You know, tomatoes have been a mainstay of our producers of produce for many, many years.

You know When we talk about tomatoes, we think of two main areas.

We think of Slocombe Tomatoes, and we think of Chandler Mountain.

And, you know, there's there's a rift between two producers as to who's got the best email.

But I can tell you if it's grown in Alabama.

So it is good.

I would hate to pick which one that I thought was the best between those guys.

Oh, the interesting thing though, is tomatoes is one of the few crops or items that we grow in every single county.

So they're they're not just grown in those two locations.

They're grown all over the state.

My favorite way to read a tomato is a tomato sandwich.

Oh, with mayonnaise, salt and pepper.

Oh, that.

You can't get any better than a good fresh tomatoes sandwich.

there's something in Alabamians about a tomato sandwich about home grown vine ripened tomatos that it just resonates with people in the state of Alabama.

It's an economic impact also But yeah, it's a huge part of our whole college football, tomato sandwiches, hamburger Society.

I have held a position with the Alabama Cooperative Extension here for working on nine years in the Etewah County area.

And I worked directly with the tomato producers in this area, whether it be Fresh Market or our commercial wholesale.

And, you know, we we represent about one out of every five tomatoes.

It's grown in the state.

if anybody has a garden, they're going to put a tomato in it and there's other things we'll grow.

But by far, most of my questions that I get during the year come from tomatoes.

There's people that will call and ask me all kind of things.

There's one gentleman I know that when he calls, he's always going to talk about cows, chickens, turf, grass.

But I know he's going to ask me about tomatoes before.

That's why he called.

And he's going to ask me about tomatoes before it's over.

It's tomoato to me is a key crop.

It's something that everybody at least grows and that's from a small farm up to the the bigger farmers and everybody wants a fresh tomato.

And getting it locally is a good thing to do.

And that's again, they're so popular.

freshness, well it was a big deal back then and it's a big deal now.

We're just able to keep them fresh longer.

So for that being done where we're at in Alabama or even the South, where there's a lot of diseases, tomatoes have a lot of insects and a lot of disease pressure that they don't have in other parts of the country.

Well, if we can ship them in from another part of the country, they wouldn't have those problems.

It's just less sprays and big deal with less pesticides, but it's a big deal with the crop does better in a way.

The South is tough to raise a tomato and we can do it.

But it is a lot a lot of management required for it.

So the farmers that do it, we're wanting to get that to the guy that's going to eat it.

And a lot of the farmers I work with, it's direct retail sales is what they're interested in doing because the wholesale depends on what part of the state you're in.

You've got to be big to do the wholesale and then you've got to have a big market.

so I'm in my forties now and I got started in produce probably when I was 14 or 15.

It was only summer job I could find in this area.

So I spent time in the fields back then and I used to work with a few growers just south of Slocombe and work right out there with field crews day in and day out.

We picked, packed and we hauled to wholesale markets like the one in Birmingham on Finley Avenue.

So we would pick all day, load the trucks and we would head to market at night and we would sell the next day there at Finley Avenue.

And we used to do a fair amount of wholesale type production like that.

Growers had anywhere from maybe ten acres all the way up to 30, 40, possibly 50 acres in the Slocumb area.

They were several hundred acres of tomato production, state tomato production back then, all going to the fresh market.

What I've seen in the last 16 years and I've been with the extension is I've seen the size of some of these farms shrink.

But in order to maintain profitability, we had to go to a retail type model.

So we're kind of doing more but with less acres, if that makes sense.

And so I've kind of seen it changed.

That sort of been the shift.

I think there's been a lot of reason for that, but that's just what we've had to do to adapt and to maintain profitability.

there's no sustainability without profitability.

And so obviously people got to make a living doing whatever it is.

But yeah, I think that lifestyle appeals to some young people, young families who are raising children.

I think that people can make a living doing it.

The people are continuing to do it.

And we've got some, you know, those areas that Slocombe, Sand Mountain, Chandler Mountain has some soil that really grows some great tomatoes and I think are unique to Alabama.

Inv 1972.

My father and my grandfather and one of my uncles bought this farm.

But prior to that, both sides of my family had been farming up here on other farms so that's 1972 actually ive been in the tomato business.

in high school, I was in 11th grade.

I had seven acres, which my dad had his crop, and I have seven acres.

My own individual crop.

Uh, my senior year, I had 25 acres and then after graduation, me and my dad became partners, and we grew 70 to 80 acres every year.

And then we slowly over the years increased and we're at 200 acres now.

when I was a child.

We grow tomatoes on the ground.

No stakes didnt tie em up no plastic.

Just pretty much.

You put them out there and pray for the best and later on.

Irrigation.

Overhead.

Irrigation came along and would greatly increase their yield.

But we still lost a lot to disease and sunburn and stuff like that because the plants were just too open.

And then we started staking them and tying them up which added a great deal of expense to growing the crop.

But you didn't lose as many to the disease and the sunburn and everything.

And then early to mid eighties, we went to plastic Culture, where we put down a plastic film with a drip tape under it.

And we fumigate soil for disease and weed control.

Plus, we stake and tie them up and it's just over the years we went from a few hundred boxes of acre yield to 2000.

2500 boxes like are yield right now.

There's a great deal of risk.

There's a great deal of expense.

There's a lot of families that work here that depend on this to make their living and not just us.

All of our workers.

We have around 25 families that work for us.

Most of them have been coming here for 20 years or more.

I've seen their kids grow up.

I've seen their grandkids be born.

I've been to their weddings.

I mean, it's it's for real business.

I mean, we normally ship right around 400,000 boxes a year, 350 to 400000 boxes a year in a four month period of time.

it's it's a huge insult to someone tells me that my quality is not good or that my it doesn't taste good.

That's just it just hurts you to the core with my says something like that because we do take great pride in having the best tomatoes.

In fact, we've had customers that's also been in business for several years that when we ship our tomatoes to them, they'll call and say, Hey, this is the best tomato Ive eaten in 20 years, 25 years and stuff like that.

So we take a great part because if the taste is not there and the quality is not there, repeat business is not there.

in the fifties and sixties, when everybody started growing quite as here in Slocomb, they were they were about 20 something families growing tomatoes.

And it I figure at the peak, at some point they were probably 1000 to 2000 acres of tomatoes here in Slocombe.

Now there's less than 100, probably less than 50, because almost all of those people have died off and a few have taken their places.

But at my last count, I think there were around seven or eight tomato growers here in Slocombe left.

And that's And those are and all of those except for us are fairly new growers.

We've got the us and the Sawyers and, and the whites and Perts and the mills and several of the Hendrick's and several others that I've probably forgotten.

But a lot of those are fairly newer growers and have just started over the last 10-15 years.

And after some of these older growers have died off and nobody's taken their place.

There's a there's a lot of good folks that put a lot of pride into Slocomb tomatoes and providing a, um, a good vegetable to to our community and into the area.

I work with my buddy Donnie Hendricks right down the road.

And his parents taught me a lot about the business.

I learned a lot from my parents.

But we've had we've grown tomatoes here at white farms for probably 20, 21, 22 years, something like that.

Aplin Farms has been around since 1952.

My grandfather started growing, tomatoes 1952.

He was one of the first Slocombe growers to start growing tomatoes here.

We're a four generation family farm We've been growing Slocombe tomatoes 60 years.

It's we just started out, just real small, just.

It was just.

We started out as a hobby, and then the hobby went into a profession.

So.

with a good crop, you can probably get around six, 700 acre boxes.

Yeah, this is my first time, To Sawyer's Produce we're on our way to Lake Eufaula for the weekend of the fourth, and I'm going to stop and get some of this.

This good stuff.

yeah, so in this area and I guess probably around the states, Slocomb has been known for their tomato production and that has been a very important crop for this area.

You know, the face of the slogan tomato has changed a little bit over the years.

We used to have a lot of really large scale farms, have a lot of wholesale type production.

Now we've transitioned more into a retail type situation.

But the slocomb tomato still plays a very important role for these growers.

It's a main staple crop for them.

Theyre the best around you take one and slice it up and put it on a piece of bread with some mayonnaise and salt and pepper and and have yourself a meal right there.

The Slocum tomato is sweeter.

The the best in the world, in my opinion.

And we're proud to be able to grow it.

I'm going to go with.

It's the soil There's nothing special about what we do.

We put a lot of time and care into to our product.

But it's the good Lord, bless the soil that makes the tomatoes.

Well, I would say it's a pretty important crop to us because it's one of our main sources of income here on the farm.

We've always considered ourselves a tomato farm.

We're well diversified Now that we grow over 200 varieties of fruits and vegetables here on the farm.

And as of the last few years, we are almost 100% direct to the public we quit shipping tomatoes.

We're not worried about Wal-Mart and all these other grocery stores and shipping to them anymore.

We do a lot.

We have a few local grocery stores that carry our tomatoes around Alabama and Georgia.

But ah, but like I said, it's very the tomatoes are very important to us because that's one of our main draw crops that draw people in here to buy the tomatoes and then buy other things My goal is one day my wife and I will not need this income.

We won't need this side income.

I've got a little boy who's two and a little girl who's six, and I would love to one day be able to grow this stuff and then hand the harvest off to them so that they can continue all the generations to come and provide tomatoes for people in the area and everywhere that we've had customers come in from all the parts, all parts of the country, it's amazing to see the customers that come in.

The pepper place Farmers Market has been going on.

We are in our 25th year.

It's amazing to have a certified market started off with just a few people moving tables and chairs around.

And now on Saturday, we're going to have 70, 80 farmers from all across the state with certified locally grown produce.

the tomatoes in Alabama are so amazing because our farmers are so amazing.

I don't know what the secret sauce is.

I'm a pure consumer.

I just know when I come here on Saturday, there's going to be red tomatoes, there's going to be yellow tomatoes, there's going to be brown tomatoes, brownish that are just as delicious as the red tomatoes.

So people come from all over for just that variety.

If you've only eaten a tomato from the grocery store, you haven't lived and you don't even know what the possibilities are.

And some days you'll come and they'll have a tomato that you've never heard of.

And I just get to bite it and see what it's like.

Me and my wife Payton are owner operators of Sandlin Farms, were located in Holly Pond, Alabama.

That's in Cullman County Were about 50 miles north of here.

I'm a third generation farmer.

My grandparents on both sides was in agriculture.

My family, my parents started probably in the early nineties.

They opened up a nursery and we started growing plants and selling them you know, locally through the years, they kind of got into the heirloom tomatoes through contacts in the Amish area from Etheridge, Tennessee.

That's how we got involved with it.

And my mom had a real passion for heirloom tomatoes, just kind of the collective thing of it, like antique roses.

She just started collecting different seeds and get stories behind it, and it kind of just took off from there, you know?

And right now, at this point time, we started with Brandywine was the first one we ever planted.

And now we grow like 25 different varieties of heirlooms each planting.

We got 13 acres.

We do about a acre and a half of just tomatoes through the season.

That's total season wise and we try to do a planting every month beginning in April, all the way through July and mid-July.

We're fixing to our plant, our last one now, and we'll try to do between 800 to 1000 plants every every time.

Heirloom varieties are making a comeback.

They're really hard to grow because they're susceptible to a lot of disease.

But that's the tomatoes that I grew up growing whenever I was a kid long time ago.

It's got that real strong acid taste.

These heirloom tomatoes are just ugly and delicious.

And we like.

But I really like the, if you're gong to.

make a sandwich I really like a big round tomato.

My favorite variety of heirloom would be probably a carbon.

I'm a partial to it I have good luck with it.

And that would be like this tomato right here.

You kind of got this a smooth shape in the top shoulders and theres your bottoms side, they can easily pick these out of a bunch because they're so glossy and smooth compared to the other ones.

All right.

We have consistently good luck out of that variety for us.

Yeah, you could talk to 10 different Farmers and you'll have ten different opinions on it, but for what works for us, that's my thing.

As we continue to try to feed so many people in this country and in the world, the market is an imperative.

The market brings opportunity for the farmer.

We know that farms have many farms have been bought out and we don't know what that what happens then?

We don't know what the quality of that food is here in Birmingham.

And when you have a certified farmer's market, you know you have quality food that's fresh, that has not been tampered with or modified in any way and is tremendously important for our health and safety as we continue to try to feed Birmingham, Alabama, and even the rest of the country.

We've been farming tomatos since 2005.

14 years.

Oh, we set out around most of the time, about 18,000 a year.

Plants in different settings.

You know, we set our last set now around July the 20th, try to have them all the way to Frost.

we we work five markets a week and we take them we pick them fresh, carry them to the market.

My wife and I got some girls at work for us and they take them to market and get them sold for us doing a really good job.

They really like our heirloom tomatoes.

We grow a lot of those.

Yeah.

I hope one day my my grandkids say they would like to continue the farm because me and my wife, we we worked very hard to build this farm and we hope they continue on with it.

Well, what makes the sand mountain tomato taste good is that our soil is a sandy loam that holds water really well, but it also drains really well.

So we have really the perfect growing conditions for tomatoes here.

And that's the case for really all of northeast Alabama, with a few exceptions.

we moved here in 2007, started planning strawberries, tomatoes, and eventually peaches.

But at the beginning, when we first started, we planted a lot of tomatoes.

At that time, we were doing 8 to 10 acres most years, and we really, really enjoyed growing tomatoes Everybody likes to have a big old tomato sandwich where you have a slice right out of the middle and make you a good tomato sandwich.

there's not a lot of tomatoes grown on Sand Mountain today, but there's still a lot of people that sell tomatoes and use that name, that Sand mountain name to sell the tomatoes.

If you go down in North Florida, you'll hear about sand mountain tomatoes around Birmingham, Montgomery.

Wherever you go, you're going to hear about sand mountain tomatoes.

Most of those tomatoes are actually grown on either Chandler Mountain or straight mountain, which those still have the same sand, the sandy loam that we have here.

But that's where actually most of the tomatoes are grown now.

But people still say these are sand mountain tomatoes.

So it's not specifically the geographic location of Sand Mountain, but it's the type of dirt that we have, the sandy loam that is especially good on Sand Mountain, Chandler Mountain and Straight Mountain.

the big thing for me in the fruit that I produce and my kids help me produce and they do a lot of the work is when I pick one up and I take a bite out of it and realize what the quality is and how good it is, how sweet it is, and knowing that that's the product I'm putting in other people's refrigerators and other people's tables at night and, you know, that's what they want to eat and they keep coming back.

And I it makes me proud that we make a product that is good enough to have the same customers for 17 years.

We're going to have the same people over and over.

we've planned to expand.

Well, we've.

We've bought another farm close to here.

We would like to build a permanent location here where this tent is, uh, a big, you know, a big market stand with a restaurant and, you know, like.

Like a lot of the places have.

We're just a little way off the state highway.

We feel like we could make it work here.

Um, so that's, that's my goal.

But, you know, it's taken us 17 years to get where we're at and we're doing pretty well now, you know, with peaches, tomatoes and other vegetables, strawberries.

But, uh, but our goal is to be a whole lot bigger.

I grew up on Chandler Mountain.

My parents started this farm about 1985.

We lost my mom and dad in 2018.

And so me and my two brothers, Chad and Philip, took over the business.

We were already working with our parents alongside them, but we took over the total operations of the business when they passed away.

I wouldn't wanted it no other way.

You know, starting out as a kid, you know, watching my dad, my uncles, you know, all the neighbors, even the older man around and stuff works.

Just what I always wanted to do.

Working for yourself, working hard, also doing something that a lot of people, you know, give up on.

That's not something that just sticks around all the time.

So it's a it's a passion, you know.

There's about 15 of us that are regular salaried and summer employees.

Most of those are family.

It's me, my two brothers, our spouses, children and cousins.

And then as far as our contract workers who do the picking and the packing of the tomatoes, there's about 40 contract workers.

And sometimes there may be a little more, little less, depending on what work is being done in the fields at that time.

So a lot of our workers have actually been here longer than I have.

My husband was very young when, you know, a lot of them started working out here and so they've really grown to be family.

We have a harvesting crew of about 40 to 50 people every year.

And it's a lot of families.

And so they do a really great job.

And it's a lot of, you know, it's all field packed and field picked.

So they do a lot of the hard work.

You know, they're out there seve They unload tomatoes every day here at the shed.

And everyone's just, you know, always in a great mood.

And you know, even even on hard days, you know, everybody's just, you know, always like family and gets along really well.

So that's a plus.

But At the end of every season, we have a huge dinner and we all, you know, just get together and have a meal and and we play music and a lot of them will karaoke and the kids will come out and, you know, we'll have pinatas and stuff for them to break and stuff.

So they're like family.

They take care of us.

We take care of them.

We plant somewhere between 100 to 120 acres per season.

It fluctuates because we do crop rotation.

So some fields lay out every year.

And so it depends on how many acres that field produces.

So on average, somewhere between 100, 120, something like that.

We generally pick between 200 to 250000 boxes a year.

Those boxes weigh 25 pounds Is what are put in them.

They can range from 25 to 27, but that's the label on the box is 25 pounds but it's over 200,000 boxes per year.

So far, this year is looking pretty good.

We have been fighting the heat and we've not had a lot of rain this month.

We do.

Our ponds are full so we can irrigate out of those ponds That helps to get water source.

We do need a good shower every now and then just to cool the plants down, wash them off It just helps keep the especially like small plants when they're first put in the ground that the heat can be really harsh on those.

So it's good to have a good shower just to kind of keep the plant perky and everything until the root system gets established in the ground.

It's not just putting a plant in the ground and water it.

There's just so much more to it.

And it's a lot of hard work.

And, you know, the the guys start and March cut and land plants are put in the ground in April and then we start picking generally the 1st of July.

This year was a little earlier because of the heat.

But it's just there's so many hours and so much labor that goes into creating a great crop.

It's got to be in your blood or there's just no way you can do it.

You got it.

You got to love it and have the work ethic to do it.

And then tying all that in together, you got to have a lot of experience, a lot of years of experience, a lot of knowledge.

You learn things as years go by and it gets tough sometimes, but you just you just keep doing what you love My favorite part is probably, you know, getting to see people come in and actually be excited about what we grow and what we have to offer here at Smith Tomato.

I love to hear people say that our tomatoes are the best, you know, not only quality wise, but taste wise.

That's very rewarding just because a lot of people nowadays, they worry about the quantity that they're picking, the boxes that they're yielding.

Yeah, that's very important.

But I believe that the taste has a lot to do with with what you're putting on people's tables.

the reason they're delicious is because the soil is real, Sandy.

So the soil doesn't hold on to the water as long as other types of soil.

So you don't have, you know, bacteria and things like that that can build up.

Also, the mountain, the elevation of the mountain causes our temperatures to be a little bit lower than off the mountain.

So it makes it during the summer months.

We have ideal temperatures for growing tomatoes.

something that a lot of people don't know is everything is done by hand.

They the plastic is layed by by hand.

The machine pulls the plastic, but they put dirt over the ends.

The we have a tractor that punches holes, but if we get too much rain, then those holes are punched in the plastic by hand.

The plants are planted by hand, They're pruned.

They're tied theyre staked theyre picked theyre packed.

Everything is done by hand.

And so a lot of people don't realize what all goes into it to create that crop.

And then your constantly having to stay on top of what the tomatoes need, how much water they need, how much fertilizer they're need.

There may be a pest or a disease you're fighting and figuring out what those tomatoes need in order to make sure that you have a good crop.

there's a lot of people that come from different places to come get tomatoes.

As for us, it provides several family households and then also our migrant workers.

You know, we, we have salespeople, we have, you know, so many people we do business with.

So it's such a huge impact of a business relation and so many ways.

And our product goes all over the Southeast.

So it's it's going into a lot of families, households, it's going to a lot of other businesses that distribute out.

So we're just glad to say we provide a good product and do a good job with it.

I think what makes a smith tomato great with us being a family business is that it's not just people that are working for you.

It's people that want your business to succeed.

They want us to do well.

They want us to grow.

They want their crop to be good.

And when everybody that's working for you has their heart in it, you can't go wrong.

And I just believe that's one thing that sets us apart from some other businesses, especially businesses that aren't family operated, because you have people that just come to collect their paycheck and they may not care of the outcome of the season.

And what we do.

Well, I've been here about going on 12 years now, and it's just multiplied on our retail and we of course we're gonna grow and more acreage on tomatoes.

But here on our retail side, it's grown drastically.

Um, it used to be my sister in law and my mother in law that used to run it and kind of sell a little bit of tomatoes.

They started off with probably a table of a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and now we're selling, you know, boxes and boxes of it every day.

And it's just because people are getting more familiar, of course, with the buy local support, local and social media has really helped us grow, too.

So just a bunch of us, you know, just just staying out there, you know, getting more people and kids, you know, involved with, you know, supporting local and shopping.

Local has really helped.

I would love to see our family business continue to grow.

We have grown a lot in the last five years.

Facebook has been a great tool because people share our videos like they share our post, and then that just it's more people that we get more exposure that we get, and the more exposure that we get, the more our business is going to continue to grow every single day.

We have people that come in that's never been here before.

They're a new customer and we love new customers.

And so I would love to see our business just keep growing so it could sustain our children and our grandchildren and to just keep that legacy go and that my parents created.

it's nice.

I'll get messages and people send me pictures of our boxes and different areas at the beach or different places.

You know, they're always saying, I seen your tomatoes somewhere or or even if I see somebody else's tomatoes, I say, I wish it was yours.

You know, it don't taste as good.

So it's good to provide a good product and people to be very, very happy with and love.

Coming up here also, you know, seeing the farm and getting a u-pick or coming in the produce stand and visiting these ladies here that help them out very well.

We do have a public market here at Smith Tomato.

And I would just like to invite everybody to come up and see us.

We're open seven days a week, 8 to 5.

Starting in August, we'll have a u-pick field and we do this with every field of ours.

Once it's no longer, you know, enough for us to send our trucks out to pick and we move on to the next field, we open field to the public.

You can bring five gallon buckets and we'll give you a pass to go out into our field and you can fill that bucket for $5.

So you're getting this these tomatoes for a dollar a gallon and on average, five gallon bucket will hold about 35 pounds of tomatoes.

So it's a great deal if someone does a lot of canning, if they re-sale, you know, just to make a little extra money and things like that.

And we have people that just love to go out into the fields and pick tomatoes.

And I always tell people to bring your children, your grandchildren.

They may complain when they're out there, but when they get older, it'll be a memory that they'll cherish forever.

at Smith Tomato, we do have a fall festival.

Every year is the first Saturday in October.

It's generally from 9:00 in the morning to two in the afternoon.

We do not charge admission, we do not charge parking.

We have anywhere from 50 to 100 vendors, food vendors set up.

We sell our produce, we sell pumpkins.

And it's just a great day to come out with your family and enjoy the day.

Every year it gets bigger and bigger and we'd love to see you.

I like to tell people, cut that middle man out is if you go to the grocery store and you see these high prices, there's a way that you can help with that come directly to the farm and shop local, because then you don't have those high prices in between people, you know, mark and stuff up so much and you're helping a family like ours, you know, continue the legacy of years to come.

Growing USA produce.

I'll say, long before COVID started.

There's some farm supplies I work with.

And and they'll say, you know, this year I sold twice as many seeds or twice as many transplants as I sold the year before to mailers and everything, twice as many.

And it's quite often.

And again, I'd say at least ten years ago, as I'm riding around places I've ridden around all my life.

Now we've got this plot plowed.

Now we got this plot plowed up, and there's more and more people doing this as a hobby and doing this well as another source of income.

And also, yes, you can sell it or eat it or give it away, but it'll make you real popular at church and everywhere.

Everywhere you go with your neighbors about giving produce away, but thats done.

And again, we've got a program to grow more, give more.

And that's really what it encourages.

You know, you grow some and then give it to somebody who don't have any.

first year, I got here, two things I tell my staff have done what I did smart and didn't realize I was smart at the time.

I'm hired really well and I've stood up for a few hours here.

The sweet grown Alabama dot org brand program because there was no way.

And there's places in Alabama you can go tonight to 3:00 in the morning about two miles from Mexico.

You buy strawberry from Arizona, you buy watermelons from California and drive back and sit on the side of the road and sell em.

And people would know any difference that that wasn't local.

And so we we get that branded program now a person can go it's a searchable database you just go sweet grown Alabama dot org so you want strawberries and I ask you zip code and it'll find the local stuff.

This is a beautiful event Yeah, I had something on here, but it's gotten bigger and bigger every year.

I just came over.

Everybody's shows up and we got enough.

But it's sort of the perfect time of the year for a lot of our homegrown products.

And so it's just a celebration of homegrown tomatoes, homegrown, everything.

We've got sweet corn here, all the stuff donated, whether it's BlueBell or Milo or Golden Flake, all of Alabama companies just stepping up and supporting us.

But yeah, we just got to keep that ground.

We can buy local and average food comes from Mexico, California, Arizonabeen on a trucks 17 18 days they probably ripen while in transport.

This just so much tastier, so much better for you and help from local farmers.

So it's really trying to encourage people to buy local.

Well, just an annual event that everyone looks forward to it is a good way to honor the Alabamians who devote their life for farming and keeping Alabama fed.

Well, I've came every year almost out here to the tomato thing, but I am a farmer by trade.

Senator second hand I recon.

And, you know, in the future, I'll announce I'm running for AG commissioner a way I've really been traveling the state already, going all over was in Hale County last night to be in north Alabama tomorrow night.

So we have two or three events every week.

But we support all this like we support everything else with farmers.

So sweet grown Alabama is our state's nonprofit agricultural branding program.

We have an online searchable database where consumers can go on and find products that they're looking for and just like tomatoes that they're serving in their corn that they're serving in there.

All of these wonderful things are grown in our state of Alabama.

So we serve those and we have tons of farmers out here at our pop up farmers market, just trying to get out in front of the consumer, telling them that we've got these wonderful things in our state.

So we started back in 2019 and our board of directors got together and said, You know what, We need a branding program to represent our awesome farmers in the state.

We've got the farmers, we've got the land.

Why are we not helping support them more?

So we were born in 2019 and we serve as a marketing program for those farmers.

we are members of Sweet Ground Alabama, and so we wanted to come and to share our wares with the public are the ones that were here for the tomato sandwich lunch.

This is year three for us.

So started out as a flower farm, and that is still my passion.

But now we have heirloom tomatoes, blueberries, peaches, blackberries, that kind of thing.

And Two years ago the Tennessee Ag commissioner just happened to be down, and it was just a coincidence we were having a tomato And he came over there and he came over two different times and said I just dont get this.

I told him commissioner hatcher I could be serving prime rib and have an open bar and I couldn't get 600-700 people But there's something about a tomato sandwich that just appeals to people.

It's we send tomatoes to them for their luncheon that they do each year as well as last week during Tomato festival week we, we took over 200 boxes to the state capitol for the legislatures and legislators and the governor and all of our government officials that week, which is what we do every year.

It's always at the end of June when the sweet corn is ready and we get the local tomatoes And yeah, I think it just resonates the hot part you know the dog days of summer and yeah it's amazing We have to have a Supreme Court justice sitting last year had a United States senator, a janitor, and then you know the guy that sweeps the parking lot all show up across the board.

Economics doesn't matter.

There's something about that tomato sandwich, and when I was campaigning I got to know more that people would not vote for me over if I discontinued the tomato sandwhich lunch than in any other area or or issue.

So it's amazing.

so we've been growing tomatoes for years.

Chandler Mountain is known.

Straight Mountain is known.

Our sand mountain guys are known for growing tomatoes.

We're sitting on top of sandstone plateaus.

That soil texture just provides a great environment for tomato production.

We do get ample rainfall at times, even though we are on plastic and drip irrigation.

Five years from now, you know, input cost has slowed down, fertilizers up.

You know, plastic is up, fuels up where, you know, there's a there's a point where the scale tilts and we're still being productive.

Now we're making good yields.

If weather cooperates and our insect populations can stay down and the input cost can stay low, then I see Alabama tomato production here in our area, you know, lasting for generations.

some farms are 50 acres.

Some farms are 100 acres, some farms are five and ten acres.

But the number of farms are shrinking.

They may still be a 50 acre farm in a 20 acre farm, but the number of farms has went down greatly, not near what it used to be.

the most important thing in the tomato field is your eyes.

You look it around and see what's there.

What's wrong, what we need to.

I want to say, Doctor, but what we need to manage and take care of whether itd be insect or disease.

We need to start early.

Well, a young person, a lot of times, if they.

They grew up doing that, that's what Daddy did.

And Granddaddy and all that, all the young people, maybe they don't want to do that and they don't continue on the farm.

They work somewhere else.

But it is hard to get labor, and that's a shortage all across the state.

And that's one reason why all the farms are quitting because they can't get the labor, they got the land, the got the equipment, they got the willingness, the got the demand for the product.

But having, labor, it's a hands on thing.

Every tomatoes picked by hand.

Yield yield is the biggest thing to try to make profit because there's so much money that goes in and on a per acre basis.

So you have to have the yield.

So we're we're maximizing everything we can do to try to produce the most we can to acre But at the same time, you got to have quality.

So you want to provide somebody with a good product.

And a lot of that is determined by whether how good something is going to be.

But we definitely got to keep the farms in business.

So, you know, I talk a lot with our senators and Congress leaders and stuff and whatever we got to do, we got to keep these farms going because we we need it here for generations to come.

So as soon as this is wiped off, we're we're at stake to some other country to to import our food.

And that's that's not a good place to be.

we've got to get more productive per acre again, we're some farms that were were 200 acres years ago might be 50 acres today, but they're more productive on 50 than they were on 200.

And that's what we're seeing with whether you growing cotton or corn or apples, it doesn't matter.

We're getting more productive on what we have.

we're going to continue to do those things.

We're continuing to put tomatoes.

We do variety trials on tomatoes.

We do that on every crop, but we do that on tomatoes, which ones are the most productive?

And it's not just how many they produce, but how many marketable fruit do we get from that crop.

So we're trying new ones all the time.

The tomatoes weve recommended now there's a disease tomato spotted wilt virus we got certain tomatoes that are resistant to that disease that we didn't have many years ago.

So by just planning this different variety of tomato, we now can make a crop where we're used to the plant would die that would be unproductive.

So there are things we're doing to be more productive on that same acre of land.

But labor is a shortage.

We still got a harvest by hand It's it's definitely shrinking for, say, and I say within the next 10 to 20 years, it is probably going to be half of what it is.

If it ain't, it's just because maybe corporations are starting to step in and take it up.

But it's harder and harder on family businesses.

Oh, that's why it's so important to support local, you know, come to the farms, you know, if you ain't coming to the farm, support a produce stand that buys from these farms.

You know when you even if you go into Wal Mart, you know, look for the produce that says grown in the US, whether it's Alabama, Tennessee, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

Supporting your American farmers is going to provide food security for generations and generations to come.

So it's very important to do So the importance of the farm, the farmers market to our farms as they are raising tomatoes and lettuce, etc., it gives them opportunity to have another avenue to sell their wares, so to speak.

A farming is hard.

Family farms are shrinking in our country, and if they don't have a place that makes sense to deliver and connect with community to deliver the product, it will make it harder for them Well, we have the willingness to do it.

There's people willing to grow it.

Getting the labor that somebody has got to figure out how we can get the labor to do that.

But we have the knowledge.

We just don't.

to me, the labor, the the big thing that's putting us behind, a few years ago it was not difficult.

You know, five, six years ago, we had an abundant work supply.

Yet labor is our major obstacle now, getting enough labor that actually want to get out and do field work at any price.

It seems like every year we lose another grower because they kind of age out or heaven forbid they pass and so that younger generation come up.

I think it's important to encourage the younger generation to get involved in agriculture.

You know, the average age of the farmer nationwide is continuing to increase.

I believe this on up in the mid sixties now.

So I think for for agriculture to survive in this country and this area locally, we have got to have some new growers coming on board.

And face it, there's a plenty of opportunity out there to sell Oh, there's enough market out there.

You know, if everybody in this area really supported local production, we couldnt produce enough.

And you know how people are drawn to crowds.

So I think having more people in the business is actually good for the industry as a whole.

Some may view it as competition, but I really don't I think it creates an awareness for the industry any time you can increase that awareness, you increase those market potentials for that industry.

So, you know, we do have a few new growers and I do get some from time to time, but unfortunately not quite as many as I wish we did have.

Well, you know, there's still a lot of work involved in growing any of our fruit and vegetables.

And so, you know, I guess with the labor shortages and everything in Alabama is obviously impacted the tomato industry and we've seen a move to more young people want to move to rural areas, we believe, and want that lifestyle.

And of course, the fruit and vegetable kind of things that a person could have a job and still have a cash crop that they can come in and work in the evenings.

My niece is 23.

She's been working with us for three years.

She loves it.

She works hard at it.

She believes in it.

She plans on carrying on.

My daughter is 14.

She says she's planning on carrying on.

And she works in it daily.

She's a big part of it.

She goes everywhere I go.

So she's learning all the ins and outs of dealing with the people, the vendors, the customers.

And she actually does.

When we unload our tomatoes at night, she goes on each truck and writes each one of them a receipt for what they pick every night and everything.

They both love it.

I believe that my children will stay on the farm as long as we stay in operation.

They they love being out here.

They want to be out here.

My oldest is almost 24.

My youngest is almost 19.

And so they both work here six days a week.

You know, they love that.

They love the farming.

And my oldest daughter did go to college for a couple of years, but she decided to stay on the farm.

So they they love the family farm.

They love the atmosphere.

Our customers and just being around the family.

So what I have seen in the AG industry, both commercial vegetable production, cattle row crops, is you had that generation that was on the farm that's what they knew.

They were farmers, they were still farmers and they pushed their children to go into industry.

And then that generation went and learned a trade.

Then they said, Hey, to their kids, go to college, you don't want to work and sweat here and go to college, so go to college, get a degree and and work that round.

So now you have both parents working or you may have a single mom or dad working.

You've got grandkids now that have been on the farm, you know, hanging out with their granddad like I did.

And and that has instilled a passion for these second, third generations to come back to the farm.

And we're seeing a lot of the grandkids coming back to the farm or great grandkids coming back to the farm, wanting to run the operation.

for some of these younger growers, I encourage them to get out and just talk with some of these guys that have been in the business, the ones that are successful, they will tell you everything they know.

There's no secrets in their game.

They want to help you.

They want to encourage you.

They want to see young blood, if you will come into it.

And those growers know there's a difference between knowing and doing so.

They don't mind.

They'll share every bit of knowledge, information, and there's just a wealth of knowledge and information to be gathered from those guys, things that they can share with you that they've learned over a lifetime.

You know, a lot of our growers that are still in it, they've been in it 30, 40, 50 years.

And that's just stuff you can't get out of a textbook.

So I encourage younger growers any time that you have the opportunity to sit down and speak with these guys, stop by to talk to them.

Sure, maybe not in a rush of produce season, but catch them early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

Find them close to the coffee pot and just pick their brains and just listen to what they have to say.

I think they can really, really help you along the way.

And like I say, the successful ones are proud to do it.

They're glad to do it.

I pulled up to a farm year before last and the comment was, if you've got a jug or something that can help me Ill pay you $1,000,000 for it.

And so we had some insect problems going on.

Correct.

Identification of the insect is what needed to happen.

And so that was rejection.

The trucks, loads of tomatoes, you're talking wholesaling at anywhere from 15 at the low end of the market to $28 a box.

And you've got, you know, a thousand boxes on a truck and multiple trucks getting rejected because of just a discoloration, some gold flaking on a tomato because consumers buy with their eyes.

That's why we put pictures on menus and everything else.

So one little small insect can can change hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So we our area, we rely on the St Clair County, Blount County Etewah county, all that's revenue.

And you know, that's workers, families and that's that's pretty much, you know, we cut out those jobs.

It puts a strain on us.

we're an extension of a land grant college for me, I work for Auburn University, so whatever we can learn at college through research, they'll pass on to me.

I pass that on to a homeowner or a farmer.

And also it's just as simple as calling your local extension office and saying, I got a bug on my tomato.

Well, I need to know what kind of bug so now we'll take a picture of it and text it to me or something.

We do that all the time.

We have a phone app that you can go to and it'll add the a lot of insects and diseases.

Well, for you and I'll and that's very handy.

That really helps.

There's no shortage of information.

We've got videos there's a farming and basics phone app but there's a farming and basics course we have is free online.

We have our hands on tomato classes all over the state where we talk about insects, disease, weeds, the fertility or nutrition that the tomato needs to grow to be more productive.

when they should be picked irrigation mulching We talk staking and we talk about all those practices.

We have face to face classes.

We have classes online to cover that.

We've got publications are all this is written down.

There's videos that you can download and look to learn.

So there's no shortage of information if you're looking for it.

I'm a people person and we can look at numbers and and talk about that.

But my thing is, if I can make that more of a qualitative impact than quantitative is, that's where my goal is because we are dealing with people, we're dealing with families.

And that's what the extension service is all about, is making that impact, taking information from universities to the people, applying it to what they're doing.

And I've been on about nine years here, so nine years within Etewah county extension that I'm making those relationships, you know, I want them to trust me.

I'm going to provide them with good research based information that is going to help them be more productive.

I try to stay up with what's going on in the markets and, you know, kind of direct them towards some avenues that they can they can push different products to whether it may not be as esthetically pleasing, you know, to the consumers I have.

But yet it may can go into sauce production or, you know, instead of just having to rail dump it somewhere.

And that's that's not good.

So relationships are key.

I treat them like family.

You know, if they need something, our our times on the door, say 745 to 430, But we're here.

My phone's on.

They had my number.

They know they can call.

They know they can.

If they need to ask about a product, ask about a variety, ask about production issues, or just call and vent about something that's I tell them I'm there.