy

“Id love to be able to go retro with my lifestyle and with my farm operation, but, as a father, I have to be practical — for the sake of my family: my wife Sabrina and my three boys Wil, Sam and Cal. I love what Wendell Berry is advocating: his ideas of maintaining local economies, family farms, organic growing, giving back to people the control over the quality of their food as well as their lifestyles while preserving and enhancing the landscape. Health, beauty, subsistence. I like his statement that “a viable community does not export local products until local needs have been met.” In the past, I’ve tried this approach with various crops, but my problem always was that the local market for most produce is a very fickle one. It’s hard to find enough people to consistently buy enough of my produce in order for me to make ends meet. I now have five full-time employees, and in the summer I employ 10 to 12 full time people as well as contracting crews of up to 60 during the harvest seasons. So I have a big responsibility to the people who work for me. A responsibility that I take very seriously.

“Essentially, I’m buying retail (in terms of my production costs) and selling wholesale. In order for me to make enough to be able to invest in turning my farm into an all-organic venture, I’d have to reverse that paradigm and be buying wholesale and selling retail. It doesn’t take a math genius to see that that equation is practically a catch-22 situation. But that is how our farming economy is set up in this county — with the middle-men (the distributors) getting the lion’s share of the profit. I’ve got a half-acre under plastic (greenhouses) growing lettuce. I produce 10 to 12,000 heads of lettuce a week. That may sound like a lot, but I’m competing with conglomerates like Archer Daniels Midland. Even Ingles — which is supposed to be a pro-regional retailer — is under exclusive contract with Colorado Greenhouse Tomatoes and Washington Apples. This produce comes mostly from out West. Well, 15 years ago I was getting $6 a box for my tomatoes. Today, with the cost of everything much higher than it was then, I’m still getting, on average, $6 a box for my tomatoes. It’s costing me about $11,500 per acre to produce, harvest, package and ship my tomatoes. Meanwhile, Ingles is charging $1.49 lb for their tomatoes while I’m getting only $6 for a 25-pound box! My tomatoes go to many of the best restaurants in New York City and other cities across the country, but even that doesn’t change the math.

“So, you see what I’m faced with, here? Wendell Berry represents my idealism, and I keep trying to move in that direction. But as a practical man I can’t ignore the reality of my situation. When I took over responsibility for Shelton Farms, I had a meaningful relationship with the land, my roots ran deep, and I had certain responsibilities. My dream was to make enough money for my family, so that when I was 40 I could “farm for fun” so to speak. Do all the alternative things that, ideally, I would like to. But I found out it didn’t work that way. What I found out was that I didn’t own the land, the land owned me! At this point I think to myself; I’ll be happy if I can leave this land in the same condition as it was when I inherited it.

“I want the farm experience for both myself and my kids. I feel lucky to be here doing what I do, but it’s difficult not to be fatalistic. I believe wholeheartedly in stewardship, but I’m not the best example of that, maybe.

“In a way, I’m a walking contradiction. I’m very supportive of organic farming, yet I farm with chemicals. I’d love to see a world in which I could grow and sell only locally, yet my distributor is in New York. It’s easy to talk the talk, but it’s much harder to walk the walk. No matter what your ideals, it’s hard not to live in the world you really live in. At the same time, I believe that the old ways are important, because to have a real sense of where you’re going you have to know where you’ve come from.

“My dream, for myself, is not a rational dream, it’s a spiritual dream. I want to find myself in a place where I am at peace with myself, my family, my neighbors and my community. At the same time, I want the security of having much less economic stress. I want to get to the place where I enjoy my work for the sake of the work, alone. My bliss, so to speak, is in taking the tomato seed, planting it, and watching the miracle of that plant as it grows. I simply love to grow plants, and this is the reason, really, why I farm. But, in order to do this, I have to be an entrepreneur, a manager, and a technician — three specialty vocations which aren’t always compatible. Not wanting to work for someone else, I have to wear all three of these hats, have to be all three people, which is schizophrenic, to say the least. As part of wearing these three hats, I have to pay FICA, pay insurance for myself, my family and my employees, and all sorts of other things. In other words, I have to produce in order to make costs. And to make costs, I’ve got to get bigger, farm more land each year to be able to pay the lenders and keep my farm operation moving.”

Being Engaged

“Wendell Berry also talks about political and community involvement. This is another thing that I have taken to heart. I believe in doing my part in trying to sustain the health and viability of our small communities and our way of life here in Western North Carolina. With this in mind, I have become a member of the Jackson County Soil & Water Conservation Board, the Jackson County Planning Board, am on the Board of Directors for a local Watershed Association, and I ran for county commissioner a couple of years ago. So, I try to be active in the community.

“Some people see farming as a polluting industry. I’ve responded to that accusation by ceasing to grow tobacco — which is a lucrative crop in this region and one that has been a vehicle for my family’s survival for generations. I’ve gotten into the fray between developers and the environmentalists and property rights activists. In terms of the issues of zoning and land-use planning, I’m pro-planning, but at the same time I don’t want to tell others what color their houses must be. I’ve been involved, recently, in the asphalt plant controversy over near the Qualla Boundary. And I’m very concerned about the air quality problem here in our mountains. I can tell you that, as a farmer, bacterial problems regarding my tomatoes and strawberry crops are two-fold what they have been in the past. While I can’t prove it, I have a strong suspicion that it’s not a coincidence that these numbers are going up and that a lot, if not all, of these bacterial diseases are coming into my fields as a result of the particulate matter associated with the high levels of air pollution in this region now, especially in the summer months. So, many of these issues impact my life and business as a farmer here in the region very directly. In order to have any control over any of this, I must, of necessity, get involved in these issues.

Globalization

“I guess what I am concerned about most is how this new global economy trickles down and effects even people like myself living in relatively remote rural areas. While I’m not an expert on this subject, I can say that it’s increasingly difficult, even for people such as myself, to keep up with the pace of change these days. Just the sheer volume of information we are getting now makes it hard to focus, hard to get even the most basic of things done well. There’s always a sense of being behind, trying to get caught up. Such is the effect of the overload of information that comes in to and through our senses on a daily basis.

“In terms of the doctrine of the new global economy, how can one not be something of a fatalist when faced with the notion that limitless growth, of necessity, demands limitless consumption. Living in a finite reality and a world with finite resources, this equation just doesn’t balance. How all this touches my life is through examples of what I experience in my business. Like I said earlier, I have to compete with huge international corporate conglomerates such as Archer Daniels Midland, so right away I’m drug into the fray of this whole economic paradigm by having to compete globally with farmers perhaps on other continents.

“More specifically, what this means and how it breaks down in my situation is that because of such a fiercely competitive marketplace these days, distribution is something of a nightmare. A majority of my produce, for example, goes through New York, where all costs are much higher (wages, office space, warehouse space, fuel ...) so, the farmer, being on the bottom end of this eco-agrarian chain, is saddled with the high cost of distribution, which means that the farmer gets the short end of the stick. Like I said before, I’m averaging $6 a box for my tomatoes, the same as I was averaging 15 years ago. National and global distribution strategies (strategies based on no less than 3 percent annual profit and growth ratios) and overseas manufacturing and production are creating this kind of surreal monster for people like myself. This example, alone, is good reason for supporting ideas for a regional or local economy such as the ones Wendell Berry talks about.

“What does globalization look like in Western North Carolina? When I was a kid, the nearest McDonalds was in Asheville. Now, every little rural town or community has a McDonalds, and the franchise is expanding worldwide. Really, I feel there are no unique communities, there is no real rural life to speak of anymore in this country. It’s all been incorporated into the larger American mainstream culture — which is increasingly influenced and affected by mega-businesses like Wal Mart and a growing global mono-culture. There is something to be said for diversity, and we are losing our small pockets of rural cultural diversity in Western North Carolina and the country in general. Along with this loss comes the inevitable losses of various vocations — such as the small family farmer, certain health standards, beauty of the environment, etc. There are really very few families that are living a subsistence or self-sufficient life these days, and it’s increasingly harder even to just live simply and well.

“Whittier is not a farm area anymore. Were just a kind of fringe zone in a larger tourist area now. That being sadly the case, those of us in these fringe areas need to work together to gain recognition as an integral part of the total local culture. This will be something of an uphill battle when the public perception of farmers is somewhat dubious and when there is such a huge gulf between farm and non-farm populations and when the youth are completely out of touch with rural farm life. Why most of the young people, even around here, wouldn’t be able to say ‘suey’ if a sow bit ‘em!”

The Future

“So, there have been a few things we’re thinking about and doing here that are focused on trying to deal with this awkward, if not uncertain, future were facing. First of all, locally, we need to begin focusing on commonality rather than competing with each other. Especially those of us who are part of the dying breed of small mountain farmers. Competing with each other, as Wendell Berry points out, we’re essentially destroying each other and reducing our number of competitors eventually, to one — which only feeds the frenzy of the global paradigm. Rather than a warring tactic, we need to be working toward a unification tactic. Competition, as I see it, is a war-like endeavor. My situation is symbolic of a struggle between war and culture. Specifically, in my case, it is all about saving our mountain family farm culture from extinction. To accomplish this, we need to be able to offer people both here in the mountains and those from the outside — as my colleague Jeff Darnell says — “something besides a bungee-jump and a go-cart ride!’ Ideally, I’m thinking about giving people a REAL rural experience. We need to, in a sense, embrace the notion of an agri-tourism business here in Western North Carolina by finding ways to celebrate the mountains, the culture and the agriculture here.

“In the past couple of years, my competitors in the farming community and I have put aside our differences and have banned together to create a common transport/distribution station — a sort of warehouse and trucking dock situated conveniently for all — that we all support and from where we all ship our produce. Also, local farmers Kent Cochran, Jeff Darnell and myself have created a kind of coalition and support system, out of which has come two annual events created by Jeff Darnell to attract both local folks and tourists to come see, sample, and enjoy our produce, our local culture and our mountain scenery. Each May we hold a weekend festival we call the “Strawberry Jam” — celebrating our strawberry crops and the harvest. Similarly, in August, we have started a “Tomato Festival.” Both events are staged down in the bottoms of Governors Island, just outside of Bryson City next to the old Kituah Village site. There is entertainment during the day and evening on a main stage and on smaller stages set up around the open fields, as well as a large variety of vendors, crafts stalls exhibiting and selling locally—made crafts items, foods, goods and information about the region. While this enterprise is in its infant stages, it is growing each year and is bringing a sense of community back to the area of Whittier while at the same time giving us, again, an identity, culturally if not politically. Hopefully all this will also serve us well in the future when the time comes to enjoin our collective voices and votes in matters of preservation, conservation, development, and the rest. This, as I see it, is a first step in the direction of giving us back both a sense of community and a stronger collective voice. Like Wendell Berry says: ‘Without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice.’

“At this point we small farmers need to stick together. There’s not many of us left. Most of us, and I’m speaking mainly of myself, are permanently unemployable. At age 40 as a creature who is used to working only for himself and with no other skills than those associated with farming, who could I work for? The bottom line: I want to farm! I have to believe that there’s a future in it, even though, often, I feel like it’s me against the world. While the runaway global economy wants me to work toward getting rich in order to sustain my business and compete, I don’t want to get rich. For me, it’s not about money. I just want to continue farming as a means of supporting my family — just as we have done for generations. Putting seeds in the ground each year and watching them, along with my children, grow.”

For information about Shelton Farms call 828.497.5323. William Shelton can be contacted by email at William.r.Shelton@gte.net