By Dru Glaze
Arkansas Farm Bureau

For many, a family “truck garden” is a healthy hobby and the best way to get homegrown vegetables. For the Carpenter family of Grady (Lincoln County), however, a vegetable “garden” is a way of life.

Second-generation farmer Abraham Carpenter Sr. realized the potential of his homegrown produce when his wife Katie made more money in one day by selling vegetables at the farmer’s market from their one acre of land than he made all week at his job at the local lumber mill. So, he bought 20 more acres and decided to go into raising produce full time.

Now more than 40 years later, Abraham Carpenter Jr. — the oldest of Abraham and Katie’s five sons and three daughters — manages a family operation that has grown to more than 1,000 acres.

The younger Abraham believes that the operation has prospered because the three Carpenter generations who work the farm have stayed together, worked hard and kept their faith. Though the farm employs 15–20 immigrant workers and 40–50 others during peak season, he says labor would be a problem if the 35 family members didn’t pitch in. Additionally, most of them start working in the business at a young age.

“When I was 5 years old, I was pulling a four-foot cotton safe full of purple hull peas,” Carpenter Jr. says. “You know all my summers were given up, and I worked after school.”

The farm has provided the whole family jobs, and no one has had to work for anyone else.

“I had a brother who tried working (elsewhere),” Abraham Jr. says, “but eventually found his way back to the farm.”

Family members work 14–16 hour days, six days a week, and “No one ever really complains,” he says. “And no one is selfish.”

Besides providing them with jobs, the enterprise offers Carpenter family members other reasons to remain on the farm.

“For those staying around here, my dad would buy them a car once they graduated high school,” the younger Abraham says, “and if they stayed a year or two longer, he’d buy them a house.

“(Dad) would always give them incentives to kind of reward them for being around here,” he says. “Because of that, each one of us came directly to the farm and worked for mom and dad full-time.”

Family matriarch Katie’s culinary skills also help keep everyone together. She cooks three meals a day, seven days a week for the whole family: sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, children, every family member employed in the operation.

They’re kept busy not only planting and harvesting produce, but selling it, too, usually at the farmer’s markets in Little Rock and Pine Bluff. The Carpenters have their own retail stores in those cities.

Abraham Jr. says his mom and dad serve the Farmer’s Market in Pine Bluff, while he and his brothers focus on the Little Rock market. Simultaneously, his sisters, nieces and nephews work the stores.

The younger Abraham says the family company, Carpenter Produce, has sold at the Farmer’s Markets ever since they began.

“We’ve established long-time and life-long friendships with our customers.”

The family offers their clients 25–30 different types of produce, meat and fish, and any other products that complement their produce.

The farm is USDA-certified, meaning it’s free of toxins and chemicals. The family has to recertify its operation once a year, costing $2,000–3,000 each time.

Abraham Jr. says the certification isn’t just for the stores, but as much for themselves, to make sure their produce is healthy.

“We only grow the best varieties,” he says. “We pride ourselves in growing the best and being the best.”

The family treats its crops very carefully — and only when needed.

To keep labor costs low and improve cash flow, the Carpenters do sell to other retailers such as Wal-Mart, Metropolitan Foods and Quality Foods. In this way, Abraham Jr. says, they can market the excess produce they wouldn’t be able to sell at the farmer’s markets or in the family’s retail stores.

Besides caring for the family, farm and customers, Abraham Jr. also finds time for other things. Recently, Gov. Mike Beebe made him a parole commissioner.

Moreover, Abraham Jr. likes to speak with schoolchildren, where he stresses the importance of a good education.

He also speaks about agriculture and farming and works with the Arkansas Land & Farm Development Corp. youth education program on agriculture. He tells those thinking of getting into farming to “make sure you have a market for whatever it is you’re growing. Be willing to sacrifice, and have a lot of faith.

“No one knows what a seed will do when you put it in the ground.”