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
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