Young Farming Entrepreneurs in Surry County……and the history of those who paved the way for them! Our Winter Feature: Slade Farm

In the next several issues, we will feature articles on some of the farmers in our county and learn about the history of their farms, as well as the modern-day applications that have made them a success!

While Slade Farms has been around for many years, two young female additions to the business have sent it into yet another direction! These two women, Clifton’s daughter, LaSonya Slade White, and her daughter, Z’hane Slade, truly have an entrepreneurial spirit and have hit the ground running! LaSonya graduated from Norfolk State University, moved away from Surry, and began teaching culinary arts in Maryland, and then teaching in Tazewell County, North Carolina. By 2006, Farmers’ Markets were becoming popular, and she helped her father with the Smithfield Market, which was very popular and much help was needed! In addition, she helped him on weekends at Sycamore Springs, their sales facility on Route 10, named for the spring on their farm and the sycamore trees nearby. One summer she made so much money helping, that she moved to Newport News to teach so she could be nearby to continue helping out! She is in Surry now and is the 4-H Youth Development Extension Agent. In addition, she is managing the Surry Farmer’s Market.

Z’hane, LaSonya’s daughter, was in middle school when she wanted a way to have money of her own to go to football games, have a car, and pay for its gas, so she, too, started helping on the farm, jumping right into the family business! After graduating from high school, she attended her grandfather’s alma mater, VSU. She had planned to have a Business and Economics major, but her adviser suggested Economics and Agriculture, telling her there might be some opportunities for financial help in that area. She successfully graduated, but a hiring freeze was in place, and she didn’t get the job she wanted! She was back home working with her grandfather, again! She gained a passion for growing, producing, and creating new products with the hemp line.

Together, LaSonya and Z’hane have brought some modern ideas to the farm, including ways their customers pay, and the many markets they serve. LaSonya is usually found at the Smithfield Market and Z’hane at the Yorktown and Carrollton Markets from spring to almost winter! Everyone helps out on the farm, picking, packing, and keeping up with their many orders that include many wholesale purchasers. The recent COVID-19 quarantine has caused the market for fresh vegetables to just “explode,” so business is booming!  Clifton A. Slade, stated that he has great hopes for their future, worrying mainly about finding dependable labor as they go forward. He believes that one great strength he has is having an open mind, allowing some things his father might not have let him do or try when he was coming along as his father’s helper and student! His daughter and granddaughter have new ideas to try, lots of energy, and they know how to market their products on social media! Check them out on Slade Naturals on Facebook, along with Slade Farm’s 43560 and Sycamore Springs Farm Market!  The future of Slade Farms certainly looks bright and promising with their guidance and desire to keep the farm growing!

To decide how to begin to tell the story of Slade Farms is not easy, but let’s start at the beginning….which is actually one of the last things Clifton Armand Slade told the interviewers during a fascinating two plus hours of talking about his family’s farms. It seems the original Slade farm in the 1950s was in the area of the California Tastee Freeze where Russell and Clifton S. Slade grew up. Later, when Russell had his farm in Ivor and Clifton S. had purchased the Surry County farm off Mt. Ray Road in the late 60’s and early 70’s, they continued farming as the Slade Brothers, with separate farms. The Mt. Ray property was sometimes called by the name of earlier owners as the Buster Hardy or John Rowe Estate. The Slade Farm now covers 515 acres! 

Clifton S. Slade, the current owner’s father, and his wife, Earnestine, were the ones who created the strong base upon which Slade Farms flourished. In addition to being a farmer’s wife, Mrs. Slade was the foster mother to many children over the years, and was often recognized for her service! Repeatedly, Clifton A. brought up how his father taught him so much over the years, including things like how to pull and dig sweet potato plants, which he didn’t learn in the many classes he took. Despite his excellent training as a young man finishing high school, he was determined he would NOT be a farmer like his father!  When the principal of L. P. Jackson High School asked him about his future plans, he told him he was going to the Shipyard! The principal, Mr. Turner, told him he was making a mistake! Casting his net slowly around Slade, he asked him what he would study if he was to go to college, and his answer was Agriculture! He figured he had learned it all from his father and wouldn’t have to study much! As the days were counting down towards graduation, Slade had completed his classes and had little to do in school, just biding his time! Boys will be boys, as the saying goes, and somehow, a little trouble arose, involving a bottle of wine! He had the bottle in his possession when as luck would have it, he ran into the principal! Mr. Turner took him in his office, and sternly told him he was not going to graduate now because he flunked children who had no common sense, and that Clifton had proven he had none!!

Little did Armand, as Clifton A. was called by his family and friends, his mother and the principal were in cahoots! She had sent out many, many invitations to graduation to family, and Armand did not know how to tell her he was not graduating! On the day of graduation in 1971, Mr. Turner called him aside, again! With his mother’s okay, he had applied to VA State University in Armand’s name, and he was accepted! Mr. Turner gave Armand an ultimatum…. You can go to VSU or you can repeat 12th grade and graduate the next year!  Needless to say, he took the offer! Unfortunately, his mother was involved in a head-on collision with another Surry resident on her way to graduation and was taken to Obici Hospital, never making it to the ceremony. She survived, and lives on today as the 92-year-old matriarch of the family! When Armand saw her he said, “Mama, you didn’t get to see me graduate.”

Her reply, “I will in four years,” giving away the secret that she knew about the principal’s plan to get Slade to go to college rather than going right to work!

Later at his college graduation in 1975, his father, usually a quiet man, observed the proceedings and asked Armand what all the “cum laude people were,” noticing he was not one! Armand had to admit that his first two years he had enjoyed partying, but he had finally buckled down during his junior and senior years, making straight A’s! Even so, he says he still only graduated with a 2.986 GPA, thanks to those early years!

Despite the agricultural degree and background, Slade didn’t want to go into farming. His asthma and being unable to work around the corn and corn dust had given him a new nickname his sophomore year - the Book Farmer! He decided he wanted to be the Vocational Agriculture teacher in Surry County. Two events happened, changing his future! Even though the permanent substitute teacher who taught the class tried to hold on to the job until Slade could get there, the new superintendent for Surry County Schools, took the program out of the school curriculum, around 1974! He still had hope, because he had done his student teaching in Caroline County, and was offered a teaching joy in Middlesex County. On the same day, he was offered a job at the meatpacking plant in Smithfield, work at the Nuclear Power plant, and a county extension agent job in Isle of Wight County under the direction of Herbert Jones! His teaching dreams had been given a shake up during an incident with one of his students in Caroline, a 19-year-old taking a 9th-grade class, who didn’t think following the safety rules was important! Although wrong on all counts, the parents supported their son, and although Slade did not get in trouble, he gave teaching a second thought! The Nuclear Power plant would certainly pay the best, but the agriculture job seemed to be calling his name! Mr. Jones welcomed him to Isle of Wight, and took him around town to introduce him as his new partner at work. He asked if he could call him Cliff, and so began a new era with his name!    

A part of getting the Isle of Wight job was a visit to Blacksburg to interview at VA Tech. His mother fixed him a cooler full of Cokes, and a whole fried chicken to eat! While at Tech, he was asked to fill out an expense report, something he was not prepared for! He had written down his mileage in Surry, so he went to the car to get the mileage and do the math! He was paid 10 cents a mile, he remembers. Then they asked about his food bill, and he said he had none! They were surprised to learn he had eaten chicken at every meal, and still had some left! He overheard one of the interviewers say he liked to hire young men like him because they were so honest! He got the job, served in Isle of Wight and Surry Counties, and the city of Suffolk. Then he served for 3-4 years as the Area Vegetable Specialist for SE Virginia, Dinwiddie to VA Beach, and later as District Director for SE Virginia.  Because of budget cuts, he was able to take early retirement at age 50.

After a few months of goofing off as a “retiree,” Slade realized that a lazy life of a little too much liquor and too little activity had put 40 pounds on him quickly, and a change was needed. When his doctor told him he’d be dead in 5 years if he kept it up, he agreed to take a job offered to him as a VSU Adjunct Faculty member. He began his own farming and wrote a paper called the “43560 Initiative”!  What does that number signify? Well, he believed he could gross $1 a square foot and there are 43, 560 square feet in an acre!  There are 87 acres in a plot, and he believed he could harvest and sell for $1 each head, bunch, or pound! With this plan, he created a whole garden scheme, and people came to VSU from everywhere to hear him speak on it! That first sample garden plot had cabbage, lettuce, Bok Choy, onions, beets, and radishes!  At that time, he began raising and selling the vegetables, accepting only cash and checks. He proudly notes that today, his daughter and granddaughter, do widespread marketing and take credit, CashApp, etc.!! He adds, now he can even get $2-$4 an acre!! The 43560 Initiative is a mainstay of his farming success!

As time passed, Slade talked with a contact at VSU, Ira Wallace, who talked him into getting organic certification, and he began working with Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (SESE). Although he and his wife had been selling and doing okay, his back surgery made it difficult to continue physical work. Growing seeds allowed him to sell without going to market. SESE even sent him the seeds to begin growing other seeds! Sweet corn seeds were selling at $8 a pound, and so the next step in his farming career began!

Slade now specializes in sweet potato plants, something his daddy taught him, as mentioned before! There’s a 90% chance that if you buy potato plants from SESE today, they will be from Slade Farms, and there are so many varieties - old ones like Puerto Rico Red, White Sweets Potatoes, Beauregard, even the all purple Hernandez… just to name a few! He can only grow varieties that have no patent. The top sweet potato growing states are NC and LA, and a grower has to be a member of a state’s Sweet Potato Commission to sell in their states and others! He stated that he sets out plants Memorial Day Week, then later he pulls 5000 plants, some to sell as plants and some to grow for his own sales. When the time comes to ship the plants those who have ordered, they must be prepared first, which consists of a moist paper towel, compost, and the plant in a sandwich bag! Next, using an “If it fits, it ships” box from the USPS, he takes his plants to the post office to ship them off! He generally pulls and ships on Mondays and Tuesdays so that plants arrive by Friday and are fresh! Sometimes he ships as many as 20,000 plants a week to SESE, in addition to selling them on his own! Despite what he said many years ago about, “I’ll never be a farmer and I will never grow sweet potatoes,” the thought of acres of sweet potato plants being worth $40,000+ seemed to change the mindset of his younger years! His many satisfied customers in about 30 states, many who ask for Clifton Slade sweet potatoes, are happy he is selling his plants and sweet potatoes!  In addition, the ladies sell them at local farmers’ markets.

The second crop being sold by Slade Farm now is the Elephant Garlic. This product isn’t bothered by cold weather, frost doesn’t kill it, and it requires no weed control! They are planted in October and harvested in May, in contrast with the sweet potato’s timeframe.  The Elephant Garlic is a lucrative plant, bringing about $20 a pound. Just one that he showed for an example would be about $4 in the grocery store!

Slade Farms is now involved in an exciting new crop - Hemp!  The farm has a grower’s permit and a processor’s permit. At this time, Hemp is the least profitable crop, but it is also early in its production. Hemp has anti-inflammatory properties, according to Slade, and they are working to make their own CBD oil, topical, and tinctures. He discovered this item on a trip to the Eastern Shore when he found a salve for sale at the Great Machipongo Clam Shack!  The salve worked ok for the immediate need, but later he found it to be a great cure for athlete’s foot, and he was sold! He sees much promise in the marketing of Hemp and its retail products and expects it to be a success like his 43560 Plan - Only 43560 on steroids!! His goal is to be the first farmer in Virginia to have a medical marijuana contract! If his past successes are any indication, this goal will be made sooner rather than later!!

Oh, did you wonder about their names - Clifton S. and Clifton A? The younger Slade once asked his father why he didn’t make him Clifton S. Slade, Jr. He quotes his dad as saying, “Ain’t but one man like me gonna walk this country with this name!” So Clifton, Jr. was not to be, but Clifton Armand Slade became the proud son of Clifton Samuel Slade, and was called Armand and Clifton and Mr. Slade!