Our team came back from the Southern Exposure Produce Show exhausted, but also energized from a great time with co-workers and customers. If you weren’t at the show or didn’t get the chance to stop by our booth, here’s a little taste of what was going on at Booth 402:
As we’ve talked and reflected on the show over the course of the past week, we’ve reminisced about how much the show has grown over the last fifteen years, as well how pleased we were with the how the show went off as a whole. As happy as we were with the relationships Read More
It should have just been a pipe dream. Actually, it was just a pipe dream. One of those things where you say it as a joke and everyone laughs because they think you’re crazy.
That’s quite literally how the idea for a farm in Yucatan was conceived. As a joke.
While riding an RTV down a stretch of back road in Yucatan, Director of Operations, Jon Schwalls, shares how he and Southern Valley President, Kent Hamilton, dreamed and joked about farming in Yucatan. With his voice raised over the roar of the Kubota engine and the wind slapping our faces, he tells the story.
At the time, Jon and Kent had been Read More
After our plane landed in Cancun, we drove for miles and miles and hours and hours through absolute nothingness. And when I say nothingness, I’m not exaggerating.
Shrub. Shrub. Shrub. Little itty bitty town. Jungle. Trees. Shrub. Stand-alone store. More nothingness.
For hours.
And just when we thought things couldn’t get any more full of nothingness, without warning the one lane road we were riding on turned into a pothole-riddled path. A dirt road would have seemed a luxury compared to the non-stop bump-bump-bumping and nausea-inducing-swerves we encountered over the next half-hour on this patch of a “road”. On and on into more nothingness we bumped and bounced and swerved.
At one of Read More
The word “family” encompasses all that Steve and Valda Mathis have been working for and with over the years. “The sense of family seems to draw us all together,” says Steve as Valda nods along stating, “Everybody wants to see the family unit succeed. Everybody’s working for the same goal. We always used to say ‘everybody get behind and push’ and if you ain’t gonna push, you need to get out of the way cause we’re trying to get to a certain point and we’re all pushing to get there.” She says it with her signature feisty tone and matter of fact attitude – the kind where you know Read More
Susannah Hortado has worked on the packing line for Southern Valley/Hamilton Growers since July 1997. In her initial years at Southern Valley/Hamilton Growers, she says her job was to pack squash, cucumber, and eggplant. However, as our inventory grew over the years, so did her job description.
Susannah now spends her days on the cucumber packing line as well as helping to oversee packing on our squash, pickle, eggplant, and bell pepper lines. Her job in this role is to ensure that the girls on the line are packing the right product for each box specification. She must oversee and train the newer girls and keep a constant eye out on what is going Read More
I would daresay that any parts and supply store in town knows the face and gentle smile of Manolo Olguin well. I also doubt that after speaking with him they would ever believe this is the same guy who used to skip English class in Mexico to go play soccer instead. “I didn’t like English,” he says, “then I came to work and as soon as I got here… I knew I had to learn it.” After arriving, he bought a book to teach himself English and while working in the fields he would use any break or stopping point in his work to study. “I would find Americans Read More
Carlos Del Angel is a self-proclaimed “city boy” who never had any intention of working on the farm. Intentioned or otherwise, Carlos has been with Southern Valley for over 20 years now, doing a myriad of different jobs and excelling in each of them. While he will tell you that he prefers electronics, technology, and computers over field work, his role as field supervisor is far from that sphere and he is darn good at it.
Carlos began working at our shop at age 17. From there, he ventured on to other positions– grass cutting crew, truck driver, cooler operator, seeding and greenhouse supervisor, well and irrigation management – before Read More
Paul Dawson has spent all of his life right here in Norman Park, Georgia. Not only was he born and raised here, but as a child he was also reared alongside many of the family and staff of Southern Valley. Paul says he was taught everything he knows about farming by Brian Key’s dad (Brian is our longtime Logistics Manager). He started working in the fields alongside Brian’s family when he was fourteen or fifteen and has worked in tobacco, greens, melons, butterbeans, squash, cabbage, and bell pepper. To put it mildly, he is no stranger to hard work or to farm life.
Paul, who Read More
Chino Ramires has been with Southern Valley for twenty years. After spending his youth working all across the Southeast – oranges in Florida, peaches in South Carolina, apples in Virginia, tobacco in Tennessee – a friend invited him to come work at Southern Valley in Georgia. There, he took on role after role and seemingly loved them all.
Chino spent eight years in Georgia in a variety of roles – field, packing house, shipping, spraying, and irrigation – “and then” he jokingly says, “they sent me back to Mexico!” He was, in fact, sent back to Mexico for the purpose of playing an integral role at the farm in Yucatan. Read More
Off to the right of the packing house, stands what appears to be a wise gray-haired man bent over a piece of metal welding almost every time I enter. If he sees me when I walk in, without fail he straightens up, grins a toothy grin and greets me with a “Buenos Dias.”
Jose “Javier” Campos calls me a child – which I am to him – as he talks about the 20 years he has worked for Southern Valley/Hamilton Growers. July 26th, 1996 is when I started working here he tells me in broken English. He goes on to say that he spent the first three months in the Read More