From Tobacco Rows To Watermelon Loads

[00:00:15.000] - Chris Griffin
Welcome to Back to Your Roots. A podcast that provides insight into all things farming, financing, and farm life, guiding you Back to your Roots. Thanks for joining us today on Back to your Routes. I'm your host, Chris Griffin. We have a really special guest today. He's a borrower of River Valley and has a lot going, and that's Mr. Keith Harris. He's one of probably the most diversified farmers around the Western Kentucky area, and we're lucky to get them on the phone today and chat about his operation. Mr. Harris, welcome, and we're glad to have you.

[00:00:39.420] - Keith Harris
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

[00:00:41.040] - Chris Griffin
Can you tell the listeners, and I'm learning a little bit about your farming operation and how your farm started, and was it passed down from generation to generation, or is it something that you started from the ground up?

[00:00:52.160] - Keith Harris
I grew up on a farm, and we had row crop, and we had hogs, and we had tobacco. It was primarily my father's, and we worked. There was four of us children, and two, primarily his sons, pretty well helped him put out the row crop for years. He had just about quit. He passed away several years ago, and I went on to college. Basically, that was in '88, and everybody was screaming, get away from the farm. Go to school. Get a great job, and never look back. Sort of the same little story that's going on today, ironically. Here we are, 30 something years later. Anyhow, I went to school, and it did take me very long to figure out that my heart and passion was with a farm. I just started looking for a way to be able to... I went ahead and finished college, but I was looking for a way that I could start back on the farm. That's what I did, and it was with dark fired tobacco. That was my foot in the door. Really, it's because of dark fired tobacco that has enabled to be able to do what I've done over the years.

[00:02:02.460] - Keith Harris
Two years ago, we quit growing dark fired tobacco, but for almost 30 years, well, actually more than 30 years, because that's how I've been married for 31. Probably for about 33, 34 years, that was what enabled us to start back farming. We grew dark fired tobacco and did sweet corn and did anything we could just to find a way to make a living off the farm at that time. The tobacco, during the '90s and the 2000s, dark fired tobacco was really good, really great to us, enabled us to grow. We started about 2012 is when we really started growing rapidly. We have several children, and I wanted to be able to pass a legacy and give them opportunity that if they wanted to farm, they would have that opportunity to do that. We started growing out into different things. I started row crop a few years before 2012, just on a smaller scale, and really up until the last three or four years, we really expanded the row crop greatly. But we started doing numerous different things around 2012 with background cattle. We started growing watermelons, we started growing strawberries, and since then, we've added a few other enterprises to the farm.

[00:03:18.540] - Keith Harris
But that's basically in a nutshell, the path that was taken, and it all started with tobacco.

[00:03:23.160] - Chris Griffin
Well, now, when you say row crop, what row crop do you guys plant and grow? I know that's been pretty volatile, too. I know I had Alan Pace on the podcast a few days ago, and it's just got a lot of volatility in it right now.

[00:03:36.540] - Keith Harris
It does. And we actually just about doubled our operation last year, which this is a great time to expand. And in some regards. But in other ways, it is because there's actually land available, and it's hard to expand whenever a farm is going great because of the competitive nature and farming as it is. But there's been some opportunities going continue to be opportunities for expansion and row crop. We farm about 3500 acres of row crop now. So like I said, we basically almost doubled our operation from last year to this year.

[00:04:12.420] - Chris Griffin
In my portfolio, I don't have many, I don't know of any, honestly, with watermelons and strawberries. Tell us some difference to the listeners compared to a row crop operation. One, what they think of as corn, soybean, things like that. How is growing, getting things ready for harvest and things on strawberries and watermelons? How does that look and what does that look like during the year for you guys?

[00:04:34.000] - Keith Harris
The first probably crop that we grew that was dealing with vegetables of some nature was strawberries in 2012. We met a couple of people that encouraged us to maybe give that a try. There wasn't many berry strawberries at that time, early any strawberries growing in our area. We already had a steady labor source because we had dark part of with migrant workers. Basically, I just started looking for those windows During the year that my guys were here, that I could add a crop that wouldn't conflict directly with tobacco. And strawberries fit that bill. And that's with encouragement of a couple of other people. And we had that, like I said, we had those labor supply, and it was obvious that there was a market there. So we got started doing that. We sell almost all of our strawberries on the retail level.

[00:05:22.520] - Chris Griffin
Okay.

[00:05:22.960] - Keith Harris
Today, after I helped, me and my daughter did that for several years, and she got married. And when she got married, I gave them that over to them. They now do all the strawberries, the high tunneled tomatoes and flowers. The strawberries that we grow on a retail market, we also, in 2012, we started on a really small scale.

[00:05:44.260] - Keith Harris
A good friend of mine helped us get started with growing watermelons. From that, we went from just growing about 12 acres to we grow about 270 acres.

[00:05:55.020] - Chris Griffin
Oh, wow. Okay.

[00:05:55.900] - Keith Harris
Now, many watermelons.

[00:05:57.760] - Chris Griffin
Yeah. That leads into my next question, I think it's going to be a good learning opportunity for the listeners. The way I look at it, it's the same way if diversifying your financial portfolio, you reduce the risk on some things if something else has less volatility. But what made you to diversify your operation and not specialize in just one specific area?

[00:06:19.500] - Keith Harris
Well, it's obvious with the row crop right now, if you're just a row crop farmer, you're at great risk. It just caused the income potential there. We was just looking for different offering revenue streams that would help stabilize the farm. We had this steady... You may not hit a home run with every crop every year, but normally, if you have a lesser production on one area, you pick it up somewhere else. So it just helped us to minimize our risk across the board, and helped us be in many different markets, and hopefully you just wasn't a slave to just one entity. I'm grateful and thankful I did that. There's two or three reasons I did that. First of all, it was to try to mitigate our risk, and it did. It did that for us. I also mentioned, I have eight children, and they have all been a tremendous help, and many of them are still active.

[00:07:12.190] - Chris Griffin
Did you say eight? Did you say eight children? Oh, my goodness gracious. Okay. I have two, and that's plenty, so I can only imagine that.

[00:07:20.040] - Keith Harris
Yeah. They've been a huge help to me over the year with a farm, and now they're actively taking part in different crops. One of my daughters takes care of our... We do beef on dairy, bottle baby calves. She oversees that. My daughter-in-law also does that. I'm just trying to arrange things that somebody can take it over and make a living off of it someday and still remain a family farm where we help each other out.

[00:07:48.180] - Chris Griffin
Yeah. You're leaving a great legacy and an opportunity for your kids and family. Well, and that leads into the next question as well. This is one that Shea wanted me to ask. I know, obviously, You've done research and you do research and probably see what the best option is for the next thing to plant. Is there any new farm ventures on the horizon for you? Any new crop or vegetable or fruit or something that you want to do? Or is that just something that just happens and you see an opportunity and you run with it?

[00:08:16.660] - Keith Harris
Well, our newest thing is the Vital egg barns. Me and one of my boys and my son-in-law and daughter were building four of those. That was just something I learned about. I started hearing about it a little over a year ago when I met some people that was doing it, went and visited and looked at their operations, started looking at the numbers. That's the newest thing. We have not got chickens yet, but we'll get our first flock in December. I've done that over the last two, three years. I've tried to find a couple of things that wasn't quite so risky that was pretty structured in their income to help offset some of the riskier things that we do. And so the beef on dairy calves was one of those things. These egg land barns is another thing that just try to help reduce, take some of the risk out of the rest of the farm operation, level that out. I've got some other opportunities. I haven't pursued them just because it hasn't been the right time or haven't had the right person to come along that could take something like that over. But there are numerous opportunities out there.

[00:09:22.140] - Keith Harris
I would really stress to people that they need to develop a market, first of all. Farmers are great at growing things. Every time a farmer has ever been challenged to grow something, we've done well and exceptionally well, and actually to the point of probably overproducing. I really stress that you find whatever you're doing, you have to have a market and you have to have a good market. Then also another thing that I try to abide buy is you got to learn to manage the small before you can manage the bigger. So don't jump into something trying to swing a big bat. That just sets you up some major issues. There are opportunities out there. I would encourage people to look at these Vital egg barns if you want some stable income. So anyhow, I won't say what some other things are, but there's opportunities out there.

[00:10:14.520] - Chris Griffin
That's a great word of advice. Just talking about make sure you can handle smaller operation and be really efficient with that before you start expanding. Because just like anything else, whether it's farming or any type of business, sometimes you can grow too big, too quick and not have everything under wraps and everything reined in. That's how it is on a bigger operation. A penny on a bigger operation, multiple times a lot, turns into a big loss pretty quick. I think that's a great word of advice, not just for farmers, just for anybody out there, whether it's working in a W2 job or owning their own business that's not farmer. Just get everything tied up and efficient and then try to grow from there. That's some great advice. Speaking of that, and I think this flows great in the next question, you're talking about you guys have grown and here's where you are now, and this is what your operation looks like. Obviously, you've set up this awesome operation and an opportunity for your kids, your in-laws, different things. But did you ever think when this started, right back in the '80s, did you ever envision that it would be where it is right now?

[00:11:19.020] - Keith Harris
Oh, no. No, never. It's pretty well just one day at a time. It's like people ask me about having eight children, and I said, I sure didn't think about it.

[00:11:28.220] - Chris Griffin
That's what I was getting her to ask you. Was that for a day?

[00:11:31.280] - Keith Harris
No, it wasn't. That's how it is with our farm. When I saw need to grow, and that's what we did. That's what we'll probably continue to do, is some of my children. If half of them are married and half of them are not. As I see people who want to stay on the farm and be a part of the farm, then we'll have to continue to grow some.

[00:11:55.920] - Chris Griffin
Well, actually, Shea's the one that writes these questions, and Shea Weaks actually said, She's been to your farm a few times. This is the next question. She just always admired how much of a family affair it was and how involved everybody was. I know you dove in that a little bit, but I'm sure there's a lot of pride involved in that. Obviously, not only that, but you're teaching your kids work ethic and a lot of other things that they're going to use for their survival. Just diving in that a little bit and just explain what that means to you.

[00:12:27.420] - Keith Harris
Well, that's one of the most fulfilling things to me that there is, is when you can raise a family and work together as a family, vacation together as a family, have get-togethers. It's just a lifestyle, and I definitely don't take it for granted. Very blessed that all my children are still in the area, and many of them are still taking a very active part in the farm, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. As with any business, it's a farm is the business, but there's also the family, and I've been blessed that all of our children, they're good to work with, easy to work with. They respect what we're doing. No regrets in ever doing that. That was the whole reason, like I said, and the rapid expansion of our farm is because I wanted them to have the opportunity just like I did. We've been blessed greatly in being able to do that and finding things that would allow them to stay on the farm and make a living off the farm.

[00:13:29.720] - Chris Griffin
Well, and it sounds like they're really good stewards of what you're leaving behind and what you're leaving for them to take over. I can just hear it in your voice. As a dad myself, that's about the only thing you ask for as your kids grow up and they're successful and have a good reputation in the community and faithful and things. You can just tell by the way you talk about them, obviously you're proud, but obviously they've grown up and it sounds like they're really good stewards for what you're leaving on, which is also awesome. Well, and then I think one thing that's interesting with your operation, so much of the row crop operations, there's so much that's automated now. I mean, there's still manual labor involved, but it's much different than strawberries and watermelons and things like that. Explain just how does that look when you're out there getting ready for planting for your watermelon season or strawberry season or whatever it is? What does that look like? Because I don't think a lot of people are real familiar with that. I think they're used to driving in Ballard County and Graves County and to seeing in the spring and then during harvest season, what that looks like on a row crop.

[00:14:36.120] - Chris Griffin
But what does it look like with the watermelons and strawberries and things like that for you?

[00:14:39.620] - Keith Harris
As you can imagine, multiple things run together. There are certain seasons that everybody is going in different directions. The watermelons, if you've ever grown tobacco, as far as the labor is concerned, they're similar. They're probably not as physical related as they It's just everything's hands-on, just like tobacco is. We plant them by hand, we pick them by hand, we pack them by hand. There's a super amount of labor involved in the watermelons. Same thing with strawberries. There's a lot of labor involved with strawberries. Traditionally, I think that's why tobacco was so good for so long and why some of these other crops have been as well is they require a lot of labor. That knocks some people out. There is tractor time, but there's more hands work than there is anything.

[00:15:33.980] - Chris Griffin
A lot of physical labor on that, which obviously, like you said, if somebody can't find the help to do that or doesn't want to do it, then, like you said, it knocks those part-time or maybe not all the way in, guys out, which obviously would help the ones that are fully committed to it. You talked about the strawberries and all you said on the retail side. What about the watermelons? What do you guys do with them? Do you guys sell them at Farmer's Market or do you sell them in retail on that as well?

[00:16:01.500] - Keith Harris
We sell them wholesale, but they're going to retail stores. Probably 80% of my melons goes to Costco. The other 20%, close to 20% goes to Walmart. There might be a couple of other small ones in there, too, but primarily, those are the two places I send my watermelons. I have to have a broker for that. I've been working with this guy since 2013, and he has contracts with these places. He takes care of all the logistics and the sales, and they semis just come to the farm and pick up the melons and then take them directly to either Costco or Walmart.

[00:16:38.140] - Keith Harris
There's a couple of other stores we ship them to as well.

[00:16:42.480] - Keith Harris
To give you an idea about the labor involved. When we're up and going in July, there's many days that we'll pack and ship in that 50 to 60,000 melons a day range, 8,000 to 10 semi-loads a day. You just imagine putting small, not a big watermelon, but a smaller watermelon But a smaller watermelon, one at a time in a. That melon's touched a lot. But that's our market for the watermelons. You can just imagine 50 or 60,000 a day, and you're doing that six days a week through the month of July. There's no way you could ever sell retail enough to do anything of very much scale anyhow.

[00:17:20.960] - Chris Griffin
Well, you say that this ties into my last podcast I did with Alan Pace, is we just got on a conversation. So many People just don't understand when they go to the grocery store, they go to Costco, they go to Walmart, where their food's coming from. There's a lot to it. I think a lot of people take that for granted. Even, like you said, the amount of, hey, we sell to Costco, and people think, Well, hey, my watermelon's just there, and I'm going to go get some. Well, they don't realize the amount of effort and time and money that you've put in your operation to get those ready, to then load them up on a truck, the truck to get them to the thing, and get them unloaded. That's part of the reason why we do the podcast is to try to educate people who maybe aren't real familiar with agriculture to begin with. You're saying it's just interesting to sit here and be like, Okay, well, there's a watermelon operation close to us in Western Kentucky that sells directly to Costco. I don't know how many people would have realized that. And Walmart. Do you think Walmart, Sam's, and Costco are probably your three biggest, I would say, retailers, in my opinion, if you're looking across the board.

[00:18:28.240] - Chris Griffin
That's obviously That's really neat to hear. I had no idea that you did that. Kind of unbelievable, I mean, that you do that many watermelons and sell them directly to Costco. It's pretty amazing. But like I said, most people just don't... They take it for granted. They go to Chick-fil-A or they go to Costco or wherever. They're like, yeah, my food's there. I'm like, yeah, there's a lot more to it than that, buddy. I would say with so much diversification within your operation, what would you say? Obviously, it's helped leverage some risk for you and less than some risk, hopefully on some other things, and maybe something else will take up the slack. But even with that, with the diversification, what's been the biggest challenge for you, if there is one, with that much diversification?

[00:19:11.680] - Keith Harris
Well, when we're doing multiple things at the same time, when we're packing melons and harvesting corn and strawberries at the same time, when you can just focus on one thing, it's still pretty challenging. But just when you're mixing crops and cattle and different things, and where you're having to think about different entities every day and going back and forth. Getting everybody, managing your labor is probably one of my biggest challenges to make sure that we are making the most efficient use of their time in getting things done in a timely manner. I'm big about prioritizing things, and there's different things that have top priority at different times of the year. You have to be able to manage the little things. Most of the time, you're going to cover the big things, but it's the little things that end up eating your lunch if you're not careful. So you can't let all the little things slip. That's one of the biggest challenges in teaching my children because they're going to be the future in managing the farm is you just can't think about getting in a combine and necessarily driving a combine and combining corn. Yeah, you're doing that, but you may have two or three people doing another job and two or three people doing another job.

[00:20:22.370] - Keith Harris
So you have to think about everybody in their position and making sure that everything is getting done and getting done correctly. And so that's one of my bigger challenges is just doing that every day.

[00:20:32.620] - Chris Griffin
Well, and you flowed right into the next question I was getting her to ask, what's some good advice you would give to a farmer who wants to diversify? You're talking about prioritizing and staying very organized and focused on little things. I would say that's some great advice. Honestly, even if you're not super diversified, I would say any farming operation, you focus on those things to hopefully be successful.

[00:20:52.860] - Keith Harris
Yeah.

[00:20:53.240] - Keith Harris
Manage the little things before you try to manage it. Big thing like that always taught me, work hard. There's time to work hard, play It's time to work hard. You can't let it just go. Farming is a lifestyle which is different than if you work someplace in a 40-hour week where when you leave, oftentimes, I wouldn't say all the time, but oftentimes, you can just forget about that.

[00:21:16.940] - Chris Griffin
Shut your brain off and go home. Yeah.

[00:21:19.860] - Keith Harris
But you can't do that. Or at least I can't do that this time of year. Now, there's a time this fall that will come when everything... Nothing's ever always done, but there's a time when Things aren't as pressing that I'll start setting my brain down for a while. But it's just the time management and the labor management. If you're going to be diversified, you've got to be able to do those things. It's not something you can just learn overnight. We've been diversified on much smaller things for a long time, not to the scale we are now. That was where I learned how to do multiple things on a much smaller scale before I started taking on some bigger things.

[00:22:01.900] - Chris Griffin
Farming, I think it's so cyclical. I know when I started here, I came from another lender, and I started here in June of '22. Grain prices are really good. Things were great. Obviously, now we're in a down cycle a little bit. It may be different in five years, right? But you've been in it long enough, and you've seen the ups and downs. What keeps you going? I know that's a loaded question, but what keeps you going? What keeps you pushing forward and looking forward within your operation and just getting up every day and doing your job?

[00:22:38.060] - Keith Harris
Well, I know there's my children now are dependent on me.

[00:22:41.710] - Chris Griffin
Yeah, you got eight of them.

[00:22:43.740] - Keith Harris
So you got Yeah, so that's part of it.

[00:22:46.600] - Keith Harris
I love challenges. I love trying to take something and figuring out how to make it work, something that maybe nobody else has ever done before, taking it and making a goal of it and actually being successful in doing that. Challenges is one thing that keeps me going. When I quit looking for the challenges, I'll probably start looking to retire.

[00:23:10.020] - Chris Griffin
I don't know how you knew the next question I was getting to ask you because you rolled right into it, but that's what I was going to ask, and this is our last question to wrap it up. But one of the questions I was going to ask you is we know that you guys as farmers face challenges every single year, every single day. But if you were talking to somebody that next generation, Obviously, you've got eight kids, and I'm sure you have those dad talks with them that my dad had with me. What are some of those challenges you feel like that next generation of agriculture is probably going to face that maybe you didn't have to face in your time or even now? I know that's a big question, but that's my big question to ask every person on the podcast.

[00:23:54.220] - Keith Harris
You can go off in many different areas talking about that. Financially, just the risk that we are exposed to today, it takes so much more money to play the game anymore to be able to make a living. So anytime you spend more money, you're at more risk. And I don't see that stopping. So that's a big concern financially for them. You've got to be able to take these challenges that we see with row crop, for example. Really, row crop hasn't... I mean, it's tough right now. There's no question about that. There's anybody that's in row crop farming would say that, I would think. But row crop farming has been like that to some extent for a while. I didn't have any financial ties in the '80s, but I saw what it did to all the farmers during the '80s with all the droughts and lack of insurance and things like that. If you're a row crop farmer, you're fooling yourself if you don't think that you have those home run years, but you don't have very many of them. But a lot of farmers farm to have that home run year, and then they'll ride on the coattail that run year for three or four years, and then they'll have a couple of bad years.

[00:25:03.440] - Keith Harris
You're right, it's cyclical. It's going to change. To teach your children how to handle those ups and downs, because you see it in vegetables as well. This is one thing that's different that I will make mention of. I grew dark fired tobacco for 30 something years. Never lost a dime growing dark fired tobacco. We always made money. Even when we lose a field somewhere, we would make enough on the other. So we always made money until the last year, the year I quit. That was the only year that we ever actually broke even or lost a little money on dark fired tobacco. And that trend has continued forward. So that's just the industry that was great for so many families all over West Kentucky for so long. It's still probably as good for some, but it's not great like it used to be, the heyday's over. You've got to I saw that probably was going to come when we had the tobacco buy out, and that was one of the reasons in the back of my mind that I can't rely on this forever. I was still young, so that was one of the reasons I started looking for the things as well.

[00:26:13.860] - Keith Harris
Just knowing that tobacco may not always be there. That was one of the reasons with the row crop as well. It's like, well, you're not going to have great years every year. You're not even going to have good years every year. You're not even going to have mediocre years every year. There's just so much roller coaster in crop farming. Just trying to find crops that would fill in those dips. When we first started with vegetables, it's much tougher now to make money in vegetables than it was 10, 11, 12 years ago.

[00:26:41.670] - Chris Griffin
I got you.

[00:26:42.170] - Keith Harris
Everything just gets tougher. It's easy to get down on it. You can't do that. You got to be able to find solutions to the problems. And that's one of the things I try to teach our kids is you just can't get down on something. You got to try to find a solution. And sometimes it means stopping doing one thing and starting doing something else, and that's okay. So you got to keep your chin up. If you're a farmer, you have to know that. Farmers are optimists at heart, otherwise, they wouldn't be finding a crop. But you also have to be a realist.

[00:27:12.760] - Chris Griffin
I think that's perfect. I think That's ending right there. Just talking about finding solutions and you got to have a problem and keep your head up and keep moving forward. I think that's some great advice to wrap everything up with. Keith, I really appreciate. I know you're super busy and you got a lot going on. Just really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to do the podcast with us. It's been a really valuable resource for a lot of people. Like I said, our goal when we started this was to hopefully educate people out there and listeners that maybe don't know anything about agriculture and the ups and downs and everything that goes into it. We appreciate you taking that time.

[00:27:50.200] - Keith Harris
Well, thank you for having me.

[00:27:50.950] - Chris Griffin
Yeah, absolutely. We loved having you, and we appreciate you being part of the River Valley Ag family and looking forward to continuing to work with you for years It's good.

[00:28:00.640] - Keith Harris
Okay. Thank you very much.

[00:28:02.320] - Chris Griffin
Thanks for tuning in to Back to Your Roots, where we dish the dirt on all things ag. Be sure to never miss an episode by following and subscribing. While there, leave us a review about what you want to hear next.

[00:28:14.400] - Chris Griffin
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