82-Uncasttr Fanning, Saturday, May 17,1986
U-Pick Operation Stabilizes Farm Income on Lee's Turkey Farm
BY RITA SHADE
Staff Correspondent
ffIGHTSTOWN, N.J. - You can
talk turkey with Dick and Ruth
Lee. You can also talk peaches,
pears, apples, pumpkins, snow
peas, cabbage, snap beans and
another 40 fruits and vegetables.
Raising more than 5,000 pullets
for holiday tables provide the
bread and butter for Lee’s Turkey
Farm in Mercer County, N.J. But
their innovative U-Pick operation
one of the first in the state
stabilizes farm income.
The Lee operation is a carefully
merchandized haberdashery of U-
Pick crops, rented garden plots, a
•’driveway” sales stand, freshly
dressed and freezer-sales turkeys
and custom-cooked turkeys with
all the trimmings. Their business
of farming is approached with a
waste-not philosophy (a healthy
dose of dollar-free marketing and
creative controls to counter theft.)
Their 55 acres on Hickory Corner
Road has been in the Lee family
since 1868. Before the advent of
supermarkets, Dick’s father, an
entrepeneur himself, operated
some 40 “comer stores” in the city
of Trenton, trucking in whatever
produce was in season.
.. the people picking
our fruit were making more
money than we were. "
Today, housing developments
have replaced the farm fields in
this central New Jersey county,
and manicured backyards have
crept up to the edges of the Lee
homestead. But rather than fight
or flee the growing suburbs, the
Lees decided in the mid-60’s to
cultivate the city folk as their core
market for stand sales and a U-
Pick enterprise.
“Dick wasn’t happy with the
prices at the auction market, and
the people picking our fruit were
making more money than we
were,” said Ruth Lee. “We could
see the handwriting on the wall.”
The Lees were amazed with their
success with the cherries, and
decided to do it with other items.
So, what started out as allowing
people to pick the apples that
dropped under the tree led to a
selection of strawberries, peaches,
pears, nectarines, plums, sweet
and sour cherries, raspberries,
spinach, red and green swiss
chard, regular and snow peas,
green string beans and yellow wax
beans, peppers, a small amount of
beets, yellow squash, cabbage,
cauliflower, broccoli and more.
“It took three to four years to
build up clients, and then we kissed
the auction market goodbye,” she
says. Ruth honed in on operating
the roadside stand and U-Pick,
while children Ronny and Donna
backed her up. Dick attended to
raising the turkeys and diver
sifying crops roles they still play
today.
Clients were built on several
good breaks and not very many
blunders. A popular New York City
talk show on WOR aired a letter
from a listener who had moved to
Central New Jersey and
discovered the fledgling Lee U-
Pick operation. The Lee’s soon
became the darlings of the Long
Island weekend jaunters, and
word-of-mouth brought in local
trade from the ever-increasing
housing developments.
Blunders fell into the categories
of over-producing, pricing, and
customer relations.
Zucchini and onions were
cheaper at the stores. Sweet com
and beets never worked out.
Potatoes don't lend themselves to
U-Pick. Garden plots are still
rented, but they’re slowly being
phased out. "And rjxles had to be
developed to insure proper
picking, and to halt damage and
shoplifting.
Early on, a mizup over which
apples were to be picked resulted
in a group of customers demanding
the cheaper price set for Macin
tosh even though they had picked
the more-expensive Delicious.
From that point on, rules were
set. One person in each group no
matter how small the group is
designated the leader and is
responsible for the group adhering
topicking.rules.
When a person arrives at the Lee
Farm, he fills out a sign-up card at
the stand, pays |l, gets a map, set
of rules, a picking card, and a bolo
tie. This enables them to pick at
the Lee Farm for the entire year.
“Then is a lot more room
for direct marketing
without getting into each
other's way."
Anyone wearing a bolo tie is
assumed to have read the rules,
and allows scouts in the fields to
single out “interlopers.” (The
color of the ties varies and changes
every fourth year.) At the end of
the picking season, a customer can
exchange the bolo tie for $l,
although many keep them for their
children. -
The sign-up cards are used for a
mailing list and to help determine
where the Lees should use their
advertising dollars.
“We know what the trouble is in
raising a crop, and what price it’s
fetching, but if we produce too
many apples, it doesn’t do any
good to let them rot in the field. If
we have too many apples, I’d
rather make the customer happy.
Everything is priced to move,”
says Dick.
Merchandising and cutting out
the middleman is Dick’s forte.
Past president of the Mercer
County Board of Agriculture,
former director of the New Jersey
Farm Bureau and now serving a
third term as president of the New
Jersey Turkey Association, Dick
Lee is also a founding father of a
newly-formed statewide Direct
Marketing Association.
“4 chain store can be
selling the same fresh
commodity, but people will
come to the farm for the
wholesome f00d ..."
“We all know New Jersey is a
deficit fruit producing state. There
is a lot more room for direct
marketing without getting into
each other’s way,” says Dick.
“Merchandising is extremely
important. You can’t just hang out
a sign. You have to learn it, you
have to fine tune it and adjust to
the times and what the customers
want. There’s a psychology to
going to a farm to buy something.
A Pick-Your-Own is like an outing,
a leisurely visit to a farm,” Dick
continues.
“A chain store can be selling the
same fresh commodity, but people
will come to the farm for the
wholesome food, atmosphere and
psychological uplift. How long a U-
Pick operation lasts depends on
what the farm has to offer.”
Lee’s farm offers a potpourri.
Farm tours in the autumn help
move pumpkins and apples.
Throughout the year, school
children guided by enthusiastic
neighbors from the developments
are ushered through the farm.
Visitors get to see the National
Weather Service’s Observer
Station on the farm, the pumpkin
patch, vegetable plots and touts.
They might see what strawberries
look like when in blossom, watch
the turkeys being fed, visit a
second-hand shop in a spare room
behind the roadside stand, and
watch the com shelter or whatever
piece of equipment is in operation
that day. As a “souvenier” those
on the tour get to pick up an “apple
drop” under a tree for the trip
home.
Although the U-Pick operation
gobbles up most of the Lee’s time,
it does not shortchange their
profitable and energetic turkey
operation. The Lee’s turkeys come
fresh, frozen and already-cooked,
served up whole, sliced or diced for
sales, with or without stuffing. You
can even buy juices for turkey
gravy at SO cents a styrofoam cup*
Ruth used to cook 500 turkeys a
year for customers, but now has
her home-cooked turkeys down to
several hundred.
The Lee turkeys are unique in
that they are “organically raised”
without medications.
“I don’t know of any other
commercial grower that does
this,” says Lee. “It’s almost
customary to feed preventative
medication because of the in
vestment. We can personally look
after our birds several times a day
and develop some degree of
standardized procedures.”
Thousands of pullets are ordered
soon after Christmas, with a mix of
medium and heavy breeds to
please the Lee’s lengthy list of
perennial retail buyers, who prefer
finished birds between 11 and 30
pounds.
homestead
USDA Study Supports School Lunch Program
WASHINGTON - A U.S.
Department of Agriculture study
released recently supports the
current system of providing
government commodities through
the National School Lunch
Program to over 23 million
children who participate each
year.
“The commodity program now
in place works better than the
alternatives Congress asked us to
test. No change in this basic
system is warranted,” said John
W. Bode, assistant secretary for
food and consumer services.
Schools presently receive about
15 percent, or $460 million, of their
guaranteed federal subsidies in the
form of commodities. The
remainder is provided in cash.
Two alternatives to the com
modity assistance were tested in
the nationally representative
study: giving school systems cash
instead of commodities, and
issuing letters of credit, which are
vouchers that may be redeemed
only for certain types of foods,
such as peaches, beef or green
beans.
According to Bode, the study
found that, compared to the
alternatives, the present com
modity program:
provides significantly more
Recipes From Mrs. let's Kitchen
Corn Fritters
These fritters make use of 2 cups of leftover corn and are cooked
just like small (3-inch) pancakes.
In a blender, put 3 eggs, 1 cup leftover corn, 2 tablespoons sugar,
5 tablespoons flour, % teaspoon salt and Mt teaspoon bating
powder. Mix well in a blender. Add another cup of com, blend
slightly, making sure pieces of com are still visible. Grease grill or
pan with oleo, cook just like small pancakes. When bubbles appear
topside, flip over.
Hot Fudge Sauce
This recipe has nothing to do with the farm, Ruth says, but it’s the
one that gets used the most.
1 cup real chocolate semi-sweet bits
1 cup miniature marshmallows
Vi cup milk
Mix in heavy pan over low heat until melted. (If too thick, add
water; if too thin, add more marshmallow.) Serve over ice cream.
The first starter lot of pullets
arrives in May, the next in June,
another in July and the final lot in
August.
“The idea is to grow them fast,”
Dick says. “Medium hens are
processed on the farm at 17 weeks,
most others before 22 weeks, and
Toms take 28 weeks. If you take
any longer than that, they’ll eat
you out of house and home.”
The Lees have developed into an
art the skills of rotating freezer
space, packing potholders into
turkey boxes and cooking many,
c H/Sies
food to the School Lunch Program,
provides foods that are not as
highly processed and, therefore,
tend to have less salt, and
provides greater assistance to
farmers.
However, Bode said, schools that
tested the alternative systems
found them appealing because of
increased flexibility in food pur
chasing. “Schools enjoyed com
plete control over packaging,
delivery times and choice of
vendor under the alternative
systems. That caused some
reduced storage and handling
costs,” he said.
Bode said, “While the com
modity distribution program
means more work at the school
level, it is worth it. On balance, the
commodity distribution program
provides the National School
Lunch Program with as much as
|lOO million in greater food value
than the alternative systems.
“This is not a surprise,” he said.
“By using the large volume pur
chasing power of USDA, most
policy officials have felt that
depressed agricultural markets
could be stabilized to the benefit of
fanners. At the same time,
bargain purchases could be made
for the lunch program. Now, a
major research effort has proved
that this common sense approach
many turkeys in the oven before
having to clean it.
Ever conscious of mer
chandising, the Lees developed a
pricing system as an incentive to
move more fresh-frozen birds and
smooth out work pressures. Still,
they process 1,600 birds in five
days at Thanksgiving time.
Of course, with the aroma of
fresh cooking turkeys wafting
through the air just about any day
of the week, it seems like
Thanksgiving year-round at the
Lee Farm.
is working.
“This system is also relied upon
to provide surplus commodities for
other distribution activities.
Presently, cheese, butter, nonfat
dry milk, rice and honey, held by
USDA’s Commodity Credit Cor
poration, are distributed free of
charge to schools, needy
households, charitable institutions
such as public hospitals and or
phanages, food banks, and soup
kitchens. This system is part of our
emergency feeding activities to
quickly provide food to victims of
natural disasters,” Bode said.
“While the commodity system
we have is the soundest approach,
we must work to continue im
provements that have been made
over the last several years,” he
said. “We are committed to
working with schools, food com
panies and agricultural producers
to make this good system better."
The study, which began in 1981,
tested the different commodity
systems in 96 school districts in 29
states. Thirty-three school
districts used cash, 31 used
vouchers and 32 uspd the ongcmfj
program of federally donated
foods.
Federally donated foods are
provided to schools for lunches
that meet USDA requirements.