The “Customer Driven” Farm 

By Deborah Wechsler (2004)

Frank Randle
Randle Farms
Auburn, Alabama
randlefarms@mindspring.com

Frank Randle’s farming has deep roots; his grandparents were sharecroppers in northern Alabama, his parents were beekeepers, and he has kept bees and rabbits most of his life. When he left college, Frank worked a few years as a bee inspector for the Alabama Department of Agriculture in the 1970s. He started farming on his own as a commercial beekeeper, purchasing the farm, on the outskirts of Auburn, Alabama in 1975. By 1980, he was a full-time beekeeper. But, when his wife became allergic to bees in the mid-1980s, says Frank, “it forced us to look at other ways to make a living and really diversify. It was fortuitous, because at about that time, the bee industry took a nose dive.” The Randles still keep bees, but only five hives—a far cry from the 1200 they once had.

Over several years, as they dismantled the bee business, other enterprises rose to the fore. Their five acres of blueberries, planted in 1978, became a mainstay of Randle Farms. A few sheep grew to a large herd and sale of lambs became their biggest source of farm income. Hay became a major crop as well. They started selling the surplus from their garden and adding other fruit crops, as people who came to buy honey or blueberries would ask if they could buy something else they saw on the farm. “We do a lot of listening to our customers,” says Frank, “and we are always trying something new.” Now, they offer vegetables, muscadine grapes, apples, figs, lamb, rabbits, eggs, and just in the last year, goats, cut flowers, and landscape plants.

The Randles direct market all their crops, selling at the farm, at the local farmer’s market, and to Auburn’s natural food store. “We sell zillions of tomatoes and sweet corn, mostly, and have a reputation for monstrous slicing tomatoes,” says Frank. About half the blueberries go pick-your-own, the rest are picked and sold retail. Customers can also pick some vegetables; many customers, says Frank, watch for the sign to go up, then come and pick 40-60 pounds of tomatoes to put up.

If you’re looking for a farm with customers beating a path to its door, Randle Farms fits the bill. Most of their customers are local, from the Auburn area. But customers also come from as far as Atlanta, more than an hour away, from Columbus, Georgia, 30 minutes away, and from Montgomery, Alabama, about 45 minutes away, most of them making a special trip to visit the farm and its small, on-farm retail market. Responsiveness to his customers keeps them coming. “Everything we do has been customer-driven,” says Frank.

When Frank and Pat Randle bought their farm, it was on the edge of Auburn. Now, it is being surrounded by the growing town. This offers both opportunities and challenges. “A lot of what we do wouldn’t work if Auburn were not a college town and if this weren’t such a rapidly growing area,” says Frank. But there are potential zoning issues as the town encroaches on the farm. The Randles are hoping the close relationships they have with their customers will help ensure zoning rulings are in their favor. “They talk about us as ‘their farm’ and how can they be vested in it,” say Frank. “These are the folks that are going to be voting on whether they are going to zone us out. By whatever means, we want them to feel invested in the farm.”

Part of what makes customers flock to Randle Farms is the quality of the products and their production methods. Frank follows organic production methods on most of the farm but describes their production methods as “authentic,” harking back to the way crops were grown in his grandparents’ day. Fruits, which are more difficult to grow organically in Alabama, are raised with a low-spray/minimal spray/low input philosophy that starts with disease-resistant varieties suited to the region. “I’m not going to spray something to keep it going,” says Frank. “That’s the sustainability factor.” Drip irrigation from a strong well is used on the vegetables, flowers, and small fruits, along with lots of mulch and compost.

Their compost combines animal manures from the farm with chopped plant material brought by the truckload by crews clearing power line rights-of-way. “I trade blueberries and honey,” says Frank, “and they sometimes bring one to two truckloads a day.” He mixes this with manure into windrows and turns the piles frequently with a front-end loader. The only commercial fertilizer used on the farm goes on the hay crop. Hay is made into large, round bales, stored in several barns at the farm, and sold as a premium product to local horse owners. Frank also makes silage either in the early spring, when grass production exceeds what the animals forage, or during the summer when weather conditions preclude haymaking. “It takes the pressure out of making hay,” he explains.

The Randles are able to graze their sheep and goats most of the year, except in April/May and October/November -- the transition periods between cool season grasses (mostly ryegrass) and warm season grasses (various bermudagrasses). Says Frank, “My son, Franklin, has spent his entire life moving animals and watching grass. There’s an art to it, he seems to have an intuitive sense.” The farm has lots of moveable fence and miles of electric netting. “On no two days is this place fenced exactly alike,” comments Frank. During the seasonal transitions when there isn’t enough grass, the sheep and goats are fed silage. The only purchased feeds used on the farm are alfalfa pellets for rabbits and some chicken feed. Chickens, too, are pasture-raised, with enclosures moved daily.

The farm’s lambs, 400-600 a year, are sold by a variety of methods. Most are sold live or live with custom slaughter and processing at one of the several state-inspected processing plants nearby. Frank usually takes 10-15 of these pre-sold animals to the processor at a time. Very recently, they’ve experimented with selling individual cuts, for which they’ve gotten a tremendous response. In order to retail these individual cuts, however, they have to have their animals processed at a USDA inspected plant. They are currently hauling animals five hours away to a new plant being developed in Mississippi. “We are in sore need of a federally inspected processing plant nearby,” says Frank. Because the demand for lamb centers around Easter and the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday season, they breed their sheep for a split lambing season.

The goats, recently added to the farm to clean up 160 acres of raw land purchased seven years ago, are now becoming a source of income. Meat goats are sold mostly live to a large local Hispanic population; so far, the Randles have a waiting list for the goats. Their rabbits and the eggs their small chicken flock produces are also sold direct to the public.

The farm hosts many school and church tour groups, especially in fall and at spring lambing, charging $10 per child. Says Frank, “We give them quite a show: we sheer sheep, work the border collies, feed them with food from the farm.” The Randles make a point of growing all their own pumpkins, so kids visiting in fall can really see how pumpkins grow.

Recently, the Randles have begun expanding further. Attending SSAWG’s 2004 conference, Frank says, “really helped us start making improvements that will help us grow the business. Both kids want to stay on the farm and we’ve had to step it up another notch.” While attending college at Auburn University, only nine miles away, both their sons remained intimately involved in the farm. Their older son, Franklin, is already the expert on grazing management. Their younger son, Zach, is just finishing college with a horticulture degree and interest in expanding the farm’s production of landscape plants and flowers. “We’ve been doing this as a team all along,” says Frank.

Partly because of advice they received at the SSAWG conference, that they couldn’t do cut flowers well without one, the Randles have added a walk-in cooler. They will be adding a couple more cold frames for fall tomatoes and salad crops. And, says Frank, “Value-added may be the next frontier.” Pat Randle has a great reputation as a cook; now, with the boys grown and thinking of retiring from nursing, they plan to put in a commercial kitchen next year so her culinary skills can have free rein. About 40-50 acres of their new land, already partly fenced against deer, will go into horticultural crops. All this expansion will, no doubt, keep the customers flocking to their farm.  

Location: Auburn, Alabama, about 1-1/4 hour southwest of Atlanta
Climate zone:  8 Soil type: Sandy, coastal, nutrient poor
Years in commercial production: more than 25
Acreage: 200 acres total; 70 in pasture, 20 in crops, rest in woods, about 40-50 of which is in transition to cropland. Lease an additional 125 acres for hay.
Crops/products: Vegetables (mostly sweet corn and tomatoes), 5 acres blueberries, 1Ú2 acre muscadine grapes, small apple orchard, figs, cut flowers and landscape plants. 400 Dorset-cross sheep, 40 goats, rabbits, eggs, honey.
Value-added products: Sell local crafts at market.
Notable facilities and equipment: 30x50 retail market, walk-in cooler, 30 x 96 heated greenhouse; two 20x96 hoop cold frames; 12 x 20 germination house.
Weeks in production: Year-round
Markets: 95% direct to public at the farm; some sales to local natural foods store, and blueberries occasionally to supermarkets.
Labor: Frank Randle is full-time at the farm; Pat Randle works off farm as a nurse but is also very involved. Their two sons, in their early 20s, are fully involved in the farm. Local kids are hired as pickers during blueberry season.