(upbeat music) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

Where do you get your produce?

Do you get it at the grocery store?

At the old Walmart?

Or do you get it from an actual farmer?

Today we're gonna be talking with Randy Starnes, a produce farmer.

You're from Chillicothe, or just north of there, is that right?

- Yes, sir.

- [Rob] Okay, is that where you're from originally?

- Yeah, I grew up there just north, or west of Chillicothe, about five miles.

- Okay, did you grow up on that farm?

- Yes.

- [Rob] Okay, were you growing produce?

- My grandfather grew watermelon, cantaloupe, and he had a small peach orchard and apple orchard.

- Oh, okay.

And did you know, growing up this whole time that this is what you were gonna be doing as a career?

- No, because, you know, things changed, and actually, my grandfather committed suicide- - Oh.

- Because he had arthritis so bad and he knew he was gonna lose the farm, with things going on, and that's something we should talk about.

There's so many farmers commit suicide more than anybody else.

- It is an epidemic, yeah.

- Because of things like that, you know.

But anyway, so my dad just had a small part of it and he grew vegetables every year, you know, I mean, we do canning.

My mother canned a lot.

- [Rob] So for yourselves.

- For ourselves, 100.

You know, you're talking about a 100 green beans, a 100 tomatoes.

- A 100 jars or cans?

- Jars, well, I mean, we- - They aren't that good.

- Five kids.

- Oh.

- Boys.

We ate the heck out of stuff.

Good way to save money.

Yeah, she did.

(Rob laughing) And so, anyway, long story short, you know, we did that.

Then in the '80s, my brother come across this property that was 10 acres, and it was about six acres tillable.

Well, nothing was tillable.

- Yeah.

- It was an old greenhouse.

It used to be Peter's Floral years ago, and when he bought it, it was in the wintertime and he seen all these mounds of stuff out there and he thought it was dirt.

And after the snow melted, it was all plastic.

- Oh.

- And so- - Like the old houses?

- All the greenhouses that was out there.

- And they were junk or just- - Just junk, yeah.

- Okay.

- The greenhouses weren't even standing anymore.

They took all them down, just left a plastic, and then it was all brush trees everywhere.

So he rented bulldozers, started bulldozing things in and cleaning things out.

Had to clean out, they had concrete strips through all the greenhouse, he had to take all the concrete out so it was about a five-to-six-year cleanup.

- Oh geez.

- Just to even it, but my brother's the one that had the dream to do the stuff, same thing my grandfather did.

So when we started, we pretty much did, we had about 30 peach trees and, well, he only grew watermelon and cantaloupe- - [Rob] Okay.

- And just a few vegetables for ourselves.

But we grew out watermelon and cantaloupe, and we sold 'em to the mom and pop grocery stores.

- [Rob] Gotcha.

- And after that, a few years ago, about eight years, seven, eight years ago, nine years ago, my brother got cancer and so we stopped doing everything.

We quit and then after he passed away, there was about two years, it was tough for me to even go out to the farm, you know, 'cause he wasn't out there, and my wife finally- - It wasn't the same without- - No.

- Yeah.

- No.

And so my wife finally said, "Look, this is costing us a lot of money in taxes.

We have to do something or you're gonna sell it, one of the two, we can't afford to keep it."

- Wives will do that.

- Yeah.

So I said, "Well, I've always wanted to do strawberries and raspberries."

That's something my brother never wanted to do, so I did an experimental patch of strawberries to see how they worked out and they did phenomenal.

And then actually in 2018 is when we decided, okay, I started planting a bunch of little small plants, you know, starter plants, and we're actually gonna really do this and open up to public and things like that in 2019.

And guess what hit in 2019?

- Covid was 20- - Covid hit.

- That was '19, wasn't it?

- Yeah.

- Okay, yeah.

- And we lost our butts.

- Well, people still had to eat strawberries.

They were nutty.

People were all nutty.

- People would not come to the farm.

- They were afraid, yeah.

- We couldn't get nobody out there.

- [Rob] Because there's a lot of Covid out in the open farm.

- Yeah.

So we lost a lot.

That's why I tried.

We lost a lot of money and, you know, and I said, "Well, that's fine.

This is what I wanna do, we'll just keep investing."

So, you know.

(both laughing) Not the smartest thing in the world.

- Not sure that's the most sound business advice, but I guess- - Very bad business advice.

- I guess it worked it.

- Well, you know, we're finally starting to make money.

We are.

It took us quite a few years to get our name out.

And even people in Chillicothe don't even know we're there.

- Yeah.

- You know?

And so it's harder to get more people out to the farm than it is us going to like farmer's markets.

We have to go, like, we have to sell in Chillicothe.

If we don't sell in Chillicothe, we get very few people that wanna drive three miles- - [Rob] Because Covid.

- To come to the farm and get it fresh.

- Huh.

- And even, you know, we have a U-Pick, everything.

So a lot of people, mostly the Indian people, Oriental people, they wanna pick all their own vegetables.

They don't want us to pick 'em because they like partial green tomatoes.

They don't want a real- - Oh, really?

- Ripe tomato, yeah.

I found out there's two different types of okra.

There's an Indian okra and there's an American okra and the Indians don't like, India people do not like American okra.

- What they're used to.

- Yeah.

It's a little smaller and it's more tender.

And so after that, 'cause they're the ones that buy more of it.

- They're the ones coming out to your farm.

- Most of the time.

It's more from like Dunlap people in that area than anyone else.

- Okay.

I would, you know, it's funny because, you know, you talk to other farmers, they're like people that get into sheep, you know, and they talk about the ethnic markets and where it to go to.

I've never really thought of that with produce before.

- Yeah, and, you know, you gotta move it.

Produce only lasts so long, so you gotta move, you know, so you can wait.

The first year I thought we could wait on the farm and sell everything, well, guess not.

(laughing) - Didn't work so much.

- That don't work, so you gotta be a, if you wanna do produce farming, you gotta be a hustler.

You gotta go to the markets and try to sell.

- Is that difficult for you to go to a market and say, "Hey, here is my product.

You need to buy it."

Are you a salesman?

- No, no.

You buy it, you look at it, I got good stuff, and if you wanna buy it, if you wanna go down over there, it won't hurt my feelings.

- I always thought that would- I would not do good in that environment 'cause I know how much effort I put into those berries right there, and for someone to come and say, "Oh, you know what, would you knock 50 cents off?"

I'd wanna pop 'em into schnauz, you know what I'm saying?

- Well, my wife had that happen to somebody in Chillicothe.

- She hit somebody?

- No, but somebody threw a tomato at her (laughing) because they bought a basket of (indistinct), and she said, "Well, I'll just take this one too."

And she goes, "Well, it's gonna be 75 cents."

And he goes, "You're gonna charge me for that?"

And she goes, "Well, they will at Kroger's.

They don't give it to you."

- So they bought tomatoes and they wanted one extra like a baker's dozen tomatoes.

- And so they got mad and they through it.

(laughing) - [Rob] Oh my gosh.

- Yeah, we still talk about that.

- Is wife a violent person?

- No, no, no.

- Why are you winking at me?

- Because... (laughing) She's only violent to me.

(both laughing) - I got a question for you.

- Yeah.

- It's a trivia question, ready?

- I'm not really, go ahead.

- We did this question at a thing we were shooting for the other TV show and I think only one or two person got it right.

- Okay.

- What is the only fruit that has a seed on the outside?

- Oh, raspberries.

Raspberry's got 200 and some seeds.

- They're still on the inside though.

- Yeah, they are on the inside.

Seed on the outside?

- You know it.

- I'm probably sure I do.

Oh, strawberries.

- Strawberries.

- Strawberries, I gotta think.

- Once you picture a strawberry, it's like yeah.

- Seed's on the outside, yeah.

- But they're the only one that has the seed on the outside.

- You're right, you're right, yeah.

- Well, yeah, I know.

(laughing) - Did you know a bee has to pollinate a raspberry like hundreds of times for it to be a raspberry?

- Really?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Every one one of them little bumples, little dimples on a raspberry has been pollinated.

- Oh, I didn't know we were doing, do you know the human head weighs eight pounds?

- Mine probably doesn't.

- It's all "Jerry McGuire."

You're laughing if you saw that movie.

- My probably about six pounds.

Brain (indistinct).

(both laughing) - Okay, so you get past Covid.

- Yep.

- And then, I mean, how are you marketing this place?

- Mostly on Facebook and word of mouth.

You know, we're getting... Every year it gets bigger.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- The U-Pick strawberry has really grown.

We say we're opening up at seven, there's people in the parking lot usually, or on farm at 6:30.

So we say we're opening up at 7:30 because we don't want 'em there till seven.

You know, we gotta, you know.

- Yeah.

- If we don't want 'em there till seven, we just tell 'em we're opening it up early.

But yeah, we have like sometimes 30 cars out there at one time.

What's great about that is they bring their kids out.

What I love to see is like these little ones, they come out and there's a lot of, some strawberry farms, you know, they, "Don't eat the strawberries," whatever.

- Yeah.

- It hurts me to not see a kid to eat a strawberry.

- Oh no, I wouldn't be.

I'd say, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey."

- No.

- That's what I would do.

You're too nice.

- I love kids.

That's what my wife says, I'm too nice.

- Yeah.

- But you know, when a kid comes up and they got faces red.

- It's pretty obvious.

- You're gonna ask 'em, you go, "Did you eat any of my strawberries?"

You act real stern, you know, you go, "Did you eat any of my strawberries?"

They go... And that just makes my day, you know, I mean, and there's some parents will say, their kids ate so many strawberries, we owe you for another pound.

But most of them don't and most of the adults eat 'em too.

You can't watch everybody.

- I've never done that.

- The biggest thing is- - [Rob] You know who does that?

My wife.

- What's that?

- Yeah.

- Oh, yeah.

- When she's picking strawberries, she'll eat 'em.

- Oh, yeah.

- She does it in a grocery store too.

- My wife does that too.

- Oh my, what is it with the women?

- I don't know, you know?

She'll do that with grapes.

She'll be eating the grapes.

(both laughing) - Oh, I'm sure glad nobody's gonna watch this show.

- I know it.

(both laughing) - What is a CSA?

- It's actually, it's part of like a... People invest into the farm, and I'm gonna break it down a little separately.

- It stands for community supported- - Community supported agriculture.

- Or ag subscription, whatever.

- Ag subscription, yeah, something like that.

But what they do is they pay ahead of time and then for so many weeks they get a box of vegetables.

And we're the only farm around that I know of that offers fruit too, like some people offer apples and peaches, but actually we do the raspberries, strawberries too, and we do watermelon, cantaloupe.

There ain't no other one that I know of that does watermelon and cantaloupe because they're so high.

Nobody wants to give us $6 watermelon.

You know what I mean, a big watermelon, but I grow 'em, so I can do that, I don't buy 'em.

- Do they order?

Like, okay, in this month's box, I want this, or is it up to you?

- It's up to me, it's what's available.

- Okay.

- But they got their choice to like, let's say if they don't like lettuce, they can say, "Well, I'd rather have turnips."

You know what I mean?

You know, just something.

Then we won't put lettuce in their box or whatever, or something like that.

- What is the least favorite vegetable?

- Okra.

- Really?

I would have thought beats.

- No, okra.

There ain't too many people like okra, and I planted some stuff that's probably even least it's called mula.

I think it was mula.

Somebody said, "Oh, we'll buy every bit you have," and so I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna be rich now."

So I planted these two rows and then he goes, "Oh, the people don't wanna buy it like that.

They'd rather have it already processed."

- [Rob] What is it?

- It's actually an Egyptian spinach.

- That sounds awful.

- It was.

(both laughing) I didn't care for it.

There was some people did like it that tried it, but I didn't like it.

There's a lot of things I don't care for that I grow.

- This CSA, what is the benefit to both you and what is the benefit to the customer of doing this rather than just showing up and buying what they want?

- For me, it's gives us seed money.

It helps us to start out to farm 'cause it costs a lot of money to even, you know, that little produce farm, it's quite a few, you know, you think about strawberries.

We spend like $6,000 in strawberries, just in strawberries, and we're putting blueberries in this year, another 2,000 bucks, you know, and then all the vegetables, time we start 'em, plant 'em, and all that, it costs quite a bit of money.

So anyway, it helps us out that way, and what it does to the customer is they're gonna know they're getting fresh vegetables every week and they're getting a box.

They're getting more than what they paid for.

They're gonna get, you know, it's a little extra.

You know, we try to break it down.

Let's say if it's $25 for so many weeks, and then we try to put like 30 bucks in worth of vegetables.

You know what I mean, so they're getting a little extra.

They'll sometimes, you know, if we got abundance of lettuce, they're gonna get more lettuce than they are some other stuff, that's the thing.

If we get more of this, they'll get more of that than other things.

- And do they come pick up the box?

- Some people come to the farm, then we deliver it to the riverfront market.

And then I think we're gonna pick up a market in Pekin and so we'll probably deliver there too.

That way it makes it convenient for them let's say if they're in that area they don't have to go so far.

- Them blueberries.

Them are good.

We grew those, I'll tell you what, we grew those one year and we were off something, doing something, my wife and I, and I told my son, we have not put sulfur on those all summer.

- Yeah.

- There's some in the garage, just put some sulfur on it.

- Right.

- And then a week goes by and my son was like, "I needed more sulfur."

I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

'Cause it should have been like twice as much.

Well he poured it on.

We had a row of like a 100 plants and the first 20 took it all.

Those were the best 20 plants.

(both laughing) Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh my gosh, there's just, ah.

Yeah, so good luck with those.

- Yeah, the big growers, when I've talked to some of the biggest growers of blueberries there is, and they say that they don't use sulfur anymore.

They use just peat moss.

- [Rob] Oh, well this worked, so I don't know what to tell ya.

- Well, peat moss is faster.

I mean, they even told me, they said they want you to use a bag of peat moss per 10 plants.

- [Rob] Oh, geesh.

- Yeah, that's quite a bit of peat moss.

Which I've already put sulfur in the ground to lower the pH to start everything.

That's the biggest problem is you gotta get your ground ready before you put blueberries in because blueberries are picky, you know, they are, the worst things in the world, hardest things to grow, I think.

- You did have some challenges.

You had a stroke.

- Yeah.

- Was that a surprise?

- Yes, it was, and even surprised to the doctors 'cause they said I was the least candidate to have a stroke.

I have no high cholesterol, no problems.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

They really couldn't figure out why I had one.

- Did that slow you down quite a bit?

- A lot, yep.

I mean, it was about eight weeks.

Luckily, when I went to therapy, when they said, "Well, do these exercises twice a day," I did 'em 10 times a day.

- [Rob] Oh, you're one of those guys.

- Well, I wanted to recover.

- That's not how that works.

- My father-in-law had a stroke and he was getting better and as soon as he got home he decided he just didn't do nothing.

- Yeah.

- He didn't do the exercises.

Well, I seen that and I go, "I'm not gonna be my father-in-law.

I'm gonna be the guy that recovers quick."

And so I did.

- Okay, wait a minute, for the folks at home.

This is not medical advice.

- (laughing) No, no.

(both laughing) But I did recover faster.

- Okay, if worked for you.

It's like putting sulfur on a blueberry plant.

- Exactly, that's what I thought.

I said, "Well, if two's okay, 10's gotta be better."

(both laughing) - Are you all healed up?

- Pretty much, yep.

Got a little bit of, every once in a while have a little speech problem, but other than that, you know, it's all going pretty good.

We had a lot of what TSAs, I think they're called, little mini strokes.

- Oh.

- Last year I had, we was having like five a week.

- [Rob] Oh.

- I'd be out in a tomato patch and I just, I knew I was gonna have one, but I couldn't do nothing about it and I'd fall down and my whole left side wouldn't work.

- Oh, no.

- Yeah.

Luckily, most of the time there was somebody always out there and they could get me back to the barn and let me sit down and stuff.

Anyway, them there last anyway between an hour and up to eight hours.

- Oh my gosh.

- Yeah.

So that was the real struggle last year, real struggle.

- Oh, I can only imagine.

- And me, I've gotta get this done, gotta get this done.

- Yes, I'm aware of you.

I've known you for 20 minutes, I'm very aware of this.

- Yeah, and then my wife, "Don't worry about it."

(both laughing) - Yeah, she must be a saint.

- She is.

- Emily, my wife asked people to bring something and put it on the desk that represents them.

Okay.

- It don't really represent me.

- What is this?

- It represents me who I am because I don't like technology, really.

- Okay, now it makes sense.

- And you know, I think the cell phones and all this stuff is ruining kids because, when I was a kid, what I liked to do is be out with my dad farming or whatever, you know?

To be on a tractor and do stuff, and now they wanna be on their little cell phones and all that stuff.

- Oh, yeah.

- This is before we had plastic.

This is ice in a can.

- [Rob] You freeze this.

- You freeze it and then you put it in your lunch pail.

- Have you opened it?

- No, that'll ruin it.

- What do you think's in it?

- I don't know.

I don't know.

I heard it's worth $50, this can is now.

(laughing) - It'll almost be worth 50 bucks to open it.

But have you froze it?

- No, I have not, not lately.

- I suppose it- - Yeah, I don't wanna ruin it.

- Oh, but it has been froze.

- Oh yeah, many times, yeah.

- And it doesn't expand too much.

- No, it don't nothing, just like this, exactly like the can.

- We used to take 'em all fishing, you know, when we went fishing as his kids and stuff, we'd put 'em in the coolers.

- Okay.

- It was great.

- It does look very cool.

It's got like the old instructions on it.

- Oh, yeah.

- Common sense.

You know, do not ingest, you moron.

(both laughing) The good old days.

- Oh, yeah.

- How old do you think this is?

- It was out in the '60s.

- The '60s, okay.

So do you have a cell phone?

- Oh, yeah.

I gotta have one now.

- I suppose - I got a smartphone.

My wife said I was finally smart enough to get one two years ago.

(both laughing) - I tell you what, what do you want people to know about what you do, about raising their produce?

What do you want people to know about that?

- About my produce?

- [Rob] Or just about being a produce farmer.

- Well, a lot of hard work.

- Yep.

- It's sunup till sundown.

You don't get to eat much.

You're lucky sometimes you don't eat till nine or 10 o'clock and you're in bed and then you go back to work as soon as light because a lot of the things you wanna pick early in the morning to make 'em fresh.

You gotta spray some, you know, if you have to spray.

We do only spray like organically, but even that, you can't spray during the sun, so you have to early morning and that's before the bees get out, of if you're spraying something that might kill the bees neem oil, neem oil will kill bees too.

And then there's a lot of things, it's just so much fresher if you pick it in early morning.

And there's actually more sugar in it.

- [Rob] Oh, sweeter?

- Yeah, sweeter.

Your sugar's first thing in the morning, and actually, cucumbers are actually, I don't do it, but you should pick cucumbers at night.

- [Rob] Nobody likes cucumbers unless they're pickled.

- We sell a lot of cucumbers.

We sell a lot of cucumbers.

- Well, you got a lot of wrong people in this world.

- Well, you know, that's... You don't like cucumbers?

- I don't like cucumbers.

- I don't even know why I'm on the show.

(laughing) - Beginning to wonder that myself.

(both laughing) - Hey, we're having fun anyway.

- People do not understand how much work goes into what you do and I think it gets romanticized.

It's like, oh, look how lucky he is, and you are.

- Yeah.

- But still, my gosh, for the amount of work you put in to make, I'm gonna say this, a superior product.

Nothing against Walmart strawberries, but a superior product.

And you need to pay for that.

People need to realize that you get a better product, you've gotta pay a little bit more.

- Yeah, and a lot of 'em do.

Peoria is pretty good about it.

Chillicothe, I'm not gonna say.

- They got their people.

- They got their people.

- I like Chillicothe.

- I like Chillicothe too.

I grew up there, you know.

- Got a tattoo there once.

- But you've got some of your older people that they're still kinda like me, they're still stuck in the back.

- [Rob] Well, a can of beans used to be like 25 cents.

- Yeah.

(both chuckling) You know, that's okay, 'cause you know, one thing about going to the farmer's markets, which I don't really like to go, my wife usually goes to them, is you do meet a lot of new people.

I like to meet people at the farm and I get a lot of people that come out.

I mean, we have busloads of kids come out sometimes, you know, at the farm and do things.

- Just eating strawberries left and right.

- We've had handicap, we've had some disabled kids come out and at the time I was planting, I can't remember, I think it was peppers, and so I let them help.

And they go, "Well, you know, they might ruin."

I said, "I can fix anything that they mess up."

- [Rob] And if they ruin one plant.

- Yeah, they had a ball, it was great.

And people are coming out, "How do you do this, how do you?"

I'm not gonna, some people go, "It's a big secret."

No, I'm gonna tell 'em everything, you know.

- That says a lot about you.

I don't want to miss out on telling more people to find you, like websites or Facebook or anything like that.

- Yeah, my website is CrookedRow-Farm.com.

- They'll put it down here, don't worry.

- Yeah, okay, and then Facebook page is just Crooked Row Farm.

- Okay.

- I'm guessing you- - At Facebook.

- You're in charge of neither.

- Yeah, well, part of it, you know, until my wife says, "Well, you missed this and you missed that, and you did this and why'd you spell that that way?"

Because I don't type, I just write it and then I don't read it and then I just post it and then it sounds stupid.

(laughing) - I haven't met your wife, but I gotta imagine that you'd just be wandering around in a circle without her.

- I would, I would.

- Yeah, I know.

- And she can outwork me.

I'll tell you what, one time she broke her leg about four years ago and she got on and we found this scooter, like electric scooter, and she was on that picking, weeding the whole time.

And one time, me and a friend of mine, we were weeding the raspberries and it was so hot and we...

I said, "I'm ready to take a break."

And I said, "But I ain't taking one until she does because she's got a broken leg, she's gonna get along."

- Let her work.

I like when the wives do all the work.

All right, Randy Starnes from Crooked Row Farms.

Really appreciate you coming today.

- Yep, no problem.

- Really appreciate all your work.

- Yep, thank you.

- Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

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