Billy and Paige Carter have been growing strawberries in the sandhills of North Carolina for over 30 years. Unlike some of our other farms which grow all varieties of produce on 1-5 acres, Carter has 8 acres dedicated solely to strawberries. For those who don’t know how big that is, the entire Downtown Cary Park that lies next to our market is 7 acres.

Visits like these are a reminder of how much of a gamble farming is. As we’ve seen these last couple months, the weather here is NC is truly unpredictable. Some small farms battle this by planting a variety of products so that if one doesn’t make it, another might.

But if you are growing a single crop at scale to meet high demand, you have to find different ways to hedge that bet. Because it is a very big bet! A small farm may risk hundreds of dollars by planting a few rows of strawberries. Billy is risking hundreds of thousands.

Investing that heavily requires a very deep knowledge of that specific crop in order to stay in business. It means taking weekly tissue tests of your plants and sending them to the Dept. of Agriculture to ensure your plants are healthy. It means finding ways to protect the fruit from severe cold or extreme heat. And it means spotting problems early and consulting with agrologists to solve them before the crop is damaged, which is exactly what was happening when we arrived for our inspection.

Billy had noticed some of his fruit was growing in misshaped. He knew by the seed patterns that it wasn’t a soil problem. So he brought out his longtime friend, former NC State classmate, and agrologist, David to come check it out.

As we watched them discuss the nitrogen and boron levels of the soil, examine the anatomy of the plant for damage, and talk about myriad of variables, it was a reminder that farmers are some of the brightest, most skilled people we have in this country. Not only are they using hard science on a daily basis, but they are combining it with predictive forecasting, and manual labor.

It’s easy to think that a farm inspection on a strawberry farm would be just showing up and verifying they do indeed have a field full of berries. And that is part of it. But a major reason we visit our farms is to get a greater understanding of what farmers have to deal with every single day and pass that along to you. We only really scrape the surface, but hopefully it gives you a better picture of the incredible ingenuity and perseverance it take to be a farmer.

Find Carter Farms at the market through the strawberry season (hopefully the end of May)