(energetic music) ♪ Hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

They say Georgia has the best peaches on the face of the earth.

They're wrong.

There is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, that beats a peach from Southern Illinois.

Today's guest, Austin Flamm, is gonna tell us all about that.

Welcome, Austin.

- Hi, how you doing?

- You grow peaches in Southern Illinois, don't ya?

- That's right, that's right.

- Now, my wife and I went to school at Southern, and I tell you, that's when we discovered that, holy cow, what?

Why didn't we know about this stuff?

You guys, nobody talks about it.

They always talk about Georgia and all the stupid places.

Why doesn't Southern Illinois get recognition for peaches?

- I think it does in its own light.

I mean, if you've tried a peach from Southern Illinois, you know; if you know, you know situation.

- [Rob] If you know, you know, exactly.

- But we can grow a peach to rival any peach in the world, and I stand by that.

- Rival?

You can beat 'em.

- We can beat 'em, yeah.

- You're from Cobden, Illinois.

- That's correct.

- Where is that?

- Far Southern Illinois.

We are 15 minutes south of Carbondale in the part of Illinois that is not flat.

- You get a little goofy down there.

(both laughing) How long of a drive to Peoria?

- Four hours and some change.

- Yeah.

Well, we appreciate you coming.

We interviewed you on the XM show, and we're definitely excited to get you up here, what you and your family are doing.

Is it the largest orchard in Illinois?

- Yeah, as far as just orchards are concerned, we are the largest orchard.

That's like being the biggest fish in a small pond, though.

There's not a lot of orchards in this state.

- Ah, there's enough though, isn't it?

- There's a lot of agritourism.

We're more on the commercial side.

We're a wholesale orchard.

- Okay, so like, on your orchard, people aren't, you know, riding the train and feeding goats and stuff.

- Correct.

We have a retail farm market where you can come buy our product.

We serve seasonal desserts, all using family recipes.

But ultimately, the majority of our business is done through shipping it across the Midwest.

- Okay.

What all do you raise?

- We do strawberries, peaches, apples, and then we do various vegetables.

It really depends on the year, the markets, the climate, on our decision on what vegetables we're growing.

- Is there a bread and butter vegetable?

- Used to be zucchini squash, randomly enough.

We were good at growing it and there was a big market for it, but in more recent years we've scaled way back on that.

It's hard to compete with foreign produce coming in.

So... - Really?

- Really, I'd say strawberries, peaches, and apples are where our bread and butter's at.

- Is it coming from like Mexico or?

- Correct.

- Okay.

- They bring it in during the American growing season.

It's cheap.

They can get it in here cheaper than we can even raise it.

- Oh, really?

- Yep.

- Maybe you should buy it from them.

(both laughing) So you grew up on a... do you say you're a farmer or do you say the farm, or?

- I call myself a farmer when people ask what I do, but I feel like a lot of days I do less farming and more just business.

But yeah, I'm a farmer, but I grew up on the farm.

- You tell your wife, "Hey, I'm going to the farm."

Or do you always say orchard?

- Farm.

- Okay, gotcha.

- I call it the farm.

- Yeah.

You grew up on the farm then?

- Yep, yep, born and raised there.

- You raised picking apples and all that stuff.

- I've done everything at least once on our farm.

And let me tell you, people think going out and picking apples or peaches, or especially vegetables or strawberries, is something you have to bend over.

They think that's fun.

It is extremely hard work.

- It is, it's a lot of fun for about five minutes.

- Yeah.

- And you're like, "I haven't even got a tenth of this tree done."

- And when you're picking something like strawberries, the problem is you eat 'em as fast as you're saving them.

So you work for 10 minutes, you only have five minutes to show for it.

- Yeah, but you can only eat so many.

That's the first 10 minutes.

So after that... - Sure, sure.

- You're probably full, aren't you?

Yeah.

(both laughing) What is, is there a bread and butter?

The strawberries, the peaches, the apples.

- Yeah, I'd say that's what it is.

From our retail standpoint, the strawberries and the peaches are unmatched.

The apples are where we start to slow down, from the commercial side, the wholesale side, I think our peaches are probably what takes the cake from that.

- Apples, that's a funny business.

They kind of oversupplied, aren't they?

- They are.

And there's a lot of apples available year round.

What makes a strawberry and a peach extremely unique is the fact that it's still very seasonal.

You can't go to just any store and find a peach in January, but you can do that with an apple.

- Do you make cider?

- We don't make our own cider.

But we do have cider there at the farm.

- Okay.

Do you make the hard cider?

- I've attempted that at home before.

- I bet you have.

(laughs) - It did not go well.

- Well, it's easy.

You could just pour a little into cider, right?

- Yeah.

- And just sell that.

- There you go.

(both laughing) - With this, I mean, and sitting up here, this smells incredible.

These are your strawberries.

- Correct.

- Like when were they picked?

- Yesterday morning.

- Oh, so they're fresh.

- I came to Peoria yesterday, and I had to ride all the way up here with those, so I've been smelling them for like a day now.

- It smells fantastic.

Can I try one?

- Of course.

- Okay.

Is there any secret to eating them or just eat 'em?

- Enjoy.

(laughs) - Mm, that is good.

Now, okay.

All right, bear with me.

Okay, just bite it in half.

So yours aren't empty.

- Correct.

And they're red all the way through.

- A lot those strawberries you get, it's like empty inside.

This thing is like delicious.

- Correct.

A lot of strawberries you'll find in the store, they still have the green tip on 'em here.

When you bite into 'em, there's a white center rather than a red center.

That's 'cause they're picked prematurely.

They're not ripe.

That's that way they can ship and have longer shelf life.

But we allow our strawberries to stay on the vine till they're ripe, ready to eat.

We pick 'em fresh, we sell 'em fresh.

And in one regard, you don't have as long of a shelf life, but who needs that when you're gonna eat 'em anyways?

- Yeah, no kidding.

You want one?

- Yeah.

- Thank you.

That's delicious.

- It is good.

It's a lot different than you get at Kroger or whatever.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

- I have a three-and-a-half-year-old son, and he's a little bit of a fruit snob, believe it or not.

- Well, I would be too.

- And we went to a friend of his birthday party, and they had a fruit tray there last week.

- [Rob] Oh, no.

- And the fruit tray included strawberries, but he, in front of everybody, refused to eat the strawberry because he said it was still green and not ready.

- [Rob] I mean, come on.

- Everyone laughed, but... - You were a little bit proud.

- I was very proud of him.

(both laughing) - And do you guys have a kitchen then?

- We do.

We have a bakery on our farm.

We have a jam processing line on our farm.

- Are these the same?

- Yeah, they're the same, different sizes.

We make all that ourself.

Kind of... - Shh.

(jar pops) - Oh, that's a good sound.

- There is it.

Okay, what were you saying before you rudely interrupted me?

- We do a lot of seasonal desserts on our farm.

We do strawberry shortcake, we do peach cobbler, apple pie, apple dumplings.

All of it's my grandmother's recipes, including this jam.

The old way of doing it was she would make it on a stove, stir by hand, and now we're upgraded to busting it out in a more industrial way, but still the same quality taste.

Pretty good, isn't it?

- Don't talk to me right now.

Dude.

Seriously?

It's not Smucker's.

- No.

- That's Flamm jam.

- Clam, okay.

I could have done without that name.

Clam jam?

- Flamm.

- Oh, Flamm, okay.

I was like, yeah, let's not get to clams.

You wanna try some?

Yeah, come on up here.

Let's get him set up here.

Right here we go.

Look at this, a little bit on there.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah!

There you go.

Don't spill any.

(both laughing) Did you get enough?

(both laughing) I don't wanna, do you want some?

Okay, all right.

I'll just have yours, and we'll have this jar done in a minute, yeah.

And the ingredients to this, are they pretty simple?

- Strawberries, pectin, sugar.

- Hmm.

What happened to the red dye or whatever they use?

- That's all strawberries.

This is your red dye right here.

Chop 'em up.

Cook 'em.

There you go.

- I'm not even joking.

I mean, the stuff you get in a grocery store, it's like a whole different product to that.

- It's non-comparable.

Stuff is fresh too.

During strawberry season, we're making it virtually every day.

- Like, when was this made?

- On May 6th.

So like two weeks ago.

- Yeah, in the grocery store, you'd have to look at a year.

- Yeah, correct.

- Do you want a cracker?

I was rude.

- No, I'm okay.

- You sure?

- I'm positive.

All right, you probably have... when we raised hogs, you know, pork chop is like the best thing in the world, but you got to a point where like, I don't want to eat pork anymore.

Are you that way with strawberries?

- Oh, yeah.

I mean, strawberries are great because they're real quick snacks.

They're not messy; you know, a peach, you gotta take a shower after you eat one of our peaches.

But the strawberries, I can just snack on them all day.

What really gets me in trouble at the farm, worse than the fruit, is the ice cream machine.

- Oh my gosh.

- You have to have a lot of self-control to be around an ice cream machine every day.

- And is it just like at any time of the day you can go up there and put a cone under there and... - Technically I could.

And that's what I'm saying; it's hard to stay away.

- Do you ever just get under there and, you know?

- I haven't; the health department wouldn't like it if I had.

I wouldn't tell you if I did.

- Well, wink wink.

(both laughing) What, just vanilla?

- Yep, vanilla soft serve.

It's excellent ice cream though.

Goes good on all of our stuff we make, so... - So tell me about the tour, the Strawberry and Peach Tour.

- Okay, so a few years ago we started what we were calling the Flamm Orchards Peach Tour.

Essentially what it is, we have a lot of demand, especially through the state of Illinois for our products.

So we put 'em on the back of a refrigerated truck, we take off and hit the road.

We're making stops in places like Peoria, Springfield, Bloomington, Champaign, Kankakee, all of Chicagoland.

And we're selling peaches direct to consumer, straight from us, no middle man involved.

And Peach Tour has been a great success the last few years.

So this year we started a Strawberry Tour, same deal.

Not going quite as far from home, but our Peach Tour's coming up this summer.

We're gonna be busy every weekend of July and August selling peaches out on the road.

For any of your listeners that want to come see us, look us up online: flammorchards.com.

We're getting ready to release the schedule for our peach tour, and you can place a pre-order, reserve a box, and we'll have it there for you on the date we show up.

- So is it just, I don't know, do you park in like a Walmart parking lot, and do people know that you're gonna be there?

- It started off, we partnered with Tractor Supply Company.

They're real easy to work with.

There's a lot of their locations scattered about, so we would use TSCs.

Now it's evolved to we're going to towns that maybe don't have a TSC.

So we're looking at different locations, partnering with small family businesses.

Pretty much, if you'll allow us to park there for two hours and sell peaches, we'll come.

- Do you come to Bradford?

- Bradford?

No.

- What do you mean, no?

You don't want to come to Bradford, Illinois.

- Where's Bradford, Illinois at?

I'm from Southern Illinois.

- This interview just took a sharp left.

Yeah, no, I would not, my hometown, but it's probably not gonna... - You ever heard of Christ Orchard up here in Peoria?

- Oh, yeah.

- They buy our peaches and sell 'em.

- Do they?

- Well, I'm good friends with the people who own it.

- Yeah, we've had 'em on here.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Molly and Kurt and all of them.

- Much better interview than right now.

(both laughing) - Well, I'm just saying if you want our peaches, go see them because they get 'em and flip 'em.

They're great people.

- Do you do any of like, I don't know, the fundraising things?

I've seen like Farm Bureaus, they'll do like, you know, you get your oranges or whatever.

Do you ever do any of that?

- We actually this week have just supplied a few different high schools, FFA chapters.

They do fundraising by selling flats of strawberries.

And then we pretty much, they take in the orders, we deliver the berries, you know?

Yeah, we have done that.

We don't do a ton of it, but yeah, we do.

- So do you go out to the tours?

Are you the one selling?

- Yeah, so there's five people who make up the ownership of Flamm Orchards, and one of us is on every tour.

We feel like... - Oh, who's all involved?

- It's myself, my cousin Parker, my dad, his dad Mike, my dad's name is Jeff, and then their cousin Karen.

- Which one's the hardest to work with?

- I'm gonna just say that my dad Jeff is, because he's my dad.

- Okay.

- The way it works though, is I work a lot with my uncle, and my cousin works a lot with my dad.

Kind of divide and conquer, separate us.

And our working and home relationship is much better because of it.

(both laughing) - You know, working with family, it can be a blessing, also challenging.

Are you guys finding a way to stay copacetic?

- Oh, yeah.

I have a degree in agriculture, and I'll never forget one time in school, in an ag business class, the professor was talking about how it's very important to stay away from friends and family anytime you do business.

So what did I do?

I'm friends and family with everybody I work with.

- My question is though, you're out there and you grew this stuff, and now you are standing face to face with the people that are buying it, and I don't know, I mean, these are all perfect looking.

I mean, but you know, every once in a while you get, I don't know, a bruise or something like that, and people get so upset and so offended.

How do you handle that?

Because it would drive me insane.

- I mean, obviously we get an occasional complaint, but honestly, it's extremely rewarding to be face to face out on the road, like on our tour, selling to people.

Because I don't know that I've had a complaint this year on the strawberries to my face while outselling them.

It's nothing but, "Oh my gosh, these are so good."

You know, we will go and set up places for two hours.

Somebody will get there right when we open, buy something, and before we're done, they're back to buy more.

- Really?

- Because they've gone home and tasted 'em.

Oh, yeah.

- Well you know, especially my wife makes a strawberry rhubarb jam, which is... this is heaven, but her heaven has an upstairs, right?

You know, it's perfect, but it's amazing to me 'cause she'll go out and go to the strawberry farm, and she'll pick all these flats and that, and then she has like, you know, this much jelly.

It just takes so much to make the jams and the jelly.

Is that what people are finding then when they're buying from you?

- Yeah, I'd say so.

I mean, I think a lot of times what people do is they're hesitant if they're gonna like 'em, so they'll buy a quart and they go and snack on a few of 'em.

They decide, "You know what, I can actually eat a flat of these."

So they're back for more.

- Do you think that you could like show up to the same place next week?

- Yeah.

- Ever thought about that?

- We, on our tours, make a hard effort to try and stop everywhere at least twice because we want to offer not only options, if you're not available one day, you have the other day, but if you've got it once, it's pretty well known that you're gonna want to have it again.

So we try to come back to you at some point.

- Your artificial dye is getting on my fingers.

- Yeah.

(Rob laughing) - So you mentioned you went to college and got a degree in ag.

Was the plan to always come back to the family orchard?

- Ultimately, I think that was the plan.

I was fortunate because I had an orchard to come back to.

My parents really pushed me to go to school.

You know, they didn't care what I did; it was more or less just go get an education, explore what's out there.

I was fortunate in the sense that I had a great college experience, met a lot of friends, got to do an internship, worked for a company outside of the area, and ultimately I decided I wanted to come back to the farm.

That's what my family's always done.

I felt, I don't wanna say obligation, but it was, I wanted to carry on the family legacy, and myself and my cousin Parker are the only two that were in line to do it, and it's what we wanted.

- So the family raising the crops is one thing, but moving into more of the kitchen side, how unnerving was that to make that kind of investment?

- You know, we've been doing the kitchen side for about 25, 26 years now, since about the year 2000.

And it's grown exponentially in that time.

We keep seeing it trending upward.

So it was a big investment to move into a lot of the bigger scale stuff that we're doing now, but it was a confident decision.

We know it's going to work; it's just a matter of time seeing it come to life.

But the name of our game right now is value added.

'Cause as our inputs in agriculture go up, and in my world, everything we do is done by hand, so one input that row crop farmer doesn't have that we do on the scale that we do is our labor input.

We're employing 120 people.

- Cool.

- And that's a big payroll every week.

- Yeah.

- So... - Where are you, H-2A?

- Yes.

About 86 or so of them are H-2A.

The rest are local.

- I am pretty surprised you got that many local, because we've interviewed a lot of people like you, and they said they just can't do it.

- We're getting far closer and closer to that every year.

We have local people in management style roles on the farm.

We have some local ladies who work in our packing house that help pack and ship the produce.

And then our retail is entirely staffed locally, and our kitchen and everything.

But I mean, if picking, packing our product, even operating tractors, really anything, our truck drivers are all H-2A now.

- So H-2A is the migrant worker, for the people that don't know.

I've heard that that can be a lot of red tape and a lot of hassle.

What are you finding?

- (laughs) Yes.

- Okay.

(laughs) - It's extremely expensive.

It's a big time headache.

There's a lot of paperwork.

Everybody works under a contract.

Logistical nightmare, trying to get everybody here when you need them, how you need them.

They have to go through a consulate and get interviewed to get up here, and that can take days.

But at the end of the day, regardless of how much of a headache that H-2A is on the employer, in our situation, we'd have been outta business 20 years or more ago without it.

It's vital.

It's the lifeline of our business.

- Is it generally the same people coming up?

- Yes.

We've had guys that have been coming with us since we started it in 2007.

They're going on 20 plus years.

We've seen the next generation of them coming.

Their kids are coming.

We have a few different father-son duos that work at our farm right now.

- Married to Jessica.

Where'd you meet her?

- Correct.

- Through Farm Bureau in Chicago.

At a meeting up there?

- At the annual meeting?

- Yep, yep.

- You met her at the meeting or in a bar?

- I met her at the meeting, we went to the bar.

- As of "Howl at the Moon"?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I know the deal.

(both laughing) That's surprising because that bar, you can't hear.

Was that the thing, you had to pull her in close 'cause you can't hear?

- Well, I wasn't nervous 'cause she didn't know what I was saying.

I just sat there and smiled and shook my head yes.

I'm still doing that now.

- Whatever works.

- That's why I'm happily married.

- She was a manager?

- Yeah, in Jackson County.

I'm on the board and involved in Union County, an neighboring county down south.

- Ooh, you stole the neighbor county manager, eh?

- Listen, she quit the Farm Bureau and moved on to a different career path after I met her.

I've always said it's because she stayed in just long enough to find a good looking farmer like myself.

- Whatever helps you sleep at night, right?

- That's right.

- Okay.

And two kids.

- Yep.

How old are they?

- Henry is three and a half, and Josephine is about two months.

- Okay.

And do they get out there and pick strawberries?

- Henry?

Absolutely.

And he thinks his sister can, but she's two months old and she doesn't do much of anything right now.

But according to Henry, she definitely could.

That's been a lot at our house.

- What's that mean to you?

I mean, you grew up on Flamm Orchard, and now you had the next generation coming up.

What's that mean when you see 'em out there?

- It's the greatest accomplishment of my life.

I'm getting to provide a lifestyle to my children that I had that so many people would do anything to have.

You know, growing up I didn't have the neighborhood kids and bicycles that we run around with.

I had my four wheeler and a farm, and I never got bored.

I played outside.

I never wanted to be into the video games and things.

And that's so important to me in my life and raising my kids, and you know, I want my family to have that same experience.

So I'm happy to be able to do that.

- You literally are living what a lot of people think their dream is.

They wrote that song about I want to move out to the country and eat a lot of peaches, right?

- Yeah, "Presidents of the US" or whatever.

- People want to do what you do.

What don't they know?

I mean, what's the hard part about what you're doing?

- The lifestyle is that of a lot of hard work and years and years and years of commitment.

I think it's sad the state of our ag community right now in the sense that if you grow up and you go to school and you decide, "Hey, I wanna be a farmer," if you don't already have a farm to go back to, it is extremely difficult to get into agriculture, and especially difficult to get into a specialty type of agriculture because there's less resources available.

You know, this is something, I'm the sixth generation of my family to steward our land and take care of the business, and you know, I look back at generations before me and how much hard work was put in to get it to where it's at today.

And I feel like it's, you know, my duty in a way to pass that on to the next generation if they so wanted as well.

- We started the XM show.

I challenged Emily, my wife, to get first generation farmers 'cause there are none.

- Yeah.

- And then she found them, and I'm like, no, these aren't farmers.

These are hippies and stuff like that.

But no, I mean, they're making money, they're figuring it out.

It's just different than what you and I think, but they are doing it.

The tour, what are some of the local areas that you're coming to?

- Populated areas.

So you're talking Peoria, Bloomington, DeKalb, Springfield, Kankakee, Champaign.

I would encourage everybody, follow Flamm Orchards on Facebook.

Go visit our website.

Because of the logistics of making that tour happen, we haven't released the dates and schedule yet, but it is coming soon.

It'll be easy to find out as soon as it's out there if you follow us on Facebook, check out our website, whatever.

- Yeah, and I will say these are not what you get in a grocery store.

Not that there's anything wrong with it, but you know there is, right?

It's healthy, healthy, but just the taste definitely does not compare.

You get one, man, we'll do a little cheers.

- Cheers.

- Yeah.

- Don't screw this up.

- Don't mind if I do.

- Awesome.

- That's how they're supposed to be.

- We got like 30 seconds left.

I don't know what to do now.

- Just eat strawberries, I guess.

- You gonna eat strawberries for, yeah.

- My son eats them.

You have to essentially take his shirt off and hose 'em down because he's got juice going all the way down to his elbow.

I love it, but I don't even care.

He just doesn't know when to stop, you know?

- There is no good way to eat a peach though, right, without getting it all over you.

- I mean the best... - And you got a beard too.

You gotta be a mess.

- Yeah, I mean, like I said, you gotta take a shower when you're done eating one of our peaches, but well worth it.

- Where'd you put your stem?

- Right here.

- I got that.

- Didn't know if I was allowed to throw mine.

- Dude, this is probably the last show we're gonna do here.

(both laughing) All right, Austin Flamm from Cobden, Illinois.

Flamm Orchards, make sure you go check 'em out.

Your Facebook, and then what was the website again?

- Flammorchards.com.

- Yeah.

Austin, I wanna thank you for making the trip up.

I know it wasn't easy.

I know you are a busy guy, and I know it's your busy time of the year, but thanks for coming up and sharing your strawberries and your stories.

It is a great story of agriculture success.

It's a great story of how a family can raise a family on a farm and be successful and all that.

And you're modest in a way that you're not talking about all the hard work and the heartache that comes along with it, but it's very cool.

Austin Flamm, thank you very much.

Everybody else, catch you next time.

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