Eco Farm
2501 Butler Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
www.ecofarmnc.com

 

I didn’t wind up teaching in a school. I was going to do that, but I feel that what we do is educational and it’s really, really important. – Cindy Econopouly Soehner


Farming, the whole thing is work. I mean, it’s not like it’s a job and you punch the clock. There’s always something to do; it’s nonstop work every day, just about. – John Soehner

Natives of New York State, John Soehner and Cindy Econopouly Soehner moved to North Carolina with their three children in 1994. Eco Farm is located on approximately twelve acres of former tobacco land in the White Cross community, about six miles west of the Carrboro Farmers’ Market. Cindy first joined the Market as a textile artist, but the family soon transitioned to selling produce—and later, meat—on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Eco Farm’s booth is situated on prime Market real estate, adjacent to the main entrance and the gazebo. As such, most marketgoers will pass the booth as they make their rounds. They will admire Cindy’s beautiful flower arrangements and greet John, who has the jovial appearance and manner of a gentle giant. In the fifteen years since they began coming to the Market, John and Cindy have become celebrated fixtures of the Carrboro Farmers’ Market community.

NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subjects: John Soehner and Cindy Econopouly Soehner
Location: Soehner home on Eco Farm, Chapel Hill, NC
Date: August 19, 2011
Interviewer and Photographer: Sara Camp Arnold

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Sara Camp Arnold:  So this is Sara Arnold with the Southern Foodways Alliance on August 19, 2011. And I’m interviewing Cindy and John Soehner at Eco Farm. So if I can have each of you introduce yourselves, please?

Cindy Soehner:  I’m Cindy Econopouly Soehner.

John Soehner:  John Soehner.

And can you all tell me where and when you were born, please?

CS:  I was born in Minneola, New York, in 1956.

JS:  And I was born in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York, in 1960.

Okay, and why don’t you tell me how you all got interested in farming?

JS:  Go ahead. [Laughs]

CS:  My family has always had gardens, and my father had fruit trees. And so growing up, we always, you know, we always had fresh fruits and vegetables. And when I was eleven, my family moved to Greece. My father is Greek, was Greek; he’s no longer living. But we moved to Greece, and this was in 1969. And everything was all natural there. We went to farmers’ markets, and—

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JS:  Her relatives had olive groves and, you know, a bunch of olive trees in Zarafona, which was sort of in the mountains on the mainland. And they were all farmers and raised goats and made cheese.

CS:  And then also we got into it when we lived in New York. My father was also a teacher. And I decided I was going to be a teacher also. And I went to school to teach. And then I did my student teaching. And while I was student teaching, and when I would sit in the teacher’s conference room and I would listen to the teachers and the way they talked about their jobs and the way they talked about the kids, and it totally turned me off teaching. I didn’t really want to associate with them all.

So I was actually pregnant at that time, plus I already had one child, and we wound up deciding to home-school our kids. And so we home-schooled our kids for I don’t know how many years, probably five years, maybe—you know, while they were young. And—what was the question again?

Oh, just how you got started in farming.

CS:  Oh, and one of the things that we did was we wound up getting chickens. And so in our backyard we had chickens. And then our neighbors complained about the chickens in the backyard. And then I looked up everything in the library, and I found you can only have chickens if you have a farm.
           
So we, you know, we had a vegetable garden and we just started selling our produce from our vegetable garden, like a little bit; I started doing that. John was the farming end.

JS:  This is Long Island still.

CS:  This was on Long Island. And so then the town asked us to leave because they didn’t want the chickens there. And so we bought a farm down here and then we moved down here. And I mean how we got into farming; you know, we got into the [Carrboro] Farmers’ Market because I was an artist. I got in as an artist, but I always had a big vegetable garden. And then John started plowing the garden and making it bigger. And then I started selling some of the tomatoes at the Market. And then John started getting involved in plowing and growing also. And then he started doing it also and then we changed the Farmers’ Market to not be an artist—to become farmers. And that was, you know, I don’t know how many years ago, a lot of years ago.

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Okay; and then when did you all meet each other?

CS:  After college.

JS:  Like 1985. I was a commercial fisherman and I worked in a machine shop with my father also. And then we decided to move down here and bought this place. My mother-in-law lives in Carrboro, and this was total gum trees right up to the door. And we didn’t know one thing about farming or growing, really, except for our little garden.

CS:  You didn’t know about growing.

JS:  Well, growing commercially.

You hadn’t had any experience before you came down here?

CS:  None at all.

JS:  I never even saw a tractor in my life.

What did you fish for commercially?

JS:  Oh, squid, whiting, flounder, lobster—you know, I would target that from Long Island. Squid was a big fishery in Long Island. I don’t know what they let them catch anymore, but that was a big fishery. You’d drag your net around on the bottom of the ocean—but I like to work for myself.

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Right. And when you first moved to Chapel Hill, did you move to this house?

JS:  Right here.

And how many acres do you have on this plot?

JS:  We bought first twelve and a half with this house, but I’m telling you it was a jungle. And then we bought another ten and a half next door. And then we lease about seven other acres.

And how did you join the Farmers’ Market as an artist? Do you remember when you joined?

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JS:  Like ’96 or something like that. [Editor’s note: Cindy joined the market as an artist in 1995.]

So you had been here for a while.

CS:  Maybe two years.

JS:  Yeah, a couple years.

CS:  Maybe two, years and what I did was I did appliqués. I started off doing appliqués; like someone would give me a photograph of their house and then I would do an appliqué, like these things. [Points to one above her head.] Like that’s an appliqué I did. That’s an appliqué I did. So I would do people’s houses, and so then they would pay me to do a picture of their house. And that’s how I got in first. And then I started bringing in spearmint because we had a whole bunch of spearmint in the fields. And then I started bringing in tomatoes because John had made this huge garden and we had all these tomatoes. So that’s how it started off.

Okay. So when you joined you think it was about 1996, and then was it a couple of seasons before you started bringing the produce?

JS:  It’s been about since 2000 we’ve been starting to bring more produce in. About the last five years, we’ve brought a lot more. We basically did it by hand with a hand-tiller and a shovel. And now we have every piece of equipment you can think of. [Laughs]

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Well why don’t you tell me about what you bring to Market each season?

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JS:  We bring shiitake mushrooms usually from July until November. This year we don’t have any. I mean they’re just starting to button out a little bit, all kinds of tomatoes and cherry tomatoes and ambrosia melons, and sugar baby watermelons, and corn, arugula, bok choy, Swiss chard, collards, kale, red Russian kale, green kale, a few kinds of cabbage; it just goes on forever—fava beans.

CS:  Did you say flowers?

JS:  Flowers, all kinds of flowers.

So right now we’re in the middle of August, and what are the things that are really big right now?

JS:  This is the lull of the season; the middle of August, the last week of July to now, and we have a lot of tomato plants that are dying, and we have a lot that are coming in again. We just actually planted a lot of cucumbers and squash that are just starting to come in and will come in until the frost. We planted some greens about three weeks ago, and next week we’ll probably set out 15,000, you know, in between collards, Swiss chard, and cabbage plants. We’re getting the ground ready now.

But tomorrow we’ll have squash, cucumbers, Sungold tomatoes, red tomatoes; we still have a lot of potatoes and butternut squash—they’re all under the house and out there in that RV. Not too many mushrooms—

Tell me about the process of cultivating the mushrooms.

JS:  It’s called inoculating the logs, and we usually just do shiitake mushrooms, and there’s a million different strains out there, but I like to use the sawdust spore. And we cut the logs in the fall when it’s just a few leaves left on the trees. They say the sugar is up when the sap is down. And that’s what the mushrooms feed off of in the beginning, I guess. And then we stack them for a week or two or three out here. We do probably 1,000 a year. I don’t know how many I’m going to do this year because it didn’t go over too good this year.

And then we put them up on these stands and we drill like forty, fifty holes in each one. And we get these tubes, these hollow tubes, and jab it in the sawdust that fills up the tube, and we jab it in the hole of the tree. And we put wax over that and we have a bunch of us standing around the circle, drilling and plugging and waxing at the same time. And then if you do them in the fall, the winter, like October, mycelium takes over the log. And then we start soaking them in tubs and we get mushrooms. We soak them overnight; we do thirteen tubs a night, submerge them in cold water, throw cinderblocks on top of them and keep them under water, and then we take them out and hopefully—well, I’ll show you. There’s some popping out right now.

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Before you two were married and started with the chickens on Long Island, did you see yourself becoming a farmer?

JS:  Never in five million years did I think I would farm.

And with your family heritage of the farming in Greece, did you see that as being more of a path?

CS:  I don’t really think I thought about what I was going to be, but I didn’t really think I was going to farm, and, you know, I don’t do it the same as he does. You know, I just do the flowers, basically, and they do a lot of the planting of the flowers, so I’m just basically cutting and making bouquets. And then I also do the food for all of the crew and everything. So I don’t get into the farming side of it as much as he does.

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You’ve got your three children [Willie, Nichole, and Shane; all in their twenties], and then how many other interns or workers?

JS:  We have no interns. They all get paid. I just hate people working for free. I don’t know; I guess we have four other employees. Not everyone is full-time. It’s the equivalent to having like five full-time employees. The end of October, a few of them will be gone.

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So today is Friday and y’all have Market in the morning—can you tell me what you’ll be doing today and early tomorrow morning to get ready for Market?

JS:  Well, it is a lot different now than it used to be, because I do it by myself and just with Cindy. So usually you have me running around like a nut harvesting all day, and then by 5:00 or 6:00 you start loading your truck and whatever you can, and cleaning up, and organizing all your tomatoes, and culling, and so on. But now I have a lot of employees, and we have a few more things to harvest, a few deliveries; got to get to the bank before 2:00, you know. And by 5 o’clock we’ll have most of the stuff we need in the truck, anything—. If it looks like it might rain we’ll leave it on the porch and load it in the morning, and in the cooler. And so it’s a lot different.

But I used to stay up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, you know, getting ready for the Market, bagging and washing arugula, and all that mess. It worked pretty well. We do six markets a week now, so we’re pretty well ready to go already.

CS:  But it’s not just us doing it; the kids are doing different markets.

Right, I’ve seen them there, too. So you’re doing Wednesday and Saturday in Carrboro.

JS:  We do two on Wednesday; we do the hospital and Wednesday at Carrboro. We’ve never missed a Wednesday Market. The Saturday Market at Carrboro—and we don’t miss those either. We haven't missed one in years. One day there was only two of us. And we do the Fearrington Market, which is a great market on Tuesday, and we do the Southern Village Market, which is a great market on Thursday. And we have a CSA, too, and our drop-off point is at Johnny’s in town, and we sell a little bit of stuff there.

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Right; well why don’t you tell me some more about the livestock that you raise and what kind of meat products you do?

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JS:  It costs so much money for feed for hogs and chickens. We’re raising hogs, and I’m not sure if I’m making a nickel on them. The feed is—

CS:  Because the feed just went up, you know.

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JS:  Feed has gone from $230 to $240 a ton to $410 a ton.

Wow.

Since last November.

What kind of feed is that?

JS:  It’s corn and soybean meal, minerals, all kinds of stuff.

Do you think you’re going to stop doing the pigs because of that?

JS:  No; I’m working on trying to get the leftover stuff after they make beer from Carolina Brewery, and I’ve okayed it with the Town. I’ve been working on this for two years. This has been like working for the State.

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And the chickens you just keep for yourself?

CS:  Yeah.

JS:  No; we’ve sold chickens. One time I did chicken sausage, but I really love to raise chickens because it’s so good for the soil. You move them around and they fertilize and eat up everything. But it costs $4.00 to process them. It costs a fortune to feed them. You have to sell a chicken for twenty bucks, and it’s just too expensive.

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Do you have any regular customers that you’ve gotten to know over the years?

JS:  Tons of them.

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JS:  But I have some, you know, pretty good friends and they’re customers.

CS:  Yeah, customers who have become friends.

JS:  Yeah, a lot of the volunteers at the Market are good customers, too.

And tell me about—it sounds like you had one restaurant relationship go bad recently—or one contract. Do you work with other restaurants?

JS:  Yeah, it’s a whole other thing. I guess it’s sort of like the country music scene, you know, like you’re hot for a while and then they throw you off in the woods. But I used to have a ton of restaurant business. I would bend over backwards to sell stuff to restaurants—riding in Friday nights at 6 o’clock because they forgot ten pounds of arugula or this or that. But I basically sell a lot to Acme restaurant, a lot of stuff. And then there’s quite a few—

CS:  And we’re also good friends with them.

JS:  Yeah, as a matter of fact, he got married here last year.

[Acme chef] Kevin [Callaghan]?

CS:  Yeah, he had his wedding at our house, on our farm.

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Does most of your income on the produce then come from markets?

JS:  I don’t have any income. [Laughs] Yeah, markets, the CSAs, I sell a lot of firewood. That’s a big business of mine, different stuff.

Given the difficulties of farming—and there are a lot—what makes you keep doing it?

JS:  Well, that’s one hell of a question. This year actually I have a notebook, and every day this whole year at the end of the day, I write down what I spent money on and what I made money on. And at the end of the day you write plus so much money or minus so much money. I’m trying to figure out if it is really worth it. It’s a lot of time and effort.

So are you seriously considering getting out of it?

JS:  Well, if I was losing a ton of money, I would be. I mean, I’m a little short on money now because my mushrooms didn’t come in. That’s usually a lot of money.

CS:  But then if you ask me about farming, I am into organic farming because it’s the thing to do, it’s the way the whole country is going to have to turn in this direction, and we’re leading something. We’re at the beginning of something and helping people learn about something that’s really, really important. So that’s why I’m into it.

Well tell me what you mean when you say that’s the thing to do. Do you think that’s here, or that should be all over—?

CS:  All over the world. I mean, in a lot of different places they’re already doing organic. Here, you know, in America, everybody—you know, I guess because of TV and everybody watching TV, and they want, you know, all the things that they’re being told to get in the commercials. And they don’t know about how important it is to eat healthy.

You know, they believe what the advertisers tell them about what’s important to eat healthy, and you know that’s not true.

So you feel that part of your mission is an educational one?

CS:  Definitely; definitely. You know, I didn’t wind up teaching in a school. You know, I was going to do that, but I feel that what we do is educational and it’s really, really important. You know, going to the Farmers’ Market and just all of the people that are there—it’s very social, but it’s also educational. So—and I really believe in that; I think it’s really, really important. And I’m really proud of my whole family—him especially, you know, and the kids being into doing this, so—.

Speaking of the social part of the Market, have you all developed relationships with any of the other farmers at Market?

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JS:  Yeah, a lot of kids that used to work for me that started farms, I talk to them a lot.

Uh-hm.

CS:  Yeah, they’re now farming and in the Market.

Who are some people that worked for you who now have their own?

JS:  Well, George O’Neal, he’s got Lil’ Farm. He’s one of them that’s in the Market, and you know, like Stuart and Alice [White, of Bluebird Meadows Farm, who sell at the Durham Farmers’ Market] are friends of mine and—

CS:  Do you know them?

I don’t think so.

JS:  They’re really nice. They’ve got a great farm. And Shiloh—didn’t work for me, but she’s been farming up in Boone, but she used to use my equipment on Mr. Woodfield’s land. A lot of people used my equipment. My friend Andy, he farmed for a little while; he used my equipment on another piece of land that I’m using now. And gosh, who else. I can’t even think of it. Alena’s now—she’s here now. She just came for lunch. She’s working at a woodshop down the street. She worked here seven years. And she’s farming a little on her own now and has a stand on her own, and she goes to the Fearrington Market.

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It seems like a lot of young people in this area, like you’re saying, are getting into farming. What kind of advice have you given the people who have worked for you—or your children, or other young people who are getting into it?

JS:  Really now, they have all these sustainable agriculture programs, which is great and all, but really the whole—farming, the whole thing is work. I mean, it’s not like it’s a job and you punch the clock. There’s always something to do; it’s nonstop work every day, just about. Now there’s a few guys, like my friend Ray, he’s smart enough where he goes surfing in Hawaii. And—there are ways around working every day, you know, but—.

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JS:  But—you just plug away you know, and man, you have—what’s the word, not endurance, but perseverance. But it’s hard. Most farmers or fishermen—anything these days, factory, people that inherited that stuff you know, they inherited farmland and equipment—. If they’re just starting, buying land and a house—it’s hard.

CS:  The government should be helping with all that, and—

JS:  Well, that’s a problem, is because the government subsidizes Smithfield and all these places that sell pork and chicken and all this so cheap. And we’re not subsidized, you know, so there’s no way we can beat their prices. We have to buy our stuff. We’re not having it given to us, so—.

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JS:  Well, you know, [organic certification] costs money to do, but you’d make your money right back. If you were certified organic—there’s a lot of people that do things by the book, even though most of my customers know me and know I’m organic. They all sell to certain people. Man, it better be on paper, or just they couldn’t do it, so it would definitely benefit—and it’s not that expensive but the time. I mean, to write all of that—

CS:  Yeah, if you just even looked at that application form it’s unbelievable, so it would take a lot of time to do that.

JS:  If you were growing 100 acres of sweet potatoes, or you know, 20,000 tomatoes plants and that’s all you did—or five acres of strawberries; but when you’re growing ninety different vegetables, man alive.

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Do you find that the Greek food, does it translate pretty easily to the kind of things that you grow? [Editor’s note: Cindy has written and self-published a Greek cookbook called Diet of the Gods, which she sells at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market and by mail order.]

CS:  Yeah; yeah.

JS:  You can try some. We made that eggplant; it’s excellent. That’s if the animals left us anything. [Laughs] You know, you were asking about different customers at the Market and who stands out. I’d have to say there’s some pretty cool—a lot of great customers there. And not only do they buy stuff from us or we go to their house or they come here, and parties and so on. Like, it’s impossible for me to get a loan, you know. So I have customers that actually lend me money, you know, and I pay them off—I mean a lot of money. Like one time I borrowed $16,000 just to buy a tractor.

From a regular customer?

JS:  From a—yeah, a customer who is a friend now. And I’m thinking of asking him for more money. But I paid him back. He never once asked me, you know, “Hey, where is the money?” I just paid him back.

CS:  Because he wants to help farmers.

Right.

JS:  It is a lot of people, you know, who are pretty friendly and helpful.

CS:  Like when the weather is really, really bad. If it’s snowing and we’re there, or if it’s just raining bad, and people come and they say, “God, I really did not want to come out in this weather, but we knew you’d be here, so we had to come.” Which is nice. They’re there for us. You know, I mean they also wanted their food, but they could have gone somewhere else, you know, the next day when it wasn’t raining.

Do you have—where do you think that kind of dedication comes from?

CS:  Well, I think they’re educated and they want something that’s really good for them and healthy. And they’re—they’re our friends, you know. So I mean, not that they’re all our friends, but they’re friendly—you know.

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Anyone else I’ve forgotten to ask you about?

JS:  Well, if it’s on the Carrboro Market, I can just say I’m glad to have a Carrboro Market. I really am. Yeah, it’s a good Market, and that’s all I can tell you.

To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.