Local Producers Respond to COVID-19 Crisis
Published: Friday, March 27, 2020
COVID-19 is making Chuck Mohler sick.
Thankfully, he's not physically ill from the coronavirus outbreak that has immobilized much of the world, put "closed" signs in the windows of countless businesses from coast to coast, radically changed the way Americans work and play for the foreseeable future and has hobbled the economy.
However, the international shockwaves caused by the pandemic are felt in rural Millersburg by Mohler and his wife Tami, owners of Sweet Corn Charlie's open-air farm markets, as sure as they are in Pittsburgh, St. Petersburg or any other burg, village, town or city throughout the land.
"We're not always sleeping real good at night because we don't know what's coming and if we can even do this," Mohler said last Friday. "We're not like corn or soybeans, we sell vegetables directly to the people and there's just so many uncertainties with the economics of this thing along with the weather.
"Of course, people have to eat, but will we have a labor force this summer to sell things? Can people come to our outdoor markets? What's the business climate going to be like then?
To produce the supply of fresh produce Mohler needs to meet the demand at his retail outlets throughout the area, he needs to get his plants into the ground in a timely fashion, and therein lies the problem.
For the past several years, he has relied on four foreign guest workers traveling from Jamaica on H-2A visas to meticulously plant-by-hand and harvest hundreds of tomato, sweet corn, pepper and melon plants at his operation located at the intersection of C.R. 42 and C.R. 43.
However, those workers aren't being allowed to return to Indiana as they have in past springs because the U.S. Embassy in Kingston was closed indefinitely after a worker tested positive for COVID-19 and isn't processing requests for international travel, which is limited to emergencies only.
"They're supposed to be here right now, but they just can't get through to help us plant our crop," Mohler said. "They're really helpful people, they work hard at this and they appreciate the opportunity to come here.
"Now, you could say there's other guys you could get who are laid off (because of COVID-19), and I do call some of those people, but they don't want to come out here and do hand-planting. They also don't know how. Our skilled workers have been returnees that we've trained and know how to do this – hand-planting sweet corn and tomatoes, laying plastic. It's not something somebody can do without quite a bit of training."
To maintain Sweet Corn Charlie's reputation for selling sweet corn three-and-a-half-weeks sooner than most other farm markets, Mohler needs to get his transplanting underway in the next week or so. One of his nine high tunnels—Quonset-hut-style structures that greatly reduce the need for pesticides and where the plants will thrive under cover all season—has 600 wooden stakes waiting for tomato seedlings currently growing in flats.
"We really have to be ramped up by the first of April," Mohler said. "It's critical then, but nobody's thinking about the ground-zero thing of producing food that's coming up."
Mohler could end up relying on neighboring farmers or their worker referrals to help him get his crop planted. Last week he was negotiating with a group of foreign green-card holders living with permanent residence status in Berrien Springs, Mich..
"One of the good things that could come out of this coronavirus is farmers working with other farmers to help each other out, an I-use-your-workers-you-use-mine kind of thing," Mohler said. "It didn't used to be that way, but times like these make for strange bedfellows."
Mohler does employ one Jamaican farmhand with resident status, "and I'm working much harder than normal," Mohler said. "I'm 68 years old and I'm working probably three times harder than I would like to, trying to make up for this."
Also at risk are the 80-85 temporary seasonal jobs—which are typically filled by school teachers, college and high school students on summer break and the like—at Sweet Corn Charlie's produce stands. Will he be able to operate seven distribution points like last year, or will he have to cut back?
"We are a major supplier of summertime labor," Mohler said, "but it depends on what we get planted. There could be quite a change to the food and vegetable business.
"Summer is coming."
John Leer's grain-farm partnership, JD Farms, raises corn, soybeans and some grain sorghum on land southwest of Topeka. The coronavirus is on his mind, but it isn't preventing him from proceeding as though the outbreak hadn't occurred.
"We're trying to go about our business pretty much as usual," said Leer, who lives with his wife Deb in Millersburg. "We aren't doing things a whole lot different than we have been. I've got a partner and three hired men, and we're staying busy. We've topped off all the fuel tanks because energy is cheap right now."
"We are a little concerned about being able to get things in case there's a disruption up the line, so we're trying to make sure our seed and our chemicals, at least for the first part of the season, are on hand. We're trying to get as much of that as we can so when planting time comes, we aren't held up. We're in pretty good shape as far as being able to go when the ground is ready."
As for living in fear of contracting COVID-19, Leer isn't. Social distancing has been a part of farm life since the Garden of Eden. Nevertheless, at 70, it was decided Monday there was no need for him to risk working in close proximity to the others in the shop, so he'll remain in his house or outdoors.
"Being rural, it's not as congested people-wise so we're not as concerned as we might be if we were in Chicago or New York," he said. "But it's understood that if somebody doesn't feel good, just go home. We've always been flexible like that— guys know it."
When Jennifer and Dennis Yoder hear government officials implore citizens to "stay home," they can't help but ask, "Where else would we be?"
Their 50 head of cattle —about half beef, half Holstein—living with them at their family farm on E. County Line Road on the eastern edge of Elkhart County have to be fed and taken care of in sickness and in health regardless of the pandemic pandemonium going on elsewhere.
"I think we're very fortunate that this routine other people are adapting to, staying and working at home, is the norm for us," said Jennifer Yoder. "We have plenty to do here and space to fan out if we need to get out of the house and go for a walk."
What isn't normal for the Yoders are their strong beef sales that have resulted because of shortages at nearby grocery stores.
"We try to sell our beef privately, but there's a lot of competition out there," said Dennis Yoder. "We don't have enough customers for that, and most of our advertising has been on Facebook and friendship connections. But what has happened is it's really taken off and right now we've really been selling quite a bit of it."
Said Jennifer Yoder, "It's just exploded. People who haven't bought from us before are calling and wanting smaller amounts, though we also sell in bulk. We're doing that because they can't find it in the stores right now. Since we don't sell to stores, we won't be helping with that aspect, but we will be helping people who know us, and want to know where their meat comes from, fill their freezers and help them through these times. We want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem."
Another strange, but positive, development in the wake of crisis, is having their oldest child, Emily, at home this time of year. She hasn't been allowed to return to Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tenn. from spring break. Meantime, son Ethan, a high school senior at Clinton Christian, and daughter Ella, a freshman, are tending to their schoolwork at home.
"Our youngest is in a pre-structured curriculum," Jennifer Yoder said. "From 10 (a.m.)-3 (p.m.), she has to be plugged into her computer and attending class. That's been an adjustment. But (Ella and Ethan) are learning to be self-sufficient and we don't have to track them too much."
Self-sufficiency and farming go hand-in-hand, and the non-farming community can look to farmers for inspiration while being forced to face difficult new challenges.
"Farmers are some of your heartiest, persistent people you could have working because every year there's something," Jennifer Yoder said. "If there isn't too much rain, there's not enough rain. Tornadoes go through and knock down crops; corn prices drop because of what somebody else says we should get paid.
"But still, you're going to find a farmer doing his job regardless. As a farming family, we face adversity all the time. When the prices drop for our product, we still do what we do—we don't stop. So for people who don't have that type of adversity in their workplace, we'd tell them there is a light at the end of the tunnel because things don't always stay the way they are for very long."
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