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

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PLOWBOY: You tripled your income? How did you do that?

REX: By developing my markets. I went from selling in just one community to selling in six different communities and to one wholesaler. I developed 24 customers, including the Red Owl Country Store, Godfather's Pizza, Heavenly Home Baked Pizza, Holiday Inn, Super Value, and Bonanza Steak House.

PLOWBOY: You were raising the same crops?

REX: Pretty much. We — by this time, my new wife, Sharon, and her two daughters were working with me — grew over 3,000 cabbages, 1,000 broccoli plants, 1,250 cauliflowers, over 2,000 tomatoes, and a 150' row of two specialty items: parsley and dill. We grew about 100 hills of watermelons and 250 hills of cantaloupe. We also had about 1-3/4 acres in pumpkins and 3/4 of an acre in winter squash — buttercup and acorn — that's over at Sharon's farm. We had 2-1/2 acres of squash and pumpkins there, and 2-1/10 acres of produce here at my place. [EDITOR'S NOTE: The sidebar on this page shows the full breakdown of Rex's income and expenses for 1984.]

PLOWBOY: Rex, almost half your acreage is in pumpkins and winter squash. Why?

REX: Winter squash keep well, so you have a lot of time to market them. And pumpkins are a very profitable one-shot item. The average supermarket will go through about 550 pumpkins for Halloween jack-o'-lanterns.

PLOWBOY: What do the stores charge their customers for those pumpkins?

REX: The small ones sell for $1.99, the medium ones for $2.49, and the large ones for $3.99. But I had to teach the stores to charge that much. They were used to paying the grower maybe 50¢ apiece and selling them for 88¢ and 99¢. The grower wasn't making any money on them and neither were the stores.

So I made an arrangement with all four grocery stores in Fairmont. I gave them pumpkins on consignment and persuaded them all to set a higher price.

PLOWBOY: How much does it cost you to produce those pumpkins?

REX: About 45¢ or 50¢ per unit, and we'll get from $1.25 to $2.00 in return.

PLOWBOY: That's great! How many pumpkins will you grow?

REX: Our goal this year is to have at least 15,000 pumpkins.

PLOWBOY: 15,000? That must be more than four grocery stores can handle!

REX: Remember, we furnish 16 supermarkets now, and a wholesaler, too.

PLOWBOY: So are pumpkins your best income producer — your big-ticket item?

REX: Really, Pat, my success comes from raising a combination of crops. However, the single best item in terms of profit per cost of production is the pumpkin. I'd say the tomato comes next. But all the crops are important. You can't make the typical big-agriculture mistake of producing just one or two crops, because if the market goes to heck on those products, you're stuck. You've got to have the diversification whether you like to grow all those things or not.

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