Grower Profile: Larry Pierce
In the Ozarks they like their okra fried!
Texas County, Missouri sits about 80 miles east of Springfield, along Highway 60 in the middle of the Ozarks. At Cabool, a farming town of 1700, you take County Road PP a mile northeast- to where the road stops in the middle of nowhere on the official Missouri Highway Map – and squiggle your way down a narrow blacktop road a half-a-dozen miles before descending along a strip of gravel into the valley. At the first intersection you stop and hang a left at the white mailbox.
Larry and Phyllis Pierce’s farm, fifty acres split equally between hillsides covered in hardwoods and bottom land harvested to hay, sits east to west in a small valley. There are several garden plots- Hill Country Red Okra runs alongside Tennessee Sweet Potato Squash: another garden hosts Chris Cross Watermelon and Southern Exposure Corn: a third plot finds Triamble Squash; and, yet, another garden sports Prescott Fond Blanc Melon.
Larry Pierce grows commercial seeds for Seed Savers Exchange. He picks up a Chris Cross Watermelon from the garden- a great family heirloom variety that originated in Montrose, Iowa- which later weighted out at 29 ¼ pounds. It’s a sweet, meaty melon, with seeds about the size of a man’s pinky fingernail. Larry figures a watermelon of this size will yield one cup of dried seeds.
The Chris Cross produces reliable yields in the 15 to 20 pound range, perfect for that summer picnic. The fruit is a washed-green color with jagged dark green stripes.
“Watermelon grows well here because of the mix of soils,” Larry says. “Eighteen to twenty feet below ground is an old creek bed. So, the land is well drained and suitable for melons.” Larry adds manure and the other organic material to his gardens and rotates them annually.
Larry’s big problem this year has been rain and keeping up with the weeds. Despite this, jumbo fruit spill from the vines. He points out a 20 pound Tennessee Sweet Potato squash and, nearby, a great crop of bushy Hill Country Red Okra looks ready to eat.
“The okra is great for gumbo and soups,” Larry says, but he personally prefers it fried like most of his neighbors in the Ozarks. He will harvest the seeds as the vegetable ripens- by separating the seeds from the dry pods – with the bulk of the seed being harvested in mid-September. Larry processes all of his seeds by hand.
Coin FlipLarry Pierce has been gardening since he was a boy growing up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where he and Phyllis started a chimney and duct cleaning business ten years after they were married. In 1988, he was one of the eight chimney experts invited to repair and clean the White House chimneys by President Ronald Reagan.
After 16 years, they sold their business because the two of them were “burned out” and wanted a different lifestyle. They flipped a coin on whether to move to the mountains or to the Ozarks. The mountains won out and they spent the next ten years in Wyoming. Seven years ago they decided that Wyoming wasn’t for them when million dollar vacation homes started sprouting up around them.
They have since settled nicely in the Ozarks. Larry calls farming “a labor of love, especially if you can make a living at it.” In addition to growing seeds, he raises natural beef cattle and poultry. He and Phyllis also run a website business called Rogue Hoe (www.roguehoe.com) where they sell specialty garden tools.
Larry values his connection to Seed Savers Exchange. “Seed Savers’ grows the best seeds. They are always true to type, they never disappoint. And the service is excellent. I take pride in growing seeds for Seed Savers.”
For many small farmers like Larry, who grow commercial seed for Seed Savers, the reward comes when the gardener plants out seed in the spring with the expectation that a juicy Chris Cross Watermelon will be waiting them on a hot summer day. Or that a perfectly star-shaped Hill Country Red Okra will find its way into a soup pot on a cool autumn day.
Now, that is a labor of love.
4360 Bado Road
Cabool, Missouri 65689
417-962-5091 or Fax 417-962-5055