Features

Farming's New Landscape
Page 4 of 4

Jeff '76, left, and Henry '80 Huntington run Pleasantview Gardens, one of the largest greenhouse enterprised in New England.

With Jonathan slowly and reluctantly easing his grip on the reins—at times he would like to be a part of the excitement—his sons are ready to grasp hold with a new $2 million, state-of-the-art facility in Pembroke, N.H., and an innovative marketing plan.

Farming by the Numbers
• Fewer than half of New Hampshire's farmers have farming as their principal occupation
• There's a retail vegetable and/or fruit stand for every 17 square miles in New Hampshire
• Since 1959, the state has lost over 3,600 farms
• There are 2,937 farms in New Hampshire with an average size of 141 acres per farm. The state has over 415,000 acres of land in farms
• The average age of farmers in New Hampshire is 54 years old
• The average cow weighs 1,400 pounds and produces about seven gallons of milk a day. To do this the same cow drinks 35 gallons of water and consumes 20 pounds of feed and 35 pounds of hay or silage.
• In 1880, 22 million Americans lived on farms. Today the farm population stands at less than 5 million. In 1935, the number of farms in the U.S. peaked at 6.8 million. Today, there are only 1.9 million farms
Data from the 1997 Census of Agriculture, Hoard's Dairyman, American Farm Bureau

From the outside, the new greenhouse is a crystal palace with its seven peaks and six- by eight-foot foot panes of glittering glass. Inside, it's a sun-splashed warehouse, its concrete floor separated into bays, each with four flood zones divided by rubber floor flanges. Sprouting plants in two-inch high flats carpet the floor, and are kept moist at first by overhead misting booms. Then as they grow sturdier, they will be nourished by a seven-minute deluge of 3,500 gallons of water, pumped from a 10,000 gallon holding tank through inch-and-a-half diameter holes that riddle the edges of the bays. When the water returns to the tank, it will be filtered and used again. The entire process is automatic. "There's very little touching of the plants," says Jeff Huntington.

A forklift beeps past the inspecting brothers. A product of Dutch technology, the specially modified lift is carrying over 3,000 little plants in trays to be placed on the other side of the greenhouse. Later in the year, the greenhouse will be filled with four-and-a-half inch pots and a different forklift attachment will move 378 pots at a time across the greenhouse, to be deposited in uniformly spaced intervals.

While the Huntingtons have invested in the future of greenhouse technology, they are also coming up with new ways of marketing live material. As part of the Proven Winners™ cooperative, Pleasantview, along with three other geographically disparate U.S. growers, introduces native plants from around the world to the U.S. market. "The first objective was to introduce new plant material," explains Henry. "Afterwards, we saw its success and we realized we were creating a brand."

Both Henry and Jeff love the family aspect of their business. "I always wanted to be a farmer," says Jeff. Henry, on the other hand, hated the greenhouse as a kid in Connecticut. "Now I love creating a new plant and watching it grow into a beautiful product," says Henry. But most of all, the brothers share the excitement of a growing and successful business adventure. "The other day when I got home my wife asked, 'How was your day?'" recalls Henry. "And I said, 'It was fantastic.' And it was." ~

Elibet Moore Chase is a free-lance writer who lives in Concord, N.H. At UNH, she studied communications and music. Currently, she is a graduate student in the non-fiction writing program at UNH.

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