Living Their Beliefs All Week Long:
Growing Organically on the Coast of Carolina 
by Lynn Byczynski 
(This article is excerpted from Farming More Sustainable in the South, Vol II: More Farmers' Stories, published by the Southern SAWG.) 

BELVIDERE, North Carolina--In the seven years since Kenny Haines started farming on just ten acres, he has grown to be one of the biggest organic vegetable producers in North Carolina. With 130 acres, a greenhouse covering two-thirds of an acre, and the fields of three neighbors who have joined him in organic farming, his company, Misty Morning Farms, Inc., is now marketing more than 200 acres of certified organic vegetables and soybeans.

Such a rapid expansion might seem staggering to many small growers, but it came naturally to Kenny. Before striking out on his own, he worked for 15 years as a farm manager for two of the largest vegetable growers in the East, on farms in Delaware and Virginia. One of the farms he managed grew 6,500 acres of processing vegetables, with a cannery on site. "It was my job to see that there were 100 tons of tomatoes to run every hour," he says.

While at that farm in the early 1980s, Kenny was one of the biggest customers of a fertilizer manufacturer who had just bought 23,000 acres of land near Belvidere, North Carolina, about 40 miles from the coast in the northern part of the state. When the new landowner asked Kenny to farm 4,000 acres for him, Kenny accepted the job and moved with his wife, Wanda, and their three children to North Carolina. In the next five years, he got the farm up and running--at which point his boss laid him off.

Although the family wasn't happy about it then, the layoff may have been fortuitous for the Haines. Kenny had already been having serious qualms about conventional farming, and had been moving his operations as much as possible toward Integrated Pest Management. Wanda, a registered nurse, was increasingly worried about the family's exposure to agricultural chemicals. Kenny recalls how he would spend the day applying a yellow pre-emergent herbicide, come home, shower, and then find the yellow stuff seeping from his pores onto the bed sheets at night.

So in 1987, when the time arrived for a career move, Kenny and Wanda decided to start their own farm and to do it organically. "It's a lot like religion," Kenny says. "You can go to church on Sunday and just sit in the pew, or you can live your beliefs all week long."

They set to work on a rented 10-acre site adjacent to the land where they had built a comfortable log home with their own labor. They erected a small hoophouse and bought a 14-horsepower tractor. At first, Kenny sold to the farm stands on the road leading to the beach towns of the Outer Banks. But because of fierce price undercutting among local growers, he was soon disenchanted with that outlet. 

An Accident Brings Community Support 

In 1990, he decided to market in Raleigh, 125 miles to the west. In June he started making the trip twice a week to sell to grocery stores. On August 1, at 8 a.m., he and his 14-year-old son were taking a load of produce to the city when a car came across the center line as they were crossing a bridge. They were hit head-on. "I could see it coming, I knew what was going to happen, and there was nothing I could do about it," Kenny says.

Kenny's back was broken. His son suffered serious internal injuries. After seven hours of surgery, the doctor emerged to tell Wanda that if the boy survived the next 48 hours, he would still only have a 50-50 chance of living. Wanda didn't get home for 20 days as she traveled between the two hospitals where her husband and son struggled for their lives.

Back at the farm, there was an outpouring of support from their community. "I had a field full of peppers, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and eggplant," Kenny says. "The accident happened on a Wednesday and by Sunday there were 100 folks out there helping. People would come out at night after they had worked all day, for two or three months. There were a lot of folks I didn't even know--they stopped here, helped us and didn't ask for anything, and then were gone."

The community's reaction was a testimonial to the respect the Haines family had earned in their short time in Belvidere. They attend church, are 4-H leaders and have been active in their children's lives. Kenny says modestly, "I think there's just a lot of good people here. We wouldn't have made it without them."

Kenny and his son both recovered, although their injuries will probably somewhat restrict their physical activity for the rest of their lives.

Kenny was not at fault in the accident, but the suddenness and severity of the incident made him realize just how vulnerable a family farm could be if such an accident, occurring while working, precipitated a lawsuit. So to protect his family's assets, he decided to form a partnership with a neighbor, Garlan Scott, and incorporate the farming business as Misty Morning Farms.

One of the neighbors who helped after the accident was Richard Parker, a conventional grain farmer. He expressed interest in growing vegetables and Kenny told him that if he would grow organically, Misty Morning Farms would market his produce.

"I always loved growing vegetables because I grew vegetables with my father," Richard says. "My son wants to farm, and I decided that instead of spending more money on farm equipment and land, we would go into intensive management. That will give him a chance to get started in farming."

Richard's son, Joe, has already gotten his start at age 15. Last year he grew 15 acres of squash for Misty Morning Farms.

Two other farmers are also growing on smaller acreages for Misty Morning Farms. Although the company is not a cooperative--it's owned by the Haines and Scott families--the four farmers involved do plan their crops and some purchases together. Misty Morning Farms does all the cleaning, grading, packing and marketing, and keeps one-third of whatever it sells.

Having several farmers involved in organic production has piqued the curiosity of the farming establishment in the area. "Sundays they come creeping by to see what you're doing," Richard says, laughing. 

A Strong Organic Market 

Misty Morning Farms is doing a good job of selling produce these days. Kenny, who estimates that he spends at least two days a week on the phone marketing, sold three times as much in 1994 as the year before. Everything is sold to organic wholesalers who pick up at Misty Morning Farm's packing shed and distribute up and down the East Coast.

"We could double our acreage and still not meet the demand," Kenny says.

That's not to say that wholesaling has been easy money. Kenny says that his family had to rely on Wanda's salary as a nurse for the first five years while all profits were plowed back into the business. Richard expected to make his first profit last year, his fourth year in the organic business.

Part of the problem, both farmers say, is that they have found little information about organic growing in their area, so they have learned by trial-and-error. Consequently, they have had several crop failures and lower-than-expected yields as they have experimented with varieties and scheduling.

In addition, input costs are considerably higher for organic production, Kenny says. For example, as a nitrogen fertilizer source he uses feather meal, which costs $270 a ton. An equivalent amount of chemical nitrogen fertilizer would cost $120.

Equipment costs for this scale are high, too. Kenny has an assortment of planting and harvesting equipment, including three Lannen transplanters from Finland, a tiller bed shaper that makes three 72-inch beds in one pass, a sweet corn picker, and a bean picker. He also has several pieces of equipment for grading and packing tomatoes, potatoes, and green beans. The packing shed, which is located on the highway about five miles from his farm, is rented from his partner, Garlan Scott. Behind the packing shed is a cooler, and the business also owns a refrigerated truck.

Labor is another big expense. Kenny employs 15 to 20 people throughout the season, including about four year-round. Most of his workers are high school and college students. Kenny says he has had excellent luck with his young employees and adds, "I hate to say it, but the girls are about two times the workers the boys are."

With production costs so high, Kenny says he has to aim for an organic premium price on his produce. When he can't get it, he will often just plow the crop down rather than harvesting and selling it for a lower price.

Since August is peak time for vegetables in North Carolina, Kenny aims for two marketing seasons: April through July, then September through the end of the year. 

Greenhouse Production 

One of his first crops each year is greenhouse tomatoes, which are planted in January for harvest beginning in April and running through July, when field-grown tomatoes ripen in his area and prices plummet.

Kenny and Garlan erected the first three 22-by-216-foot gutter-connected greenhouses in 1991, then added three others the next year. They have been growing tomatoes and cucumbers, but plan to try a sugar snap pea or other crop to follow the tomatoes as a hedge against disease. "I think if we grow tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, we're going to get a problem," he says.

As another preventative measure against disease, he sprays in the greenhouse twice a week with food-grade (35 percent) hydrogen peroxide, diluted to one percent. So far, he's had no problems.

The greenhouse is 12 feet tall, which helps dissipate some of the heat that builds up, but he still has to run the 6-foot-tall swamp coolers and fans much of the year. For the winter months, the greenhouse is equipped with regular propane heaters, but it also has three of the first waste-oil burners sold for greenhouses. The waste oil, which burns extremely hot, costs about one-third as much per BTU as propane.

Kenny says the biggest problem in the greenhouse has been whiteflies, which have ruined two crops. He tried neem-based pesticides with little luck, then began working with Encarsia formosa, a parasitic wasp. He has one of his employees monitor whitefly populations with yellow sticky cards; each Wednesday she counts the number of insects on the traps. As soon as she finds any whiteflies on a trap, Kenny starts to release 7,500 Encarsia per week. When the total on the cards reaches 100, he doubles the number. This year, he spent about $1,000 on Encarsia, but was pleased with the level of control he obtained.

Using a vacuum seeder and Speedling trays, Kenny starts nearly all his own transplants, in the greenhouse for spring crops and outside for fall crops. He has brought in transplants in the past, but is trying to avoid this now because he sees brought-in plants as an opening for trouble. 

Finding the Right Size 

Throughout his expansion, Kenny has given considerable thought to the question of scale. Profits increase to a certain size, then drop off when the farm expands because it requires more farm equipment, more labor, etc... He acknowledges that growing organic vegetables on his scale is expensive, and that his net income may be no better than a market gardener with ten acres. But because he doesn't have a nearby market, he says he really has no choice but to sell wholesale and to continue his expansion.

"If we were in Raleigh, we would make a living with ten acres," Kenny says. "The ideal situation would be a subscription service, but you have to be in the right place for that to happen. You have to have the right kind of people--educated people who want to know where their food is coming from."

Without that option, Kenny plans to continue his expansion. He hopes to buy more land himself and he's willing to sell for other farmers who convert to organic practices.

"We think we're doing the right thing and if somebody else thinks we're doing the right thing and wants to try it, we'll be more than happy to help," he says.