MEMBER PROFILE 



Phillips Farm Produce 



A Friendly Ail-Around Place 



Wr ilbur Phillips, upon 

 graduation from the 

 UNH Thompson School 

 with an associate's de- 

 gree in dairy science in 1961, be- 

 came a technician for the Soil Con- 

 servation Service. He worked in a 

 number of counties — Strafford, 

 Grafton, Belknap, Hillsboro — and 

 stayed in the SCS for 27 years. 

 Then, as the number of farms de- 

 clined and "the SCS lost its sense 

 of mission," he began to move to- 

 ward another career. 



He'd bought the house on the 

 1.68 acres off Routes 3/1 I in Tilton 

 in 1970. At first, he and his family 

 grew vegetables. 



They sold from a wagon set next 

 to the road in front of the house: 

 "When my father and I were sugar- 

 ing on the other side of Silver 

 Lake — the last of a chain of lakes 

 on the Winnipesaukee River — we 

 found two pairs of old wheels in 

 the woods. We decided to make a 

 sales wagon We built it of wood, 

 6'xl4', with a roof to protect the 

 produce and an overhang to protect 

 the customers. It was all self-ser- 

 vice. We'd stock the wagon in the 

 morning before going to work 

 (Norma, Wilbur's wife, is a medical 

 librarian) — people would weigh the 

 produce themselves and put the 

 money in a locked box. 



"In the mid-to-late seventies, to- 

 matoes were a good product — we 

 could go through 300 pounds on a 

 Saturday morning at the Laconia 

 Farmers' Market. One day my wife 

 said, ^if we had tomatoes earlier, 

 we could sell more,' so we grew our 

 tomatoes under a hothouse we set 

 up in the middle of the garden and 

 had ripe fruit by the first of |uly. 



"But we wanted them still earlier 

 and in 1984, we set up our first 



house — a 30x140' quonset 

 That year, we were sell 

 ing tomatoes by mid 

 May." 



Wholesale torn 

 toes became a major 

 crop Eight green 

 houses— 13, 00 

 square feet— were 

 put up between 

 1984 and 1991. He 

 gives credit to his family 

 to his wife, to their children 

 daughter Robin, twin sons Robert 

 and Rodney, and to Rodney's wife, 

 Vicky: "The business was built by 

 all of us, all together." His family 

 has gone on to do other things, but 

 their help is acknowledged — and 

 they still help, when time and dis- 

 tance permit. 



AS THE BUSINESS GREW, the wag- 

 on could no longer hold the pro- 

 duce needed for an entire day; as 

 more people came, Wilbur began to 

 worry about pilfering. In 1986, he 

 and his sons built a 30'x42' retail 

 shop. Floor and part of two walls 

 are concrete. Trusses cross the en- 

 tire span without interior supports; 

 the roof is double poly, creating an 

 open space full of light. The build- 

 ing is fronted with a porch. 



Then, "four years ago, we had 

 germination problems and didn't 

 get fruit enough to pay the cost of 

 growing the plants;" tomatoes were 

 no longer as easily marketed: "Mo- 

 cally grown' isn't necessarily a sell- 

 ing point." It seemed like a time to 

 move in other directions. 



He'd experimented with other 

 crops: he'd grown cut flowers — free- 

 sia, Dutch iris — some wholesaled to 

 local florists, some retailed in early 

 spring before the outdoor planting 

 season began — but this was too 



specialized to 



be profitable on a 



small scale. 



Routes 3/1 1 is a major road into 

 Laconia and Lake Winnipesaukee — he 

 realized his market was driving right 

 past his door. Phillips Farm Produce 

 evolved into a non-specialized gar- 

 den center catering to the people 

 who summer by the lake: they pur- 

 chase plants for their cottages and — 

 often on the way home — for their 

 year-round residences. This — com- 

 bined with wholesale sales (50% of 

 his business) to grocery stores, flo- 

 rists, and other nurseries — accounts 

 for most of his business today. 



EIGHT GREENHOUSE STRUCTURES, 

 the shop, storage buildings, park- 

 ing, display areas, and his own 

 home fill the steeply rising land — 

 space needs to be fully utilized. 



Half of the first house— still 

 known as "the Tomato House" — is 

 used for tomato production; the 

 rest is filled with bedding plants 

 and hangers 



Half the production space in two 

 of the houses is equipped with 

 TAK rolling trough benches with 

 ebb-and-flow subirrigation. In order 

 to moderate feed temperature, a 



THE PLANTSMAN 



