REX OBERHELMAN: $27,000 (Net!) from Five Organic Acres

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By the way, Rex grows his crops 100% organically. (And he still goes to grocery dumps every day to forage feed for his rabbits.)

PLOWBOY: Rex, you didn't create this flourishing truck-farming operation overnight. Tell me how it developed.

REX: I started out in 1981. I went down to a local store that had seed packets for about nine cents each, bought $2.00 worth of seeds, and planted about an acre and a half of vegetables. And I made a lot of mistakes.

PLOWBOY: Like what?

REX: Like growing zucchini squash. Everybody could grow zucchini, so there was no demand for the product. Beans were another mistake — they took too much labor to harvest. My melons did poorly, too. By the time they were ready, everybody was so full of southern-grown melons that I couldn't sell ours profitably. But I learned from my mistakes.

PLOWBOY: What sold well the first year?

REX: Tomatoes, cabbage, pumpkins, and winter squash worked the first year.

PLOWBOY: How much money did you make from them?

REX: $2,800 net. I also had a part-time job — well, actually it was a full-time job — working as the night processing manager for Armour Food Company. We made the Dinner Classic frozen meals.

PLOWBOY: What happened the next year?

REX: The second year I developed another half-acre of ground, decided to raise more tomatoes, pumpkins, winter squash, and cabbage, and expanded by adding broccoli and cauliflower. I also built a small greenhouse — about 16' X 22' — and grew my own plants from seed. That helped me double my production and bring my farming income up from $2,800 to almost $6,000.

PLOWBOY: What was the breakdown of crops on those two acres of produce?

REX: It was about one-third in tomatoes, one-third in pumpkins and winter squash, and one-third in the other items. That's about the same ratio that we're using right now.

By the third year, 1983, I had to make a decision as to whether to keep the full-time job or do truck gardening full-time. I made the decision that truck gardening was what I wanted to do, and thank God I did.

I increased to four acres — doubled my growing area — and went with nine basic items: cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes, pumpkins, winter squash, peppers, cantaloupe, and watermelon; I'd found I could move melons in bigger metro markets where there was a constant demand for them. That year I netted close to $9,000.

PLOWBOY: That must have been a lean year.

REX: It was, but we were able to survive on it.

PLOWBOY: What happened in 1984?

REX: Last year, we grossed about $52,000 and ended up with a net profit of approximately $27,000.

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