Raper Farm:
What a Difference a Community Can Make
by Deborah Wechsler 
(This story is from Southern Sustainable Farming, issue no. 21, Winter 1998, published by Southern SAWG) 
 
Aubrey and Linda Raper's farm, up a bone-jarring rocky drive at the top of a mountain cove near Marshall, NC seems a fine place to get away from it all. But sustainable agriculture has had an unexpected effect on the Rapers, drawing them into a supportive community and a world of new opportunity. "If I hadn't become involved in this," laughs Aubrey, "I would have just ended up being another grumpy old guy back in the mountains."

Seeking a stable, quieter place to raise their children, in the mid 1970s Aubrey left a university teaching job in Elizabeth City, NC and the family moved to the Appalachians, building a house, going back to the land, starting to raise crops. They slowly began reclaiming the farm, mistreated for decades by previous absentee owners, by reducing the plowed acreage and planting marginal areas in Christmas trees.

Learning from their mountain neighbors, the Rapers started raising burley tobacco, a crop that farmers could count on to make the land payment. "Back in 1978," recalls Aubrey, "there were very few chemical sprays, there was no blue mold, most people didn't fumigate or use herbicides on their tobacco." Along with their 2-3 acres of tobacco, they grew some vegetables for market, often tomatoes, sweet corn, greasy beans, sweet peppers. The whole family participated in another enterprise, producing Fraser fir wreaths to sell mail order at the holidays. 

Wondered if They Would Make a Living 

Always environmentally minded, they used cover crops and crop rotations, and limited their chemical use mostly to conventional fertilizers. In 1982, they stopped growing tomatoes for market and switched to green peppers, which could be grown without pesticides. "One year," says Aubrey, "we raised our tobacco organically, but we ended up selling it conventionally--the market wasn't developed then." As tobacco prices failed to keep up with the costs of production, they began to wonder what might be able to replace it. "I was at the point," says Linda, "where I was thinking we just couldn't do this anymore, we're just going to have to sell this place and figure out some other way to make a living."

In 1996, they raised an acre of organic potatoes, and found an interested buyer in the Carolina Organic Growers, a growers' co-op based in Asheville. "It helps when you've got a marketer who's willing to trust what you've said," recalls Aubrey. "He wasn't suspicious, just asked us the names of what we'd used." When they were able to sell those potatoes for $24/bushel, rather than the $8/bushel they were used to receiving, they were impressed. "We sent for the application for organic certification," says Linda, "but it was expensive, and there was a lot of risk in sending it in. And we had a feeling that if we didn't state things in a certain way, we'd be denied and lose our money."

Found Support Outside Their Farm 

In 1997, they became involved in Mountain Partners in Agriculture (MPIA), which offered funding and support to farmers in transition to organic farming. Through a small grant from MPIA, the Rapers were able to buy organic soil amendments, pay their fees to become certified as Transitional Organic through Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, and pay for other improvements to the farm, such as a small greenhouse and irrigation equipment that would help them increase vegetable production. "Becoming organic wasn't some kind of momentous task," says Aubrey. It was mostly replacing some products with others that--by the way--work better than what you are already using."

The Rapers became members of the Carolina Organic Growers, which provided mentors to the newcomers as they began to grow unfamiliar crops for the organic market. "Through MPIA and Carolina Organic Growers, we realized that we could tap into a bigger market and we could grow more of a variety of things, and that somebody wanted it," says Linda.  

It’s a Farmer’s Delight 

The organic market has been good to them beyond their wildest expectations. For the first time since 1978, they are not growing tobacco, and are even able to rotate some land out of production. "We got away from tobacco production because this particular niche in vegetable production is so extraordinary that it said 'Forget tobacco!'" says Aubrey. "We've made more money off eight 100-foot rows of squash, in one planting, than we did off an acre and a half of tobacco last year." Though they may not always get the same high prices, marketing through the co-op has been key to their success. "It's a farmer's delight when we call up and we say to our marketer, ‘20 cases of lettuce, 10 of red leaf, 10 of green leaf,’ and he says 'Is there any way you can let me have more?' It doesn't get any better than that."

For the Rapers, this entrance into the organic market has been more than lucrative, it has been energizing. They are planning, experimenting, thinking about new options. Instead of hiding away back up the mountain, they are now making several trips a week to Asheville to deliver their produce. Now, Aubrey is on the board of Carolina Organic Growers and Linda is its treasurer. Through the co-op, they are in contact with growers with similar goals, sharing ideas and working together to plan production schedules. And, bringing to the sustainable agriculture community their long association with the conventional farmers who are their mountain neighbors and their own strong practicality and economic realism, they have become eloquent spokesmen for the concerns of all transitional farmers.