#Blood of heroes farming full#

“The same blood that's been farming for 130 years runs through me.” I reconnected with my family I reconnected with my heritage,” he said. “I reconnected to something I’d been missing. “It’s a legacy that he wants to perpetuate,” he said.ĭuring his freshman year at the University of South Carolina, George Graham Trask was constantly sick, and later was told by a doctor his blood sugar was so low he “should have been in a coma.” He was diagnosed with hypoglycemia, and moving back home to work on the farm saved him, he said. “Next thing you know, by the 1950s, we were the largest producers on the East Coast.” “The telegraph arrived back: The lettuce arrived perfect. Richard Trask’s great-great-grandfather, Daniel Webster Trask, is credited with pioneering the concept of shipping produce north via rail following the Civil War to solve a local oversupply problem. “He loved it, and he wanted to do it but he thought he couldn't make a living doing it.” His father and grandfather lived during the collapse of farming in the ’70s and early ’80s,” George Graham Trask (pictured right) said. Though the land continued to be farmed, Richard Trask never went all-in but continued to carry out the work as a hobby. The land where Trask Family Farms is located spent the past five decades or so cultivating row crops, following the exodus of produce in the '70s given its seasonal nature. “Once the switch is turned on, it can’t be turned off,” his son said of the farming bug. Richard Trask said his son is working 12-14-hour days, seven days a week. To the point where now I’m obsessed with it. I do it every day and I can't stop.”

“It gave me peace of mind, it gave me clarity to where I wanted to do this more and more. “I just kind of fell in love with it, because it was the only time I felt like I was actually doing something worthwhile, was when I was out at my father's place farming,” George Graham Trask said. After picking up vegetables and grabbing an ice cream, visitors can stop for a photo op in a sunflower field.Īfter several years of experience helping family members out on their respective farms, Trask dove into the trade last summer while working 70 acres of sweet corn in Brunswick County belonging to his father, Richard Trask. Twelve acres of produce will be in view and a soon-to-be-planted 10-acre corn maze will pop up in time for Halloween. “We're gonna build it to where it's a destination where you can come out, buy produce, sit on the porch, have a lemonade and watch somebody pull stuff right out of the field onto the shelves,” he said. A large barn on the property is under construction, set to wrap up within a month, that will function as a vegetable stand and gathering place, where homemade watermelon and cantaloupe ice cream will soon be sold (definitely by the spring, Trask said, and maybe by the fall).

#Blood of heroes farming full#

Tuesday through Friday and at varying hours on Saturday, depending on the weather).īut in the fall, the farm will be out in full swing.

Twenty-two-year-old George Graham Trask is in the midst of his first summer season as head farmer at Trask Family Farms, a new business on old land centered around getting back to old ways.įor now, customers can get a taste of the farm’s first round of produce at area farmers markets and at a produce stand on Eastwood Road (just past Autumn Hall, the stand is open from 9 a.m. Tucked away off Blue Clay Road, a young farmer is carrying on a family tradition he is determined not to let die.