Family Farm’s Focus On Youth Education

Founded in 1899, Stacy Family Farm in Marietta, OH, moved from one farm to another before Alfred and Carolina Stacy bought the farm’s current location because of its rich, fertile soil and proximity to the Muskingum River. The Stacys began with a small dairy, raising and selling vegetables on the side. Progressive for the times, they quickly grew the original 20-acre farm when they purchased another farm on a hillside and an 80-acre orchard, which they operated until the 1950s.

Alfred and Lina had three sons — Lloyd, Dewey, and Merle, who all worked on the farm in some facet. Dewey ran the orchard while Merle worked on the dairy. The oldest, Lloyd, ran his own farm in Lowell, OH, and eventually became the director of agriculture for the state of Ohio.

Merle continued his work at the dairy, raising his family on the farm. His son Ralph became involved in the dairy, as well, and helped diversify the farm’s crops into more vegetables. At the time, Marietta was a great shipping area for stake tomatoes. The Marietta Truck Growers cooperative, rumored to be the first cooperative in the U.S., helped small area farmers pool and market their crops, shipping vegetables by train to metropolitan areas like Cleveland and Pittsburgh until the 1970s.

When Ralph’s son Bill graduated from high school in 1973, he attended the Agricultural Technical Institute at Wooster, OH, where he graduated in 1976. He returned home and dove into work on the farm.

“I came home and thought I was going to do great things,” says Bill Stacy, who currently owns and operates Stacy Family Farm. “I grew the farm from 30 acres to 150 acres on rented ground, and then the ‘80s hit, and a lot of farmers got beat up with high interest rates.”

The farm had ventured into wholesale marketing, but tough economic times forced the operation to downsize, and Stacy had to find work off the farm. He began driving trucks and returned to college at age 40. Today, Stacy works for Chevron Phillips chemical company as a chemical control room operator.
“I’m the same as other farmers,” he says. “Somebody has to work off the farm to provide health insurance. We had little kids then and I felt I had to do something to put them through college. That’s where plasticulture strawberries came into the picture.”

Size Is Relative

Today, the Stacy family operates 31 acres, including 5 acres of plasticulture strawberries, which are 100% direct marketed on the farm, and 10 acres of sweet corn, which is sold locally. Customers travel to Stacy Family Farm from as far away as 50 to 60 miles to pick their own strawberries, Stacy says.

“We were one of the first to do plasticulture strawberries in the state of Ohio,” he says. “I worked with Barclay Poling in North Carolina for a number of years, and he was an inspiration to us and helped me get started.”

The venture into plasticulture strawberries has been so successful for the Stacys that the operation was invited to be a feature farm at the Southeastern Strawberry Expo this month, Stacy says.

“They do a farm showcase where we get up and explain growing practices, marketing, etc. Even though we’re small, we can still be progressive and aggressive with technology and be competitive in the business.”

Stacy is investigating what global positioning system technology can do for his business, and waiting for the right time to buy, when prices come down. He wants to use GPS to reduce fertilizer and chemical applications.

Stacy says he credits the farm’s success to family and more specifically, his wife Janet. “For every good farmer, there has to be a great, super farm wife,” he says. “I consider her 100% a farmer and she’s there all the time.” As a family farm, Bill and Janet involve their children in everything, as well. “We spend a lot of time with our kids, and that’s what plasticulture has allowed us,” he says. He adds he is hopeful that all three children will want to continue the family’s legacy.

One thing Stacy says he is very proud of is taking a farm business planning and analysis education course through the local adult education program to keep track of his profit on the more than 40,000 quarts of strawberries he produces annually. “They come to your farm and help you do your books. They do a computer analysis at the end of the year, and I know exactly what my return is on every quart of strawberries that goes off the farm.”

What’s more, he knows exactly what percentage of his strawberry crop is picked and what percentage is you-pick. “I had been doing 60% to 70% you-pick,” he says. “This year we came out 92% you-pick, which is astounding in this business. It’s through marketing.”

When the Stacys began growing strawberries, they weren’t quite sure how to market the crop, so they employed a local advertising agency to help. They built www.stacyfarm.com, designed the farm’s catchy logo, and created a media plan to advertise you-pick strawberries, “We plant ‘em, you pick ‘em…” in several local newspapers.

Educating The Masses

A big hallmark of Stacy Family Farm is the priority it puts on agricultural education. This year the farm hosted second grade classrooms from 17 schools in Ohio and Wood County, WV. “We started May 16 and I had a field trip every weekday until June 7,” says Janet Stacy.

Students arrive at the farm and are taken to the old dairy barn for a slide show that explains the life cycle of strawberry plants. “We relate it to what they’re doing in school,” Janet says. “When we’re planting strawberries, they are starting school; when they are on Thanksgiving break, we are covering strawberries.”

The kids are divided into four groups that visit each 20-minute station. One group gets to pick strawberries and put them in a clamshell to take home. The next group is in the bee barn, where they can look at an observation bee hive and learn about the bee’s life cycle. Another group goes on a hayride and another investigates animal hides, bones, and skulls from critters like raccoons, deer, possum, snakes, and turtles.

At the end of the two-hour tour, students are treated to strawberry shortcake — half a Twinkie and a scoop of strawberries. Many students are so excited by what they’ve seen that they bring their parents or grandparents back to pick strawberries, Janet says.

“The tours are a lot of work and we don’t do it to make money, but for the educational value and the marketing,” she says. “Just for the educational value in general — some of these kids don’t have much to look forward to at home, so this is quite an opportunity for them.”