Throughout his career in corporate America and higher education, Hilery Gobert never could shake the feeling that he belonged on a farm. The dream of having a tract of land all his own, working the soil and growing food for his family just never faded away.
These days, the seventh-generation farmer is finally living that long-held dream. On a 65-acre farm in Iowa, La., called Driftwood Farm, Gobert has only one real goal — help restore the heritage of his family’s Creole farming tradition.
“My father was a farmer, as was his father before him and his father before him in south Louisiana,” he says.
“I grew up working as a sharecropper with my father, and as a Creole, we always had meals with large family and lively conversation around the table.
“Coming home, for me, meant recreating the whole idea of where I grew up, the farm, the fresh vegetables and the idea of having family around you.
“That’s what this has become for me,” he says.
Learn more about Driftwood Farm by watching America’s Conservation Ag Movement Case Study in Conservation.
Heritage Growing Practices
For Gobert, having a farm that both looked and felt like the one he’d grown up on meant he’d need to tackle one important thing first: the health of his soil.
Early soil health tests on Driftwood Farm showed dismal organic matter levels. According to Gobert, when colonists first arrived in Louisiana, the organic contents of the soil were around 20%, but his soil had been so depleted of organic matter that its levels were less than 2%. In order to grow food that he was proud for his family to eat, he’d need to boost those levels fivefold.
“We realized we had a large job ahead of us if we want to produce nutritional food, because the only way you’ll produce nutritional food is if you have healthy soil,” he says.
His answer for a quick boost was animals. It was the same way that his ancestors had maintained healthy soils.
Now, his land is teeming with livestock and animals, each serving a particular set of purposes, according to Gobert. They include:
- Grass-fed cattle — Driftwood Farm sells whole and half-shares of their beef to family members.
- Free-range chickens — Eggs are sold and shared with family members as well as meat.
- Sheep — The woolly coats of Driftwood Farm’s sheep actually help keep insects at bay.
- Fowl — A variety of ducks, geese and guineas roam Driftwood Farm, keeping pests in check.
- Horses — Horses serve as transportation around the farm and local community for the family.
The manure from these animals limit the commercial fertilizer needed, says Gobert. He adds compost to supplement and uses mulches in his cropping areas.
Cover crops are keeping his soil covered and adding nutrients, and he is limiting tillage, working toward implementing a fully no-till operation.
Much like his ancestors, Gobert made the decision to grow his food organically.
“Our decision to restrict the use of any type of pesticide for five years is helping to create a biology and ecosystem that will take care of itself,” he says.
Heritage Innovation
Restoring his farm in the image of his ancestors’ farms doesn’t mean that Gobert is shying away from innovation.
He tapped his local USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service for financial and technical assistance to build a high tunnel to extend his growing season and improve his irrigation to a micro-irrigation or drip irrigation system to capture water efficiency.
“Driftwood Farm is a great example of the benefits small-scale agriculture can have,” says Joshua Anderson, USDA NRCS district conservationist. “The only thing about it that’s small is the footprint.”
“NRCS can help producers like Hilery address resource concerns that, if left unchecked, would have large financial and labor investments to correct them, and then it can also serve as an incentive for a producer to try a new conservation practice they may be on the fence about.”
Gobert is also bringing back one of his father’s heritage crops using an innovative new agronomic approach.
“On my father’s farm, nearly half of our farm production was rice,” he says. “Rice was traditionally grown in the southwest Louisiana area because the very high water table meant you didn’t have to go very deep to get the amount of water you needed in order to paddock flood rice.”
Recently, Gobert learned of rice growers in his area that were experimenting with rice as a dry-land crop, using furrow floodings and only using about a quarter of the water traditionally used to paddock flood. In addition to the water conservation, Gobert was intrigued by the agronomy’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas production.
He tapped into the expertise of Jubilee Justice, a Louisiana-based organization that supports Black farming communities with conservation assistance, cooperative ownership and financial security.
One focus of the organization is on encouraging rice production using The System of Rice Intensification, or SRI, developed in Madagascar in the 1980s.
“Traditionally, rice farmers get 13 cents a pound doing specialty rice,” says Bernard Winn of Jubilee Justice. “Growing rice SRI-style, you can get 80 cents to $1 a pound, which is one of the reasons that we wanted to bring Black farmers in on this economically-friendly way of growing rice.”
Gobert and Jubilee Justice are partnering to test nine rows of rice in four different varieties on Driftwood Farm using drip irrigation.
“I’m probably going to use only about 15% of the water that paddock flooders are using,” Gobert says. “I’m excited about the possibilities, because the rice production could be a way for small farmers to get back into rice production without accumulating the cost that’s involved.”
Water conservation opportunities in Louisiana, an important migratory destination for many waterfowl, align with the mission of Ducks Unlimited, an America’s Conservation Ag Movement partner and wetlands conservation leader.
“Waterfowl habitat is disappearing, especially the Louisiana, Texas Gulf Coast,” says Kyle Soileu of Ducks Unlimited. “What’s good for rice is good for ducks — they go hand-in-hand like peanut butter and jelly, or when you are in south Louisiana, jambalaya and white beans.”
Heritage Markets
On any given day, consumers might be able to purchase a number of fresh foods from Driftwood Farm. Beef, poultry, duck and eggs are available, alongside fresh vegetables from fresh greens to okra, cucumber, tomato and turnips.
Driftwood Farm sells online, but it also uses an age-old method of CSA, or community-supported agriculture. In that program, enrollees receive a selection of goods from the farm’s weekly harvest as part of a cost-share.
“Today, a lot of our small-scale farmers are doing basically the same thing as generations before through CSA,” Gobert says. “We go out to the community and sell shares on our farm, and I’ll take everything that I produce on that farm every week and create a care box for one of the shareholders and divide that plentiful bounty that I get from the farm to each of the stockholders.
“It’s surprising how the old become new again,” he adds.
In addition to his weekly farm sales, Gobert is using the farm to open up seats at his family’s table.
“This farm is our idea of not only feeding ourselves and our close family, but our extended family as well,” he says. “Now, we are actually feeding an entire extended family in the Lake Charles area with the vegetables that we are growing here.”
Heritage Sustainability
For Gobert, the conservation agronomy and the innovation are all part of building the overall sustainability of his farm, the same way that his father and grandfather did before him.
“The idea of the sustainable farm is to be able to keep it in our family from generation to generation,” he says. “That’s the Creole tradition.”
Gobert is already fostering that next generation. His grandson began learning early the importance of caring for the land through workshops he attended right alongside Gobert.
When Gobert retired and moved back to Louisiana to develop Driftwood Farm, his grandson moved with him.
“He’s very active in the farm and decided to major in agriculture in college,” he says. “I feel very secure in the transition of this farm when I retire going to the ninth generation, who will have the knowledge to continue nurturing the soil and revitalizing the soil into becoming a productive farm in the way we would like.”
“He is excited about his future here as well,” he says. “The future in farming and our young people looks good.”
America’s Conservation Ag Movement is a public/private collaborative that meets growers across the country where they are on their conservation journey and empowers their next step with technical assistance from USDA-NRCS and innovation solutions and resources from agriculture’s leading providers. Learn more at americasconservationagmovement.com.
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