The Pendletons of Kansas: Doing Better with Asparagus and Tomatoes

John and Karen Pendleton are enthusiastic and articulate college graduates. They have been fanning with John's parents on about 1,000 acres near Lawrence, Kansas, for nearly a decade.

Al Pendleton, John's father, bought the land 30 years ago. During most of the period since then, the operation has been typical of farms in northeast Kansas corn, wheat, soybeans, and a cattle feeding operation.

But 8 years ago the younger Pendletons added a new, separate enterprise growing asparagus, tomatoes, and a few other spring crops, which they market through a pick-your-own operation, a farm market, sales to area restaurants, and other channels.

They began with a half acre of asparagus, selling their first crop to buyers on a list. Today they have an intensive spring season, during which they sell the products of 20 acres of asparagus, two or three crops of tomatoes grown in a greenhouse, and a few other crops. For the time being they have left the cattle business, which had been the "lifeblood" of the farm.

Creative Planning

The shift to alternative crops has led the Pendletons to devote substantial time to planning. They worked with Bob Hajicek, a consultant with the Kansas State Board of Agriculture, to develop business and marketing plans. "Bob asked us what direction we wanted to go in," John said. "Then we sat down and wrote a business plan.

"Most farmers don't sit down and write a business plan, although they should be doing that to help focus their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and struggles, and to learn how to take those struggles and turn them into opportunities," he said.

Although the "planning we do is not as technical as most business advisers would recommend," John said, the Pendletons spend substantial time participating in programs on farm production and marketing that help them plan for the future. "Karen and I have gone to lots of horticultural and farm marketing programs and seminars. We find them to be an opportunity to set goals and learn new techniques," he said.

Participating in these programs gives them a chance to "brainstorm" about the future. "We think about what we would like to do what sounds like fun to us and what we would like to be doing 3-5 years down the road. If our operation still involved strictly row crops and the feedlot, we simply wouldn't have the opportunity to do that kind of planning," he said.

"Eight years ago we thought of something we would like to do in a few years, and we probably are farther along now than we ever dreamed we would be back then," John said. "It has taken a combination of luck and conscious effort to change our business."

Leaving Cattle

Some changes were forced on the family. John's father had knee surgery and could not participate in farm work for a long period. "When Dad had the operation, we decided to go a winter without feeding cattle rather than hiring outside labor to take his place," John said.

The decision to leave the cattle business, at least temporarily, was based on other considerations as well. "We started looking at updating equipment. If we decided to stay in cattle, we'd have to update, spend a tremendous amount of money," John said. "We decided that running our greenhouse and the spring vegetable business was more enjoyable than hauling manure.

"So we auctioned off some of the cattle equipment and committed ourselves to staying out of the cattle business for at least a few years. We still have our silos for feed storage and the concrete feedlot, so if we decided to go back into cattle, we would have the basics.

"The economics of cattle raising was a problem. We were borrowing to buy calves and fatten them. At the end of the year, we always hoped we'd make enough to pay off what we had borrowed," John said. "For 30 years, cattle were the lifeblood of this farm, but the prices in the first 5 years of the 1980's changed all that. It's a relief to be out of cattle. Now we're not forced to feed cattle just because we have always done it which is so typical in agriculture, doing the same thing in the same way in the same season every year."

However, John said that "corn and soybeans are still important to us. They still pay the bills."

"Why Not Asparagus?"

"We were looking at some different things then anyway. I had just gotten out of school. Dad had given some thought to raising hogs, and we were looking at building a swine facility," John recalled. "Then I thought about a pick-your-own strawberry operation. Some neighbors across the river were looking at strawberries too, and we went to a seminar together. We didn't want to compete with each other, so we thought, 'Why not asparagus?'

"Eight years ago, asparagus was almost a joke here. We had one small row in the garden. One day my dad said he liked asparagus so much that we should plant the whole garden with it. That spring we got caught up with our other work and had some spare days. So we went out and bought 1,000 asparagus crowns."

They talked to the Douglas County Extension Agent, who encouraged them to "go a little farther." So they started to expand. The business grew from garden size to about 200 plants in a field down the road. The next year they added a half acre of asparagus.

The new asparagus variety they selected after making use of research by nearby Kansas State University and others had several advantages over older varieties. The hybrid variety produces three times the yield of traditional varieties and it has greater vigor and disease resistance.

The vegetable business is considered a separate enterprise from the farm corporation, and it pays rent to the farm. Because the vegetable crops are not covered by Federal commodity programs as are more traditional crops such as corn and wheat the costs and bookkeeping are totally different from those of the traditional farming business.

Learning from Experience

"In our first year, we picked all the asparagus ourselves on that half acre," John said. "Word of mouth spread so fast that all we did was take orders from friends and callers. We had to limit individual sales to 10 pounds. We'd harvest in the morning, call a person on the list, and they'd pick it up."

That year was relatively easy. There was no need to advertise they had all the customers they could handle and they didn't need major storage space. But they had a lot to learn about their new crop.

Asparagus production varies from day to day during the harvest season. In warm, moist weather (the ideal is 90-degree days and 70-degree evenings), production is prolific, and there is a need to harvest twice a day. However, if it turns cool, the plants grow more slowly and the harvest may come to a brief halt. The Pendletons had to learn how to market their crop in view of these changes in availability.

"That year was a seat-of-the-pants operation. There was no one with experience in the area to talk to," John said. "The research we read helped us under-stand production expectations, but that still doesn't tell you about the day-to-day changes during asparagus season. We had to learn that ourselves."

Growing asparagus also required more physical labor than did growing row crops which are planted and harvested using heavy machinery as well as more public interaction. "You bend over and plant asparagus. You pull weeds and pick by hand. It means sweat and hard work. And you need to enjoy meeting the public, because you sell the product yourself," John said.