Finely Tuned to the Market

Hebron, Maryland

Erroll Mattox grew up in Maryland feeding chickens and working mules on his grandfather’s subsistence farm. He reviled it — got out of dodge as soon as he could. But after 15 years in the city, an epiphany on the virtue of organic farming called Erroll back to the land.

He returned to Maryland ’s Eastern Seaboard in 1987 to farm on 32-acres surrounded by a sea of chemically grown corn, soy beans and wheat, and confinement chicken operations. Three Maples Farm, buffered by Indigo pines, poplars and maple trees, sits in the breezy center of DeMarVa Peninsula . It’s a two and a half hour drive from the beach and about the same to Washington D.C.

With no help initially from the university system and scant other organic farmers around to show him the ropes, Erroll was on his own to learn organic weed control, crop rotation techniques, and how to match production to market demand. He experimented with the gamut of vegetables from broccoli to Swiss chard before honing in on crops he found to have the highest return for his effort.

Of 12 certified organic acres, four are grazing pasture for couple dozen sheep, one is an asparagus patch and 2.5 acres are used for heirloom varieties of tomatoes, potatoes and squash; the rest is fallow. Every two years, he moves his vegetable plot onto freshly plowed, nutrient-rich fields of buckwheat, vetch, barley and rye.

Erroll sells his products at the Berlin and Salisbury farmers markets near his Hebron home, to couple restaurants, and directly off the farm. His now-stable customer base took at least a decade to cultivate. Lonely is how he describes his first years in the field of organic agriculture. “It was difficult to find a sense of satisfaction,” he recalls. Besides learning how to farm, he had to find clients.

Coming from a past life in urban Connecticut selling furniture, Errol put his marketing skills to work.

He identified the handful of consumers already sold on organic products, which became his initial customer base, and worked up from there. He approached schools to invite classes of primary students to his farm to discover that eggs come from hens and other wonders unbeknown to city kids. He also entreated the local media to shine a light on his operation.

“Hey, I’m doing something unusual and different – don’t you need to do a local piece?” he would suggest to news reporters. And as he introduced himself to the public, Erroll also got to know his potential clients. He became aware of the growing popularity of heirloom crops — older vegetable varieties often more flavorful and colorful than their commercialized cousins. Through persistence and good farming techniques, he became the go-to guy for heirloom tomatoes.

“I’ve been, over the years, able to develop a reputation for a quality product,” he said. In addition to attracting consumers with high quality tomatoes, Erroll explained, his product was unique. Few others were growing heirloom crops.

The business grew, reaching its peak in production in the mid-nineties, with seven acres of vegetables and two employees. Short of delivering to an Annapolis produce wholesaler 90-miles away, Erroll had tapped demand. He scaled back his operation, tuning it for maximum efficiency.

As with tomatoes, keeping sheep could only be justified by having a market for the product. Erroll found his steady customer base in the Pakistani, Iraqi, Iranian, and Palestinian communities settled in nearby small towns.

“If Americans eat hamburger or hotdogs, then folks from Pakistan would eat lamb and chicken and fish as frequently,” he said, adding that an Iraqi customer once prepared a meal of stuffed grape leaves for him to show her appreciation for his lamb.

Besides filling a niche, raising animals matches his philosophy about farming. “Every [vegetable] farm should have animals,” he says, explaining they add fertility to the soil and clean up scraps from the garden. Erroll keeps Kathadin sheep, a low maintenance breed which don’t need help delivering babies, don’t need shearing and don’t succumb to worms as easily. They dine on grass and a supplement of dried corn.

He does most of all farm work himself, relying on hired labor now only at peak times, and supplements his farm income by building office furniture and hiring himself out for yard work. Approaching the age of retirement, Erroll is exploring ways to round out his operation.

With an eye on a locally adapted variety being developed at the university, Erroll ponders how to fill an untapped market for locally grown grapes. He has also gotten a grant to test market demand for pasture-raised pork with a higher fat content and richer flavor than factory-raised pork. If the high-end restaurants looking for better-tasting pork find his product, the 25 low-maintenance pigs at Three Maples Farm may prove a decent pension plan for a man who loves the land.