Grower of the Month - October 2011

Chestnut Hill Farm in Snow Camp, North Carolina

Spotlight on Chestnut Hill Farm in Snow Camp, North Carolina

"I love to farm. I've been around it my whole life. It's in my blood and it would be hard for me to do anything differently," says Lin Andrew, owner of Chestnut Hill Farm in Snow Camp, North Carolina, and Pilgrim's October Grower of the Month. "We produce the most important thing in the world, outside of water. We produce a good, safe food supply."

"Last year I probably held eight to ten farm tours. I love to talk about agriculture and to promote it, be it poultry or cattle. I'm good at it, I enjoy it, and I'm passionate about it. I just love what I do."

The Andrew family, beginning with Blake and Becky Andrew, have been poultry farmers since the late 1930s. Lin and Kenny, the couple's two sons, grew up working the 200-acre farm. Lin worked the farm through his college years at Elon University, north of Burlington, North Carolina, where he studied economics. Shortly after his graduation, in 1991, he took over management of the farm.

Blake and Becky, who have been married for 59 years, still live in the original farmhouse and Blake still actively works on the farm.

"My dad still does a lot of work on our farms," says Lin. "He's been in the chicken business since the late '30s and I try to glean as much information as I can from him. He's been around chickens his whole life. I lean on him a good deal."

Carrying On the Family Tradition

Lin and his wife Angie purchased and renovated an adjacent farmhouse originally built in the 1800s. They have two children, a nine-year-old girl named Lindley and a six-year-old boy named Brady.

The Andrew family runs a breeder farm. (A breeder hen lay eggs which are collected and taken to hatcheries all over the country, where they are incubated and hatched. Those chicks are then taken to broiler farms and raised for their meat.) Lin has 28,000 hens in three chicken houses, which produce 370,000 dozen eggs per year. Kenny lives in a separate farmhouse and has two chicken houses with 14,000 hens on the farm, producing 190,000 dozen eggs per year. They have one rooster for every 10 hens (about 4,000 roosters between the two of them) to fertilize the eggs. The fertilized eggs are picked up twice a week and transported to a Pilgrim's contracted hatchery where the eggs are hatched and then taken to broiler farms.

Brad Smith, Pilgrim's Sanford, North Carolina, division field supervisor, believes Lin Andrew is a deserving recipient of the Pilgrim's Grower of the Month recognition. "Lin attends to every detail. He is a really bright guy and he's in agriculture because he really loves it. He's a very proactive person as far as technology and the environment and other industry issues. He always seems to stay a step ahead. He deserves this recognition because he puts a lot of effort into it," says Smith.

Smith continues, "You wouldn't be able to find a spot on his record; he's one of those guys. He has very high integrity, he's very truthful and a very trustworthy person. It's a family farm that's been handed down from one generation to the next. Blake is 80-plus-years-old and he's actively working on the farm with Lin. He's got a wife and two kids and I think he wants the farm to stay in the family, and one day he'll want the farm to go to his kids. That's why he works as hard as he does. He's got a wonderful family."

Pilgrim's and Family Pride

Lin has won several environmental farming awards, including the US Poultry & Egg Association Family Farm Environmental Excellence Award and the Piedmont Region Outstanding Conservation Family Farm Award, among others.

Lin, though proud of these awards, says it isn't the recognition of the awards that makes him proud. It is the positive public relations for farming and farmers that makes him proud.

"I try to put as many good headlines around environmental stewardship as I can, like these awards that I've won. My neighbors, who have never seen a chicken or cattle farm, when they read about or see these headlines they view agriculture in a positive light. It's good PR for people to see that we, as farmers, are doing the right thing and that we're not out here to destroy the environment, which is what they read about a lot of times in papers. So for me, it's not about the awards. It's about showing people that farmers are doing the right thing. We're producing good quality food for people to eat," Lin explains passionately.

Environmental Stewardship

Some of Lin's environmental measures include livestock exclusion, keeping cattle out of streams and ponds to promote better water quality, and litter drystack facilities to store poultry litter so it can be applied to grass at the proper time.

"I feel like, as farmers, we're stewards of the environment. We rely on the land to produce for us. If we don't take good care of the land, it's not going to produce for us. We need to do everything we can to take care of the land so we can pass it on to the next generation. I want to leave something better than when I got it. That's probably the basis for why I'm conscious of environment. I want to leave the land better for my kids and their kids. I'm pretty passionate about doing the right thing," says Lin.