By Jake Dowling Icon intern
Peppers and cabbages are not your typical planted crop, but for Bill Suter, cabbages and peppers are king.
“I wanted to grow cabbages and peppers to somewhat diversify the farm,” he says. “But a small portion of that are vegetables, most of it is corn and beans.”
“You just have to weather the storm,” says Suter, whose farm is on Road Q, between Bluffton and Pandora. Suter grows cabbages and peppers to go along with the other vegetables on 500-acres that he farms.
“We have 10 different varieties of peppers and for cabbages; we grow both red and green cabbages,” Suter says.
“Everything is transplanted, none of it is seed,” Suter says. “They are planted in the green house, then they are transplanted into the ground and then it is all hand harvested.”
Once harvested, it is time to find some suitors interested in buying his product.
“We try to sell the cabbages and peppers anyway we can,” Suter said. “We don’t have contracts, so we just put them out there.”
By ‘putting them out there,’ that means anyone in the Midwest, or even anyone in the country. For example, it's very possible that the hot peppers you might purchase at Meijer's in Findlay or Lima are grown in Suter's fields. He said that Meijer's is buying much of his crop this year. The vegetables go to the Tipp City distribution center and then on to other Ohio Meijer's stores.
“We have several contacts with people from Ohio, some in Michigan and Indiana and other surrounding states,” Suter said. “Sometimes we get brokers who buy them and take them to the eastern seaboard.”
Of course, there are always challenges, like for instance, the weather.
“The heat hurts more than anything because then the plants just shut down and don’t want to grow well.” Suter says you plant, and then you wait.
“We just wait for the weather to get better,” he says. “We plant in early June then after that, there’s nothing much you can do.”
After that, you just weather the weather. “And hope for the best,” Suter says.
