By ANNE KAZMIERCZAK
Register Reporter
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Long before the term was coined, Jim Smith believed in multi-tasking.
The former barber, who retired after 46 years in the business, also was a full time farmer.
Now, he’s a budding berry grower with a “you pick” operation that’s just two years old.
Smith began raising blackberries after passing through El Dorado a few years back and stopping at a pick-your-own operation there.
“He had 1,000 plants at least,” Smith said of the venture, called “Blackberry Heaven.”
“I asked what he’d charge for information, and he came back out with a handful of pamphlets,” Smith said of the operation’s owner.
Armed with new knowledge, Smith said he immediately sent away for 50 thornless blackberries.
Intent on keeping his fledgling crop secure, Smith took up a spray can with what he thought was insecticide.
“But I picked up the wrong one,” Smith said. “I killed them all. I sprayed them with Roundup.”
Undeterred, Smith ordered 50 more plants from a grower in Massachusetts and has been more cautious with his enthusiasm.
It’s worked. Trained on lines to keep them upright, Smith now has two 215-foot rows of bearing canes. All are thick with ripe berries and a bounty of red ones yet to darken.
With the onset of hot, dry weather, ripening will be rapid. Still, Smith noted, there should be at least four weeks of picking yet to come.
Smith, who can be reached at 620-496-2581, doesn’t have a name for his business, but he’d love to see a bunch of berry enthusiasts come out to share the harvest.
“We eat a lot of our own stuff,” Smith said. “We have a lot of blackberry cobbler.”
Prepicked quarts cost $5, Smith said, while the same quantity picked yourself will cost half as much.
Picking’s easy.
A woman came out Wednesday and got eight gallons in no time, he said. There’s that much and more on the canes still.
And with no thorns to worry over, picking is painless.
“She wore gloves,” Smith said of Wednesday’s visitor, probably to ward off any juice stains.
Marvelously, Smith’s berry variety is firm fleshed and doesn’t burst when plucked. Fingers stay clean, even when grasping dark blue jewels.
And they’re huge — easy to see, easy to grasp. A typical berry is larger than a thumb.
BLACKBERRIES are not Smith’s first venture into you-pick farming.
He and his wife, Helen, used to have fields of strawberries, he said. As those berries played out and Helen was less able to help care for crops, they plowed them under, he said.
Strawberries have a productive life of about three years. Blackberries keep growing.
Each year, the bearing cane must be cut out after fruiting. Each year, along with that cane, the bush makes what looks to be an empty branch. That branch will bear fruit the following year, Smith said.
Beneath the rows Smith lays wood chips “To hold in the moisture. And when it’s muddy you can still pick out here anyway,” he noted.
He also has a trick for propagation.
“Stick the end (of a cane) into the ground.” A new cane will sprout a little way away from the branch tip. That shoot can be transplanted to form new bushes.
Smith has moved 61 such baby bushes this year, he said. By next year, he will have a third row for picking.
Smith, 85, hasn’t considered not farming.
“I just like to do something,” he said.
In the past, he raised 85 sows on his 120 acres.
“We had little pigs all over the place,” he said of the breeding operation.
Fescue pasture also changed over time.
“I planted it to wheat one year and it made over 100 bushels an acre — that was when wheat was $5 a bushel,” Smith noted.
Now, that same ground is growing blackberries.
Smith’s farm is at 2981 Idaho Road. The easiest way to get there, he said, is through LaHarpe.
Head south on Main Street and go six miles from Highway 54. Turn east from 2600 Road onto Idaho — there’s a log cabin at the corner for a landmark.
Come anytime, Smith said, just call first to be sure there’s ripe berries on the vine.
7.22.10
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