
{"id":17030,"date":"2011-03-31T12:42:34","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T16:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=17030"},"modified":"2011-04-01T10:45:32","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T14:45:32","slug":"farm-with-a-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/03\/31\/farm-with-a-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Farm with a view"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>RECENTLY . . .<br \/>\nBy Valarie Schwartz<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Betty Sue and John Yow don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how long the Orange County land they live on has been in her family.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We know it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s over 230 years,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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.<br \/>\nJohn 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Market. <\/p>\n<p>As a child, John Yow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family sold at an impromptu farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 market in Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I went to the farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 market as long as I can remember,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d John Yow said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The 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.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>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. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We shut down the dairy in \u00e2\u20ac\u212272,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d John Yow said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We have always sold cattle on the open market. But we have never used growth hormones.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153To be a farmer, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to like it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d John Yow said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not gonna make any money unless you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re lucky. My ability to farm is my ability to make money somewhere else.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>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. <\/p>\n<p>One recent Saturday, as John took me on a golf cart ride around Valley View Farm, I saw in my mind\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eye a video depicting the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bucolic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d begin to roll as we approached a herd of cattle who stopped their grazing or stood from their resting to come check us out. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Curious, aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ya?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d John asked as they walked right up for their close-ups. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our future,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said of the cattle staring at us. <\/p>\n<p>Then, while Yow called a high-pitched \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Soo-KAY,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c eating fresh grass or hay by day, bedding down in a clean barn each night, drinking fresh water from an electric water system. <\/p>\n<p>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 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c his contribution to keeping the drinking water cleaner for people in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.  <\/p>\n<p>Betty Sue goes out several times a week to sell meat. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at the Seymour Center from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays and has started selling at Johnny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Carrboro on Saturday mornings.<\/p>\n<p>And anytime you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to take a short drive into the countryside and see \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bucolic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Betty Sue and John Yow don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how long the Orange County land they live on has been in her family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-recently"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17030"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17122,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17030\/revisions\/17122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}