FARM-CITY: Annual ag, industry celebration kicks off
The 2011 Cullman Farm-City week kicked off Thursday with members of the Farm-City committee touring locations highlighting the interdependence between urban and rural life in the state’s top-producing agricultural county.
This year’s tour led to a farming landmark in Cullman County, followed by a visit to Cullman Regional Medical Center for a lesson in scientific nutrition.
Fairview farmer Lee Haynes hosted the Farm-City committee early Thursday, offering an up-close look at how eggs are produced and distributed at his farm, one of only five such operations remaining in Alabama.
Haynes, whose family purchased the farm — known to longtime Cullman residents as the old Brock Miracle Egg facility — in 2002, showed committee members how a small number of family members and employees use a lot of automation to efficiently process roughly 120,000 dozens of eggs for sale each week.
While most of the farm’s eggs — sold under the Nature’s Best brand name — go to stores throughout the South, Haynes emphasized how several local retailers complete the economic cycle of production, distribution and consumption of his home-grown product, with every step in the process leading back to Cullman County.
“Locally, we have eggs at the new grocery store here at Fairview [Hopper’s Family Market]; Jack’s Food Land at Eva has them; both the S&S stores have them,” said Haynes. “You’re likely to find them in convenience stores also. We work with some big poultry wholesalers who sell to mom-and-pop convenience stores. But we also deliver basically through Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee; through our distributors, I know that we’re going into at least eight states in the Southeast.”
Farm-City chair-elect Cherrie Haney said the tour emphasized the way in which community members involved in production-oriented industries in both city and county rely on each other to enrich their businesses — and their livelihoods.
“It really shows the coming together of the two,” said Haney. “We need the city to sell the produce, and we also need expertise on equipment and technology, and city-based businesses are usually the ones who have the industry to produce that. Just as with all that specialized equipment we saw on the tour at the hatchery — most farmers don’t come up with that; it takes both sides to make the world go ‘round.
And of course nobody would have any variety of food without the farmers who put that expertise and equipment to use, who produce the majority of what we eat. We really want people to realize it’s not just one or the other — it’s teamwork.”
At CRMC, director of wellness and nutrition Debbie Morrison took the committee through a presentation explaining the many roles a dietitian can play in improving and maintaining health.
“The hospital tour was excellent,” said Whitney Haynes, this year’s Farm-City committee chair. “Debbie Morrison did a great job telling us about the hospital and about some of the new things they have coming in; some of the renovations they have planed,” said this year’s committee chair Whitney Haynes.
“It was wonderful to learn about all of things a dietitian actually does,” added Haney. “The realm of what they do is so vast; from trying to get kids in the community to reach a better level of nutrition to programming for the needs of different kinds of patients in the hospital. It’s really amazing to see how they put their knowledge to real use.”
Haynes, a teacher at Fairview who also belongs to a long-standing farm family in the same community, said Farm-City is all about bridging any lingering gaps in understanding between town and country.
“Really, the purpose of Farm-City is to make that connection between the farm and the city. We really try to choose people for our farm families and our city families who really connect with that message; who are connecting between the communities and are really involved.
“We’ve always had really good representation, I think because Cullman is really blessed with a diverse group of people. This is my fifth year being a part of it, and I’ve always seen that. Last year, Gloria and Raymond Williams were our city family, and they are super-involved in so may things. They’ve really done just a great job representing our community.”
Cullman’s iteration of the tour is part of a Farm-City calendar that links farm families and urban residents nationwide in a week of celebration immediately preceding Thanksgiving each year. On alternating years, the Farm-City committee selects either a rural or urban-based local family to represent the area in Farm-City activities statewide and throughout the region for the coming year.
Farm-City activities culminate next Thursday with a banquet at the Cullman Civic Center at 6 p.m. This year’s Farm Family will be announced at the banquet; there will also be awards for Farm-City posters and youth leadership awards. Tickets for the event are $15 per person.
* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com, or by telephone at 734-2131, ext. 270.