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
About 5 years ago now, Brad Golden ran into Jon Schwalls, Southern Valley’s Director of Operations, at the grocery store where he then worked as Produce Manager. An unfortunate series of events caused them to cross each other’s path at the time, but Jon left Brad his card and told him if he ever wanted to come to “the other side” (of the produce industry) to give him a call.
That store ended up closing a year or so later and Brad found himself working in a different industry, one he didn’t really care for. After 20 years as a produce manager at various locations, he says the produce industry Read More
Martin Portales Rivera has been employed with Southern Valley/Hamilton Growers since 1998 as an H2A (temporary guest worker) employee. As a guest worker, he can spend a certain number of months with us on our farm working and then must spend a certain number back at his home. Over the course of the last 18 years, Martin has spent the months of March thru December working at our farm in Georgia and the remaining two months at his home in Mexico.
Like most of our employees, Martin started his time with us in the fields planting, stringing, and harvesting product. After two years in this role, he began the long Read More
Corey Goss is a member of our illustrious “clean-up crew” as we term it. When Corey first started working for Hamilton Growers/Southern Valley (Hamilton Growers is the grower entity, while Southern Valley is our marketing label) he spent the early part of his employment in the fields helping to plant and pick product. After that, he moved to the clean-up crew and he’s been there ever since making his time at Southern Valley/Hamilton Growers a total of 6 years.
Corey says his job now is to “help everybody.” He does everything from loading empty bins and unloading full ones to cleaning off the packing lines to straightening and organizing box Read More
Brenda Palomares has been working at Southern Valley almost as long as it has been in existence. She references her time here with statements such as, “I came about 3 months after *Kirk passed” and “*Pam was pregnant with *Courtney when I first met her.” Those statements point not only to the length of her tenure here, but also to the closeness with which she has worked with the Hamilton family over the years.
Brenda began her time at Southern Valley in 1988 when she first worked here for one season. She then came on full time in 1989 and spent her first six years here in the fields helping Read More
Here at Southern Valley, when we use the term “family farm” we mean it in the most literal sense possible. For instance, what we aren’t saying is that we are a farm that operates like a family – although as a family farm that is, of course, inevitable. What we aren’t saying is that we are a group of small family farms combined to make one large farming operation. What we aren’t saying is that we were started by a family one day many, many years ago and are now corporately run. There are no hooks and gimmicks here. When we say “family farm” we mean it. Literally.
The family Read More
The war room. The bullpen. The place where the magic happens.
Each of these terms has been used to describe the sales office at Southern Valley over the years, and I’m certain many more which aren’t suitable to repeat in print. Within the offices at Southern Valley, the sales office is in a league of its own. While everyone else more or less has their own space, they have what you might call an open floor plan (Read: everybody all up in everybody else’s business) with two rows of 4 desks facing each other. I spent my first year at Southern Valley sitting in that sales office and can honestly Read More
Spring season.
Those two words are spoken throughout the office all year long with layers of meaning delving far beneath the surface. Sometimes they are uttered with dread. Other times with a level of excitement or intensity. No matter how the words “spring season” roll off the tongue, we spend all year bracing for it, preparing for it, and gearing up for it. At the end of the day, we ultimately love it.
For the general population, spring tends to represent longer daylight hours. Afternoons and evenings spent working in the yard. Fresh air and warmer temperatures. Flowers blooming and grass needing to be cut. Working on that summer tan Read More