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Farm with a view

Posted on March 31, 2011April 1, 2011 by Staff

RECENTLY . . .
By Valarie Schwartz

Betty Sue and John Yow don’t know how long the Orange County land they live on has been in her family.

“We know it’s over 230 years,” Betty Sue said of the acreage around Old Greensboro Road that has been owned by the Neville family for 10-plus generations. Her siblings and many cousins still live off the land, but only one of their farms continues a dairy operation.
John Yow also grew up in a farming family. He was raised from 18 months on in the White Cross area on land now known as Eco Farm, owned by John Dennis and Cindy Econopouly, who sell at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market.

As a child, John Yow’s family sold at an impromptu farmers’ market in Chapel Hill.

“I went to the farmers’ market as long as I can remember,” John Yow said. “The first one I remember was on the corner of Henderson and Rosemary behind the post office on the opposite corner. It moved on up the street to Columbia and Rosemary where the savings and loan was.”

Betty Sue and John, who grew up knowing each other, will celebrate 50 years of marriage on April 15. They and their three sons have taken the 100-plus acres of their Valley View Farm from a dairy to a beef farm.

“We shut down the dairy in ’72,” John Yow said. “We have always sold cattle on the open market. But we have never used growth hormones.”

They raise Angus and Hereford/Angus-cross cattle that are born on site and raised on beautiful pastures without growth hormones or antibiotics. At this point, only their middle son, Keith, who is an award-winning teacher of woodworking at Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough, helps in the day-to-day around the farm. The other two sons, Walter and Gerry, run John W. Yow Grading and Septic Services, but help around the farm with mowing and other periodic events requiring extra muscle. Additionally, they mow the fields of three pieces of property the family sold, where people have built homes but keep the fields agriculturally active with hay.

“To be a farmer, you’ve got to like it,” John Yow said. “You’re not gonna make any money unless you’re lucky. My ability to farm is my ability to make money somewhere else.”

Keeping the taxes paid on this much land has proven burdensome. But each in the family does his or her bit to support the family farm. Betty Sue works in the office, keeping the schedules straight, refusing continual requests to sell their land and selling the meat, which is processed in Siler City.

One recent Saturday, as John took me on a golf cart ride around Valley View Farm, I saw in my mind’s eye a video depicting the word “bucolic” begin to roll as we approached a herd of cattle who stopped their grazing or stood from their resting to come check us out.

“Curious, aren’t ya?” John asked as they walked right up for their close-ups. “That’s our future,” he said of the cattle staring at us.

Then, while Yow called a high-pitched “Soo-KAY,” the herd followed us to a new pasture where young grass sprouts awaited as their all-you-can-eat buffet. This will be their life for up to 24 months until they weigh 600 to 700 pounds – eating fresh grass or hay by day, bedding down in a clean barn each night, drinking fresh water from an electric water system.

Yow keeps the cattle away from all water associated with a branch or creek that flows to nearby University Lake. It costs him $25 a month in electricity to pump the water from a well – his contribution to keeping the drinking water cleaner for people in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Betty Sue goes out several times a week to sell meat. She’s at the Seymour Center from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays and has started selling at Johnny’s in Carrboro on Saturday mornings.

And anytime you’d like to take a short drive into the countryside and see “bucolic” for yourself, Betty Sue will help you support the local-food movement with some of the healthiest beef you can find. Call 942-4304 seven days a week.

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