- Diversity stacks up
Fifer Orchards mixes marketing plan, crops
- By Lee Dean, Managing Editor
Fifer Orchards, which grows 2,500 acres of vegetables, fruits and field crops near Wyoming, Del., has an interesting marketing philosophy.
“We try to stay diversified in our marketing and crop mix,” said Carlton Fifer, who handles the farm’s sales, “with some acreage for retail, some for wholesale, and some for the chains,” along with a considerable acreage for processing.
Spring vegetable sales at Fifer Orchards begins with asparagus, a crop the Fifers have been growing for 40 years. Much of it is successfully sold, wholesale and retail, at their farm market. Their plantings include two 15-year-old fields of Mary Washington, Roberts strain, and two fields that are only two years old of Jersey Knight and Jersey Giant.
The new plantings are making a good crop in their second year, according to Fifer. “The newer varieties have a larger size spear, are better looking, and more marketable,” he said, adding that this year, the two-year-old plantings will be cut for one-third of the season. By the fourth year, they will be cut for almost the full season.
The older plantings will soon be taken out, to be replaced with the more productive, newer strains. But with all four fields being harvested last year, asparagus production is definitely up.
Previously, the Fifers had been able to market most of their asparagus through their farm market, in both retail sales to individuals and in bulk sales to wholesalers and distributors. One wholesaler, for example, delivers to restaurants and grocery stores. (He also wholesales the Fifers’ apples, peaches and sweet corn when they are in season.) Also, some restaurants and stores in the Delaware beach area stop at the market for their supply of asparagus.
“We’d like to further develop our sales to local restaurants and grocery stores,” said Mary Fifer Fennemore, “but we’re so involved with growing that it’s difficult to deliver as well. We do advertise in the Yellow Pages under wholesale and retail.”
“If we have extras, we take them to the Philadelphia Market,” she continued, “but we’re fairly new to the market, and sending asparagus there is expensive in terms of boxing, transportation costs and the labor costs for bunching and packing.”
This year for the first time, the Fifers sold some of their asparagus bunched, to make a pack that is more attractive to grocery stores. They sell to chain markets through wholesalers.
Cutting season for established asparagus beds begins in mid-April and extends to mid-June in Delaware. Work on the asparagus begins in the middle of March.
“We lightly scratch with a disc harrow, as lightly as we can, three times,” said Fifer. “Then for cutting, we ridge the beds. Ridging increases spear size and controls weeds. Years ago, we ridged way high, but now we ridge just enough to cover the little sprouting weeds.”
Hard hose units irrigate the asparagus fields. Then at the end of cutting season, workers knock the ridges down with a disc harrow so the field is level again. Then fields are sprayed, followed by irrigation to activate the chemical.
“Our main problem,” Fifer continued, “is the asparagus beetle. The beetle isn’t hard to kill. Sevin, Asana, or Pounce will do the job. But they’re easy to forget as the fern is growing, and they can do a lot of damage in a short time on a young bed.”
“The slugs - the larvae of the beetle - do the damage. They’ll chew the fern right up so it turns white. I walk the field, and if I see any area of the plant where it’s stripped of fern growth, I start looking for the sprayer.
“In July and August, we add a fungicide for rust. For weed control we use a tank mix of Karmex and Solicam when we finish cutting in the spring. The first frost kills the fern, and it turns brown.”
The Fifers leave the dead fern standing until February. “Then we go in with a bush hog and chop it,” Fifer continued. Doing this in February allows some time for the wind to blow some of the growth off the field before they start to cultivate.
When planting a new asparagus field, Fifer looks for light, well-drained soil in odd-shaped pieces of fields that would be difficult to plant in a field crop like corn.
“To prepare the field,” he said, “we take a middle buster and bust open a trench 10 to12 inches deep. We drop the crowns in the trench 10 to 12 inches apart. The first year we start with a half-inch of soil over the crowns. Then as they sprout and grow, we add more soil to fill in the trench, so at the end of the season, it’s level again.”
The trenches are filled in with a cultivator, and care has to be taken not to throw too much soil in. Filling in the trenches helps to keep the weeds out, and the Fifers also have new asparagus fields hoed a couple of times the first year.
“Except for Gramoxone right after planting to burn off weeds before the crowns grow, we can’t put any herbicides on that first year,” Fifer commented. “You have to make time to hoe. When the fern is up so high, it’s hard to go in there and cultivate.”
In addition to about 80 migrant workers at peak season, which they house in two camps, the Fifers have been successful in attracting and keeping local workers too. “We’re very fortunate in this,” said Fennemore.
The asparagus fits into the Fifers’ operation well. It brings in early income, gets the labor crew up and in place to help with orchard work that also needs to be done, and “it feathers in nicely with the rest of the operation,” added Fifer.
Large acreages of sweet corn for shipping are grown at the Fifer farm – 800 acres this year. “We sell our sweet corn through a local broker,” said Warren Lamborn, farm manager, “so it could end up virtually anywhere.” However, a lot of their crop winds up in chain stores in the East, according to Fifer.
The sweet corn is planted for consecutive harvest starting the first of April, and continuing through late June, with planting dates based on heat units according to how much their packing shed can pack in a day.
“We like to have 20 acres per day to harvest,” said Lamborn. In season, the packing shed employs about 60 workers for most of the day, although some are in and out from other jobs.
Preferred sweet corn varieties are mostly supersweets, in bicolor and white, including Ice Queen, Candy Store, and Vail. The Fifers experienced some problems with pollination in last year’s exceptionally hot, dry weather. “Irrigation with 10 pivots and six hard hose units kept the crop alive,” said Lamborn, “but we had some ears not fully filled out. We had our best results last year with Candy Store and Vail.”
Sweet corn is sprayed according to IPM recommendations, about six sprays per planting. “We had heavy insect pressure last year,” commented Lamborn. “We’re concerned whether we have some resistance building up in local insect populations to chemicals we’ve used for many years, such as Lannate. We were experiencing more pressure than usual from the fall armyworm, and Lannate has been the preferred material. But then corn earworm population rose. Warrior did a good job in getting the earworms under control. We can’t use only one chemical anymore on sweet corn. We need two.”
In pumpkins, the Fifers concentrate on Howden-type face pumpkins such as Magic Lantern, growing six to seven acres a year. In 1999, the first pumpkin harvests were late.
“We lost our first planting due to residual herbicide in the soil,” said Lamborn, “so our second planting was late in getting full orange color although other growers also commented their pumpkins colored late this year.”
The Fifers cultivate rather than herbicide their pumpkins. “We still have old, one-row cultivators if we need them,” said Lamborn, “and this year, we adapted an S-tine cultivator from six rows to three rows for use with pumpkins. We have also hand-hoed pumpkins at times.”
For disease management in pumpkins, “we generally try to follow the local county agent’s advice on a spray schedule,” said Lamborn. Delaware Extension is doing some work currently on using Quadris for downy mildew for the local area, to replace Bravo, Benlate, and Bayleton.
The market for pumpkins was a little better in the East this year, according to Lamborn, because there was a shortage of pumpkins due to last year’s heat and drought.
Peas and lima beans for processing round out the Fifers’ vegetable plantings. Last year the Fifers grew 350 acres of peas and 500 of limas in staggered plantings, with much of that land double cropped. Lima plantings were up because soybean prices were low, and some acreage that would normally have gone in soybeans was diverted to limas.
Because they were double cropped with peas, the limas were planted late enough to miss severe heat, to ensure good pollination. Both peas and limas were harvested by, and sold to, nearby Charles West Farms, and ended up in Agrilink.
At Fifer Orchards farm market, Fennemore has seen sales patterns change in recent years.
“At the market we’re selling in smaller quantities than in the past, often by the pound like supermarkets do,” she said. “Housewives used to freeze and can a lot. Today, while the Amish buy in quantity to put up, along with some older women and stay-at-home moms, most women just want something for dinner.
“They come often for the freshness and for our lower prices. They bring the kids and enjoy the outing and the chance to see a working farm, with tractors and wagons coming in. We try to provide a service in addition to a product. We carry purchases to their cars, for example. And if people ask us questions about growing fruits and vegetables in their gardens, we take the time to tell them what we do. On Saturdays at the market, we have cooking contests and demos. Sampling always sells things.”
Special events, like a peach ice cream day and a fall festival also attract crowds to the market.
Much of the Fifers’ advertising is done by radio. They sponsor the weather on a local Christian radio station and give a tip of the day on food preparation or the nutritional value of a fruit or vegetable. Then every Friday, the station airs the recipe of the week.
“We send the finished product, and the announcers talk about it and tell listeners that they can get the recipe at the market or on our web site,” said Fennemore.
And then there are the tours. “In the fall, the tours take most of my day,” said Fennemore, who handles the tours personally. “We do some tours in the summer too. After the fall tours, the kids often bring their parents back to get the same kind of apple they got on the tour. There is no charge for most groups.”
Tours are usually aimed at kindergarten and first graders, but they’ve also had home schoolers of all ages, 4-H and scout groups, groups of mentally and/or physically handicapped students, and fourth, fifth and sixth graders.
“We try to educate the kids so they appreciate where food comes from,” said Fennemore. “We talk about different varieties of apples, and about pollination and bees. We want the children to see that growing food takes people and resources and equipment. We talk about irrigation and fungus problems and bugs.
“The orchard is pretty impressive when the trees are loaded with apples, and I enjoy hearing the kids’ comments about being out in nature and enjoying the beauty of the orchard. If they have a good time, I have a good time,” she added.
Senior citizens groups also come for tours. The centers are looking for activity for the seniors, and the Fifers allow them to pick up fruit on the ground. “Because of the tours we give, people notice that fact that we’re in the community helping out and providing services like this,” said Fennemore.
The Fifers have found other creative ways to be active in the community. They give vegetables to sports camps for good nutrition during training, and sponsor several sports teams: a little league team in the Challenge League for handicapped players, a summer hockey league and a soccer team. “This puts our name and logo out there in different ways,” Fennemore pointed out.
The business works with the Delaware Agricultural Museum by donating ceritificates for vegetables and fruits which the museum sells to raise money. In addition, they have restored an antique truck, a 1935 stake body, which spend its winters in the Ag Museum, which is fully reconditioned and refurbished. (In summer and fall, the truck is on display at the farm.)
For their 80th anniversary celebration this year, Fennemore had hoped to get a scale model made of the 1935 truck. She’s planning to do a basket with a wooden tie-on plate to commemorate the occasion, made by a local basket maker. They’ll get some made and take orders for more.
Replicas of their market, the antique truck, and an apple tree in “Cat’s Meow Pieces” are available at local gift shops, and a new piece made by “Home Town Collectibles” was put on sale in their country store starting Nov. 15. Another 80th anniversary celebration item is an $80 gift certificate to be given away every month this year.
“All the people have to do is come into the store and register,” said Fennemore, “and on the eighth of each month, we’ll pull names. It does bring people in more often. They can enter every time they come, and the certificates can be used any time this year.”
Brochures in seasonal colors, printed 3,000 at a time several times a year to spread the word on what’s in season at the farm, also help advertise. The detailed brochures give approximate harvest dates for 26 varieties of apples and 29 varieties of peaches, as well as the other fruits and vegetables grown at the farm, along with a history of the farm and directions for reaching it.
