Farm Initiative Getting Attention

By Larry Dale (Daily Courier)

RUTHERFORDTON - Foothills Connect's farm initiative is a growing endeavor, in two senses of the word "growing."

The more than two-year-old effort to get Rutherford County residents back into farming is urging its producers to extend their growing season by using hoop houses.

A seminar to show people how to build a hoop house was held in September.

"Extending the growing season simply means growing when no one else is growing," Kirk Wilson, manager of the FarmersFreshMarket.org program at Foothills Connect, said in August. "I call it farming the back side of the calendar."

And the Foothills idea of using intensive methods to grow specialized crops for nearby urban markets is quickly spreading across the state. Rutherford County farmers have been linked to Charlotte chefs through the Internet, thanks to Foothills Connect.

Just this month, residents of the most westerly mountain counties have been thinking about the potential of the Atlanta market, and piedmont residents have looked at the proximity of Winston-Salem and Greensboro markets.

Tim Will, executive director of Foothills Connect Business & Technology Center, is trying to pass on the lessons he has learned from his time working on the initiative.

"I had these folks over here from Stokes and Cherokee counties on Monday," he said. "Well, I told them over and over again, you can't do this alone. You have to be inclusive. You have to get everybody to buy in. You have to get the community engaged.

"It isn't just about farms and food. It is about creating jobs with small businesses that just happen to be farms."

The Foothills Connect director also stressed that organizers won't come in and find an ideal situation for launching their farming initiatives.

"You have to take the people the way God gives them to you," he said. "If they don't know how to use computers, then show them how."

In January of this year, four farmers became the first graduates of the Farmers Adopting Computer Training classes, sponsored jointly by Isothermal Community College, Foothills Connect, the ICC Small Business Center and N.C. A&T State University.

"We have been in conversation with at least 10 counties around the state," Will continued. "Six of them were counties where other Foothills Connect type programs, called business and technology centers, were located. And when the directors see how many jobs we have been able to create, with the owners of small farms, and the enthusiasm that is engendered with the product, i.e. fresh food, that they want to know how to do it.

"So we have been contacted by Stokes, Rockingham, Anson, Clay, Graham, Cherokee, Martin, Washington, Alleghany (among others). All these counties are interested in at least moving down the road of redeveloping the agriculture.

"We have been able to get them to understand that there is a market for it. Every one of them is within a hundred miles of major cities. And as isolated as Cherokee and Graham and Clay seem, they are 92 miles from Atlanta. There is nothing that keeps them from doing this with Atlanta. They are less than 70 miles from Chattanooga, and another 90 from Knoxville. They've got a huge market.

"They only think of themselves as isolated. They're not isolated. And I was up there last week and they've got all kinds of good farmers with vacant land. We had a meeting up there, and 15 people attended. That was on Thursday of last week, and on Monday of this week the Cooperative Extension agent and the marketing person for the North Carolina Department of Agriculture stationed out there were here. Why would we not help out these folks, because business is booming."

Will, a former teacher, knows that any farming program will fail unless the next generation becomes active in tending the land.

Foothills Connect has invested money and time in the farm program at R-S Central High School. In July 2008, Foothills Connect gave $60,000 to R-S Central to expand and diversify its program. In March of this year, Foothills Connect helped bring an Ossabaw Island hog to the farm. Next Saturday, 10 pigs that are half Ossabaw will be auctioned at the school.

"We've got to get more kids interested," Will said. "Look at Brandon Higgins (an agriculture teacher at R-S Central). "This is a program, and I'll be the one to say it, Brandon won't, but the first year he had 75 kids, and half of them were in there because the teacher is 6 foot 4.

"And now those kids are working. Kids out on the lower 40 digging postholes. Most people have a hard time getting their kids to take out the trash and these kids are all assigned jobs. I would like to see what Brandon has done to affect the dropout rate in the school."

Also, third-graders at Thomas Jefferson Classical Grammar School have been introduced to raised-bed agriculture through plantings at the school.

"I mean, these kids come up and hug us," Will said. "Here I am, coming from an inner city school where they say you never be caught alone in the classroom with a kid, never touch a kid, and here these kids are coming up and hugging my legs. I've never seen anything like that.

"So it is obvious, agriculture offers an alternative, in terms of job creation. If we can stop our kids from leaving here, because when they leave here it is hard for them to come back. There are not the jobs to support them."

Foothills Connect is one of seven e-NC Business and Technology Telecenters in North Carolina. Foothills Connect was created in 2005 to support the development and growth of small businesses and entrepreneurship in Rutherford County.

"Now that we've got the basis of high tech," Will noted, "why stop? We're close to Charlotte. That's the second biggest financial services center in the country. And financial services is the No. 1 user of broadband. So the same rationale that brought the data center here can obviously be used to attract data-based businesses.

"So, nothing is stopping us. The infrastructure is here, we've just got to realize that we are winning; we're not losing anymore. We are winning.

"If you were a data-based company and you were looking for a place to locate your accounts receivable and the people that answer the phones, you can afford a house here, but not in Charlotte. I tell the people in Charlotte, there is not one metal detector in the schools here. And they go, ‘What!' There is one metal detector in the county.

"We've got the things that people with high-tech jobs want to be part of. All we have to do is just not give up. And that is one of the reasons why, even though I wanted to be a teacher, I'm staying here, because these folks don't give up.

"I have seen people 80 years old come in and take a FACT class. People who have been laid off two or three times that are starting over by learning high-intensity horticulture. And I've seen volunteers coming in and taking care of that garden, because we don't have time to do it. And maintaining and taking pride in it.

"I will spend the rest of my life with those kinds of people. I've never seen anything like this. We have so much here that we can offer the rest of the state."

Will noted that his experiences have taught him to look beyond the obvious.

"There are opportunities that abound here," he said. "We have to reexamine this environment that we live in and realize that there is a demand. Sure, there is tourist dollars. But see what is underneath the canopy for what they are coming here to see.

"And there is this whole market that we have been able to help get an Internet connection to. Not just in Charlotte. The world."

He cited the example of county resident Edith Edwards' kudzu blossom jelly. "Taking what most people consider a weed and turning it into something that is sitting in a five-star restaurant." Will said.

Will has spent considerable time traveling around the state to tell the Foothills Connect story, and people from east to west are starting to listen.