![]() “Weeding, picking, and packing by hand is hard work.” “It’s hard to keep hired help on a farm like this,” Betty says. Fortunately, they have a teenaged grandson who helps out. The Cheniers also have the universal agricultural concerns of high fuel and fertilizer costs and a lack of labor. October’s unusually early frost killed plants that should have produced another month. This past year the Cheniers faced challenges from coyotes, which ravaged persimmons and their celebrated watermelons. ![]() I like talking vitamins and minerals with my customers.” “I research what’s inside the vegetables I plant. “And I always have an eye on nutrition.” She stresses that consumers are health-conscious these days. “I also like planting with different cultures in mind,” she says. Betty says she loves studying seed catalogs and ordering unusual things. ![]() Then there’s the unexpected, such as rows of different-colored pumpkins, and arugula, red mustard greens, and mizuna, a stunning Japanese mustard green that’s good for salad.īlack laughs that he lets Betty buy any seed that strikes her fancy. Some of this year’s fall and winter-maturing crops are beets, cauliflower, spinach, turnips, green onions, acorn squash, broccoli, and 2 acres of sweet potatoes. “Longhorn is a variety the old Creoles and Cajuns know. They also plant okra, including longhorn. “In season, we pick up to 1,000 pounds of tomatoes a day,” Betty said. A few of their summer staple crops include snap beans, peppers, cucumbers, corn, and white, Yukon, purple, and new potatoes, and some 500-600 tomato plants. The Chenier farm has rich sandy loam soil, which the couple plows into rows irrigated by drip lines. “But with every spare minute he had, he’d work on our farm,” Betty said. And I made this my full-time job.”įor 43 years, Black worked in private industry. I wanted to dig in the dirt,” she said “That’s when we bought this land. That’s the only way his parents could feed so many mouths.”īetty, originally from Oberlin, spent 16 years doing office work, then convinced her husband that she’d be more productive and happier growing vegetables. “Black is from Plaisance,” she said, “and he grew up in a family of 22 children. A herd of 30 cattle grazed in a lush fenced field.īetty told me that she and Black have been married 40 years. Further down the dirt road sat a large chicken house. On our way to look at mustard greens and cabbages we trundled past a greenhouse and a row of fig trees. Landry Parish farm, the visit started out with me, Betty, and a sleepy Australian shepherd named Brandy easing into a 4-seater side-by-side. I would also snatch up honey and eggs and whatever unusual vegetables they happened to bring along. ![]() I would make a beeline there early, to pick out the biggest melons. ![]() I first met the Cheniers about 25 years ago at the Baton Rouge Farmers’ Market, where their vendor stand always seemed the most crowded. Betty and John “Black” Chenier know about growing produce - from common sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and collards, to the more exotic, like kabocha squash, bok choy, napa cabbage, and roselle hibiscus, which Betty dries to make tea.įor over 30 years the couple has been growing specialty crops on 10 acres of their 40-acre farm north of Opelousas. ![]()
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