April 2004

An Employee Handbook for Your Farm is discussed in Farming (April 2004). “An employee handbook is one way to help ‘socialize’ new employees to the farm, by explaining key points about your management style, the farm business and why things are done in particular ways. . . . (It) can be as simple or as complicated as your farm situation calls for. Large operations may want it to contain detailed information about a variety of personnel policies, pay scales and benefits that probably require some legal advice before you finalize them. Small operations may only need a few pieces of paper that spell out the guts of how your farm works, what you expect from your help and how they have to behave if they want to keep their job.” The article spells out suggestions in more detail and how to order a guide for writing a handbook. Read the complete article at http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/handbook.html.

A Better Berry: Quest for the best turns part-time farmer into full-time success story reports Growing (April 2004). Hunter Farms in Pickens County, South Carolina began as a way for Eric Hunter to make “a few extra bucks so his wife Kristi could stay at home with their new son.” He is now “one of the biggest strawberry growers in upstate South Carolina. . . . Hunter attributes his success to an unorthodox business philosophy. Basically, he ignores his competition and focuses exclusively on his own product.” The focus on quality “has helped Hunter Farm grow from a part-time operation with 1.5 acres of strawberries in 1997, to a full-time enterprise with 8 acres of berries and a greenhouse, plus a couple of acres ready to go into cut-flower production. . . . Hunter uses raised, black plastic beds . . . his 100,000 strawberry plants are of the Chandler variety . . . He pumps his water from his own pond, mixing it with 30 percent nitrogen liquid fertilizer in pipes that distribute it evenly through the beds.”

True Blue: Hammonton, NJ, Blueberry Capital of the World notes the April issue of Growing. “North America is the world’s leading blueberry producer. . . . While blueberry farms can be found throughout the country, Hammonton, NJ, claims to be the Blueberry Capital of the World. . . . The highbush variety produces most of the 300 million pounds of blueberries annually eaten and harvested in the United States. . . . New Jersey’s harvest accounts for 21 percent of the nation’s total. . . . One of the largest producers is the Atlantic Blueberry Company. . . . The Galletta family started Atlantic Blueberry in 1935 with 5 acres in the southern New Jersey Pinelands. Today, the company can boast about their successful, cultivated blueberry farm operation that now encompasses over 1,300 acres.” Each year, Hammonton hosts the Red, White and Blueberry Festival on a weekend near the Fourth of July. “The local chamber of commerce . . . estimates that over 250,000 berries are sold each day of the festival.”

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