Bill Holbrook

Partial Transcript: My name is Bill Holbrook, and I'm a sixth-generation farmer on the property we're sitting on now, and I grew vegetables and hay, and tobacco. My mother was raised here. I was raised in Buncombe County, but then, I came up here and went to work on a public job, but, since started farming full-time in 1993. This community, Bethel, North Carolina, got two major influences on it, and that's water, which is the upper Pigeon River and the Cold Mountain. And with the river, you've got bottom land which is great, fertile land to grow crops on as you can see in the background with the corn. It's farming my fourth great-grandfather about 385 acres here around 1830. And it's been in the family ever since—part of it—most of it is gone now. I'm the last to farm and probably the last generation in my family to farm; my sons and daughters have no interest in it. So, there is an effort to preserve farmland in this community. The key to preserving this farmland, one of the keys, is keeping the farm of that community rule. And to do that, approximately twenty years ago, we had to fight off water ensure being running to this community are local. Commissioners wanted to run sewer and water up here. We have two schools up here—Bethel Middle School, Bethel Elementary School. And at that time, at the second advent of the sewer and water, they want to build a new elementary school—obviously, sure, it was one of the reasoning—but we fought it off. The community organized, the county commissioners led us—they formed a certain district and let the people in that certain district vote, and it was turned down by ninety-two percent. So it's not been brought up again. And, obviously, a neighboring County like Buncombe, where sewer and water is pretty well—ninety percent of the county, you can see the development—and it wasn't against sewer and the water, but it was against what come with it—high-density housing, low-income housing—those kind of things. So, we preserved—help preserve—the farmland in this community. We have good clean water. Haywood Waterways Association test the water and it's proven to be as a high quality it is in this county, so we're very proud of that. The local farmers strived to keep the water clean because it's to their advantage, to keep it clean, because we irrigate vegetables. A lot of vegetables grows in this community, and irrigation water is the livelihood of vegetables and any crop. So that's basically farming is a big part of this community. And most local folks appreciate the farms, they enjoy seeing it. One aspect of that is the number of bike riders that come up Highway 215 here want to see this community in the background—the mountains and the farms. So that's basically where our community is based on.

Partial Transcript: William Moore was my fourth great-grandfather, but the key to it was my great-grandfather William Harrison Hargrove who was in the Civil War. And he married him to the Moore and Cathy family; and he was a county surveyor and a county commissioner back in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and purchased a lot of the farm here and inherited fifty-five acres, his wife did, and part of the Moore family inherited that, and then he bought the remainder of it. So, at the time when I bought where this house is set, I didn't know he's some kin to the Moore and he was a kin of the Hargrove, but I bought it from a Moore family member, and since then learnt that he was our relative. North Carolina culture has something called a "century farm." If your farm has been in your family and improved by deeds, you can qualify as a century farm in North Carolina, in which, this farm I got it qualified about fifteen years ago. But my great-grandfather went home and purchased land, joining me and stuff. So we got several bottoms here that I farmed with tomatoes, pepper, tobacco as I said earlier, so it's been good. My mother was raised just a house below us so she appreciated being able to keep it in the family, and those kind of things, so it's been good.

Partial Transcript: Mainly, they had tenant farmers, and my great-grandfather, William Harrison Hargrove, was a tenant farmer for William Moore. A tenant farmer back when the farms were so big, the tenant farmer would grow crops high for whatever they negotiated with the landowner. And that's what he done, a tenant farmer. Most tenant farmers lived on a farm in a one-room log cabin, and that's where they got started. And William Harrison Hargrove kept a diary and May of some year in late 1800s, a flood comes through here as we just nearly had recently and what was lost is his corn crop, and he quoted that he is able to recover and plant a new crop and make a decent crop by fall. So, they had hardships back then just like we do today. So, they grew corn primarily, wheat. They primarily grew corn for livestock and for cornmeal, their own food production, and of course they grew their own vegetables, but primarily the main crop would've been corn.

Partial Transcript: Probably one of the most important things is care of the land, take care of it. And taking care of it meaning looking at it, watching it continually how water gets on, how water gets out of it, managing, of course, you've got to manage and trying to keep them out of your crops and stuff, and deer or groundhog eats your crops, you got to manage that. But primarily you're dependent on the weather and you can't do nothing about it but work with it. My grandfather used to—they didn't have fertilizer but they put leaves first when they give organic matter to the land after they used it and used it and used it, trying to renew it, as today we put fertilizer, those nitrogen, that kind of thing to help the crops.

Partial Transcript: In my experience, probably the most important thing about your crop is quality—for a quality crop. You can't do much about price, but if you grow quality, you're going to gain in quantity and therefore it's the process of you'll be okay and I never did lose money on farming. I worried about it sometimes—the flood come in. In 2004, when we had the major flood here coming September, done harvesting eighty percent of the crop. I didn't lose money that year but I had to expend a lot of money to repair the fields and stuff to get it back to where I could grow the next year. The quality is one of the most important things I tell young farmers today. Go for quality first, don't worry about volume, it'll come if you take care of your crop, if you take care of watering it properly, disease control, insect control, managing the water on it, it'll be okay, most of the time it'll work out. One thing about tobacco, I grew tobacco sometimes it was a guaranteed crop when the tobacco program was our—we had allotments and you could grow someone's tobacco. And if you grow to quality crop, you're going to get your money. It was my insurance crop before we could buy crop insurance, now we can buy a crop insurance.

Partial Transcript: Yes, but they worked to it just like we did in 2004, they worked through it and repaired their fields the best they could. At the 1940 flood if I recall come in August, in which would have been a bad time. That kills the crop but you don't have time to plant a new crop in August, so it's been a tough time for them. Probably didn't make anything that year and they had to worry about—some of them probably had crops on up ground and they did, they grow crops where the river wouldn't have flooded it. They lost what in the bottom land, but they had upland, they're probably producing food for them to eat, no sale nothing. But they grow turkeys and chickens and sheep and stuff and they're driving to South Carolina, I want to mark it on the Buncombe Turnpike and drive on, meaning walk, move them by hand to that area. I've got records of that of my great grandfather. Pretty tough people back then, tougher than what we're now.

Partial Transcript: Well, in his diary, he kept, my great-grandfather, he kept records of it. And when he drove turkeys to Greenville, South Carolina from Haywood, he went through the old road system wagon road which went through from here to Canton, went through Dutch Cove and what we call the Turnpike area on the end of Buncombe County, and he hit the Buncombe Turnpike which basically went south into Greenville, South Carolina, and that's they drive turkeys down into there are cattle accumulation of several things, sheep, and sell them down there. Better market, larger town, and they wouldn't bring a better price, it was a cash crop form before tobacco come in here and the Depression late thirties. But back then, that was what much people are—the communities here had money to buy crops. Some of them was smart enough. One of my fourth great-grandfather's had a mill here, Colonel Joe Kathy, Joseph Kathy, had a mill here, water mill, to grind corn, wheat, to make a little money with. But a lot of that was done on bartering and so many whatever corny ground he'd get height of it, it didn't cost a farmer nothing, but in case, he just tried it out.

Partial Transcript: I was raised on a farm and I enjoyed the outdoors, I hated school and I remember that, and I enjoyed the outdoors. And my grandfather, Larkin Holbrook, he kept the back allotment and obviously the kids worked us, and father taught me how to grow vegetables in the gardens and stuff and it was an experience. My grandmother told me years ago that I will be a farmer because she recognized my work ethic in the farm and my grandfather, and the summer when I was out of school, it plants beans to sell and if I helped him, and which I did, I'd get hiked for money. Well, my high fat year was thirty-five dollars which I thought was tremendous amount of money and I bought my first gun with that thirty-five dollars—my dad used 22 rifle—and that's where I started farming and I wanted to do it. When I went to work on a public job, working in a factory, just being inside in the concrete, the noise and stuff, just the solitude, you lost it. I wanted to be outside so I just quit my job back to twenty-five years resign. I was in management at that corporation, I started farming full time. I've done it part-time all them years, I have to work real tomatoes, grow the first crop of tomatoes in 1969. I knew I wanted to do it but it couldn't make no money, it's small, by the way.

Partial Transcript: Well, it's important to me for the food to be grown in this country. Part of agriculture now has come up with a program to keep food safe, the government regulation, the gap certification to practice. Today, if you sell vegetables, you pretty well have to be certified to do that. For food coming in in this country, wherever it's from Mexico or whatever, it's just inspected a small percent of it. You really don't know where it's coming from. And, yes, it may be cheaper but the dependence of it, we need to grow here so we know we always have to have food. Yes, teachers are important to educate their children, or lawyers are important, but to me nobody is more important than the ones that feed your children or the family members. Food is the key to it and we take advantage of it in this country because most people don't know where food comes from. They think it comes just from the grocery store, supermarket, wherever they go to buy the groceries. It's sad. It is good to see some younger generation want to get out and grow their own vegetables, that's good, and there are avenues to help. When I was farming, North Carolina State University Extension Service, the research stations—we've got a research station in this county wanted Mills River—it was a great help to a farmer as far as methods of growing crops. Whatever it was, there's information out ahead of you, so it's only just tremendous amount of it and people to help you.

Partial Transcript: Well, the bacteria get on food, it's supposedly killing a lot of people and making them sick, a lot of illness, E. coli, that gets comes out on the water sources or out of the ground, and E. coli it's in the ground. Most people are immune to it at work in the ground, it's the dirt, we're immune to it. But somebody who's not been around dirt much are not immune to it and so they're going to get sick. And therefore, I didn't like the certification because it was a government regulation only as a farmer that I had to do things, manage things. Most farmers don't like to be told what to do, and I was one of them, and was basically the government tell me. But there is an importance of food safety as people get sick and stuff and that's not coming from overseas now. The diseases are coming here mostly. I've been to Mexico, I've been to Honduras, and seen how they grow stuff in the environment down there, it's sort of like dog-eat-dog, you just survive. It's a pretty dramatic—everybody in this country would have to go to a third-world country and they'd appreciate what they got here more.

Partial Transcript: The key to farming is management. It used to you could make a living with your back, but now you better use your head because you've got so much capital in it, you have to have more land. I always say you get a bigger truck but you've got to have more land to grow, but management's the key. When we grew tobacco, there is a called a thirteen-month crop because you had to start early, you had to start preparing tobacco beds, you had to start planting in the February and working all the way up. And sometimes you would get the tobacco you worked off the next February. In vegetables, you had to start getting seed lined up, you had to decide first off what you're going to grow, how are you going to grow it, and then you start getting seed and preparing the plants, young plants, grew your own plants, the pepper, bell pepper, or tomatoes, cucumbers, you just started. And here in Haywood County, our window is so small meaning from frost in the spring to frost in the fall, when our crops come in mainly in first August like tomatoes, cucumbers have come in first June, July, middle July, that kind of thing. Pepper come in the middle of July, tomatoes first of August. The countries got the market sold up so you try to come up with little niches to help yourself, maybe have your pepper come in the first crop early as you can. We grew on plastic, I mean, we fumigated under plastic cup, drip irrigation on the plastic, and drip irrigation is a neat thing in itself because you're not overhead watering, you're not putting the Z's on the plants, splice and dirt up on the plants as a rain does. And then that plastic protects it from that disease to the plant comes from the soil. Fumigation helps some of that disease, but bacterial disease, it doesn't help. But in managing your crop and growing the crop, you had to keep up with what's—when your market come, as I said earlier, there's not much you can do about price control, it's going to be whatever it's going to be. Another thing, a farmer gains on another farmer's loss. For example, if South Carolina has a flood, it damages the crop down, their price goes up. Or if we had a flood in 2004, it helped the market, immediately it went up. The buyers produce look at this, they don't want to buy if there's a heavy rain in a community and an area, they don't want to buy that crop because they know that product will have more water content in it and be more apt to spool, won't have a longer shelf life. So there's a lot of things to do and the more you can educate yourself on crops, and as I said earlier, the University and Research Station in North Carolina, they have a lot of information now to help farmers manage their crops.

Partial Transcript: Well, I have a lot of friends who are farmers, and a few of them, they seem to struggle. And to me, I try to help one another, but to me it's management. They do good work. They get up and they go to work, work until dark, but they just can't manage money. They just wait late to plant their crops and knowing that the price isn't good with that, more likely will be down at that time. So, to me, my personal view on it is there's three things that I look at that's important to me—God first, my family second, and my land third. If I put them priorities and it'll come about. My faith in God is great and I just feel like He helped me through it all through my farming practices. I very seldom worked on Sunday, I'm not going to say I did, and my men, my co-workers, we didn't work on Sunday. We work from 7:00 to 5:00 o'clock during the weekdays, six days a week, but on Sunday we didn't work. I see farmers working on a Sunday and that's their choice, that's up to them, whatever they want to do but I didn't and I feel that God blessed my farm and still is.

Partial Transcript: Well, it impressed me to be a river-friendly farmer. That meant I tried to—we used to spray chemicals and we just go down to the river like our sprayer and I fill it up. And it was something that could have happened, you know. Spray material is a concentration and you weaken it, a two-and-a-half-gallon jug may make a hundred-gallon spray. So, I built up through the help of the North Carolina soil and water, I built a chemical handling facility, and now it's a hundred yard from a river contained. If there's a spill within, it's contained there and kept in there, so it protects the water. And that's one of the reasons I was awarded that river-friendly farmer award. I was just this past week inducted into the Western North Carolina Agriculture Hall of Fame. It was a great honor to me and I'm very proud of it. I serve on the tobacco trust fund. For years, I served on the North Carolina farmland preservation trust fund with the Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler still on it. I was president of North Carolina Tomato Growers Association. So things that I wanted to get involved in and trying to improve my culture in my community and my county and state, that happened. As I said earlier, I didn't like to go to school but I did like to learn about how to be a better farmer and preserve the farmland and the water that I had to have to make a living with.

Partial Transcript: Well, water is a key to all of it. You've got to have water, you got the water your crops, you got to drink it, you got to whatever you're doing with it, we bathe in it and wash our clothes. I know it's a big issue in this country, and as a population grows it's going to get scarcity of water. I'm sure municipalities looking at our river to gain, to get access to it, and that's just going to hurt communities down the river as Colorado River, very little of it ends up Mexico. It's a shame to give that way. But I guess when the politicians get through with it, it goes their way and whatever. Meaning, wealthy people can control, but water's the key to it all, it is. I recognize that. I love to trap fish, fish and lakes, and I like good quality water, good fishing.

Partial Transcript: Well, I recognize the—I live above the town of Canton, and we have good water up here, and it is an advantage to Canton because it is through a watershed for them, and it's an advantage to keep the water clean for them. Below Canton, I recognize the fact that there is a lot of jobs at the paper mill down there, and there isn't a necessity there, and they've done a lot to improve the water quality. There is fish quantity—tremendous amount of fish that live in that river below there. Yes, years ago, they had restrictions on how many to keep or eat and those kind of things, but I know years ago when the water was worse below the town of Canton, local farmers downstream from there, their cattle would go drink out of that river before they drink, you know. I guess they won't, that tannic acid taste or whatever the water wouldn't freeze. But I'll have to give the paper mill credit, they have improved the water, reduced the amount of water they're using which means it's less going into the river, and I'm glad it's not up here to put that away.

Partial Transcript: Well, I don't—I guess that's a tough question, what farmers would look learn from my example. I guess I'd be willing to help any farmer and there is a younger farmer that's rent some of the land that I still own, he's growing vegetables and he's making a good farmer because he believes in quality first. He was a house builder and he's doing a really good job in farming. Farming has been good to him so far on the small acreage as he grows and he's increasing each year. If I can help them, I'd like to have that opportunity to do it and I'll be willing to help any of them.

Partial Transcript: The future of farming in this community is—I see the downside of it is a farmers got to have more land to make a living. As the volume of produce coming out for the land is increased through technology and learning from the universities, but the land is not available, it's just there's so much land in the river bottoms here to grow crops, and it's just the competition for that amount of land is getting less or more and more competition. So that's one of the challenges for a farmer here to keep farming because to make a living you got to have more land, more crops. Tomatoes and bell peppers are high capital crop, it takes a lot to produce, a lot of capital to produce it, but it can be rewarding if price is up or you can lose your stocks too.

Partial Transcript: Young farmers are getting to be fewer and fewer and primarily because they probably several young farmers—I'm a member of the North Carolina Farm Bureau in this county on the board of directors and we try to help young farmers in the schools, the two high schools out in this county—FFA, Future Farmers of America—we try to help them. And there's a lot of students that have good participation in the schools for that, but when they get out the farming is not—there's just not a land unless the family inherited it. But there are other opportunities in agriculture other than farming. For example, where the produce goes, processing, meat production, there's a lot of opportunities not only in managing those factories and stuff but accounting. There's different things of education. I've got a local lady in college going the extension service and she's tutoring in Vietnam, those kind of things. There's opportunities to still be an agriculture and help the community.

Partial Transcript: Well, no. My concern is going to be there because the land that are available will be farmed because most of them, farmland on the bottom than there in the river bottoms are not very good building sites so there's not too much threat for development there, but the farming will be there. It's just there's going to be very few and fewer people because there's going to be more farmers, existing farmers, are going to want the available land and it's not available.

Partial Transcript: Well, education, just through education and the schools. it starts in the high schools. I believe even Bethel Middle School up here's got a FFA program. As I said earlier, the students are very interesting, they want to do farming. At the elementary school, we grew a garden and I assisted in it, and the kids just love to come out to it and put the seed in the ground or pick a bean or pull an ear of corn—they just loved it. But when they get on up in the high school, there's not so much, I guess, much attention to other things that they want to make a living and it's hard to do it in farming. If you can be a farmer, you can make a living at it, but here again, you got to find the land and you got to move away from here to do it.

Partial Transcript: Well, one of the stories that my great-grandfather and he kept a diary as I said, and there's a flood coming late 1800s in May, it damaged and lost the corn crop, but he was able to recover that, repair the land and plow again, and get a crop in, and make that corn before frost whenever come in late September or October, whatever, and he commented he was able to make a good crop. And that good crop meant maybe I believe it was like three hundred bushel of corn. It produces one acre now. But, see him that was his high for the crop, he was a tenant farmer. So, he makes me appreciate what I'm doing and have done in my farming career just what he done and made a farmer. Although, he went in there surveying and coming down, but he did on the farm. Some of his sons farmed a little bit but not basically, my grandfather left here, he didn't farm. I still own part of my grandfather's farm and great-grandfather all the way back to my forth grandfather.

Partial Transcript: Bethel is older community. We have an organization, the Bethel Rural Community Organization, which I been on the board of trustees before. They do a lot as far as history and helping to preserve for the history in this community. The highway right in front of my house, highway 215, was a railroad in around 1906, 1909, through there and it serviced the Sunburst Logan operation up at the Sunburst on the head of this river, what we call now Lake Logan. That brought the logs or lumber out going to Canton to the mill down there and on to wherever the lumber sold. My grandmother used to ride the train to Canton to get groceries and back, make a day trip out of it. That operation worked over five hundred men and women, unheard off what was work back in the head of the West Fork Pigeon River and over on the head of the East Fork Pigeon River. There's still a railroad grades back in our six-thousand-foot elevation. A lot of men lost their lives in the railroad train wrecks and logging operations and stuff, and there is some history wrote on it. So the community of Bethel is very prominent here. Some key people that come in here are Kathy family, the Argo family, the Moore family, among others that really helped this community. I've traced mine back to the land-grant in 1791, but it was a speculator that bought it from the town that stayed in North Carolina and that's the way the state grew plant to raise money. Another story, it's in a book wrote Land Titles of Western North Carolina by George Smathers. And George Smathers was the first attorney for the Champion Paper when they come in here in the turn of the century in 1900. He'd done all the title searches and they owned thousands of acres here on the biggest part of Great Smoky Mountain National Park at the time. But in his, to my memory, in his book which I have a copy of, they quoted, I believe it's in 1785, the Indians—Turkey Indians—had an agreement with the United States that they occupied all the land on the west side of the Pigeon River—that's aside we’re sitting on. Well, as time went on and land grants were issued by the state after that, the Indians sued—this was their land. And finally, according to the book, and finally in around 1930, it finally made it to the Supreme Court and they ruled that the Indian had a right to occupy—he didn't own the land. So, there's another way the Indians, you might say, who do it again with the Indian Treaty of 1785. It's an interesting story and an interesting book, Land Titles of Western North Carolina.

Partial Transcript: I guess the legacy I'd like to leave is one of the statements I made earlier—put God first, your family second, and your land third. Whatever you do, do quality first. It may be in your family, raised in your family, it may be worshiping, it may be farming, but quality first. That's one thing I did learn in industry—it was quality control. And it's very important in life, it's very important on the farm, it's very important in our water—quality—get the best water and try to keep it that way. So, probably that's the legacy I'd like to be known for.

Partial Transcript: Well, when I was younger, I didn't think much about it, but as I become older, history was very important. If you know the history of it, how your ancestors farmed or come into this country and made a living, you appreciate what they done compared to what you're doing. So there is a comparison there of people that move into this community and there's a lot that come from Florida in here that's been a big asset to this community. Migrants who had come into this country can be an asset if done properly. So, history, knowing where your ancestors come from, knowing how they lived and stuff is very important, and even cemeteries—I'm a trust chairman of trustees on the Bethel Cemetery—it was formed in 1845. The history of the community is very important. Elderly people do appreciate history

Partial Transcript: Well, I think young people are no different to when we were younger. They're trying to make a living, trying to have fun, you know, but I think as they get older and grow and raise a family, they will appreciate history as they come about. I think it'll be there, we got faith in our young people, and most of them do, they'll be okay. Now, there's a lot of dangers being young today that there wasn't when I was younger, but we were just as mean as they were. Back then, I did fear what my father did to me

Partial Transcript: One of the problems with the day is distractions that are facing our young people. I see the decrease in morality, moral aspect of it today, and society teaches that it's okay—whatever you want, it's okay. Well, I was raised in the generation where it's not okay to do whatever you want to. In the schools, we couldn't do whatever we wanted to, you know. Today, they do whatever they want to. Guns is an example. I know boys, they'd bring their gun, put on the school buses and take it, then when they got out of school, they'd get off the school bus and go hunting, squirrel hunt. A new threat of it being shot in a school or something. There might be an accidental shooting as a kid or an adult, drop a gun, they go off. But today, it's like we want make our kids grow up too quick. You see eighteen-year-old kids shooting, going into school and shooting up the school. They're still kids. Yes, we can send an eighteen-year-old to the war, you know, in the service in the past and still do, but I think we want them to grow up too quick. We give them too much responsibility.

Partial Transcript: One of the things of a sense of community stand together and communicating together is, to me, as years ago—I'm going to say twenty years ago—was the church is in the community. Most people went to church. That was their—I guess—social Sunday that they'll be able to talk to one another, communicate. And as the Bible teaches this, there's a falling away now in the community and the church. Yes, I think there is a danger of our kids sitting around with an iPad in front of them constantly, being able to view whatever they choose—very, very dangerous for our young people. And parents don't regulate it, don't look at it, just long as that's keeping that kid quiet and settle down. Community organization does a little bit to help, people stay together in our community, but it's mainly elderly people that come and want learning the history of a community or like those kind of things. But, I guess, years ago when we as kids, we just meet up with cousins or neighbors and go to the creeks and play, those kind of things, and our parents wasn't worried about us—today, they are, and I have my grandkids, I worry about them with what they're facing in this world today. And I just think it's everybody I would be worried about. I'll say it this way, I think I was raised—we were better off back then than we are today. Yes, I've got more money in my pocket today than I had back then, but the morals were better back then. I remember wanting an ice cream, I thought that was a delicacy. Now, my grandkids say, well, you want ice cream, what kind is it? It didn't matter back then. I just see so much—they get anything they want and all they want as a majority.

Partial Transcript: Well, I feel like I'm a blessed man. You're looking at a blessed man sitting here. And being able to live in the Bethel of community, a good place to raise kids. My sons and cousins, they play on this river, didn't worry about them, they learned to swim—all my grandkids have learned to swim here. It's a blessing to live here. I made my livelihood here, it provided for me. I can't see why other people don't want to come here and there is something I would appreciate to that rural community. There's so much pressure if a farm is next to municipality, there's so much pressure of that development coming in