 Stanley Hughes
Pine Knot Farm
by Cat Moleski, Features Editor, Contributing Writer
Photo by Debbie Roos, NC Cooperative Extension
Traveling to visit Stanley Hughes of Pine Knot farm, I move with a steady stream of traffic heading north through Hillsborough. The traffic thins the further out I go, yet even on the dirt road leading to Stanley’s farm, I am pressed to drive faster by a van with a harried mom and several kids. I wonder where all these people live. The land around Pine Knot Farms seems open and quiet but I learn from Stanley that his family used to own much more acreage than they do now. Parts of the original farms were sold off as children who inherited it chose not to become farmers. Stanley was born when his parents were almost fifty; thus, as he grew into a young man, his parents grew too old to farm. He regrets that, as a result, much of his father’s knowledge of farming did not get passed down to him. He shows me a broom made from broomcorn his father grew and wove together to make the brush, a skill that has been lost to his family. Now he farms some of the original acreage and rents still more land from other farmers in the area.
For small farmers to survive in today’s pressure cooker world, they must be connected to a larger community of like-minded people. Stanley stays connected through the Carrboro and Durham’s Farmers’ Markets, by talking to professors at North Carolina Ag & Tech State University in Greensboro, and by working at Operation Spring Plant, a grass-roots, non-profit organization whose mission is to support minority farmers. Operation Spring Plant provides minority farmers with education, networking, marketing assistance and self-help projects, which enable minority and limited resource farmers to maintain their farm operation.
As a child, Stanley grew up picking tobacco grown by his family, but like many tobacco farmers today, Stanley must pull from a variety of resources and look to other crops to sustain his farm. Operation Spring Plant hooked him up with the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, maker of Natural American Spirit additive-free tobacco products, and he now grows about 15 acres of organic tobacco for them. Through the Golden Leaf Foundation he received money to transition some of his acreage over to tomatoes and to purchase a cooler for a roadside produce stand. The Golden Leaf Foundation is a non-profit organization that receives and distributes money from the tobacco settlement to improve the economic and social conditions of North Carolina. This season Stanley is also partnering with a professor and his students from NC Ag & Tech State University. The professor was looking for area farmers to grow herbs so that the students could study the effect location has on the growth of plants. In addition to these projects, Stanley grows cabbage, collards, mustard greens, turnips and squash to sell at the Carrboro and Durham Farmers’ Markets.
Weaver Street Market in Carrboro carries Stanley’s sweet potatoes and collards.
|
