![]() Today the total acreage operated is 3,192 with 91 acres rented and 3168 owned. Saunders began his first year of farming with 542 acres of owned land. I am a problem-solving farmer, working alongside my three brothers, two children, three nephews, a highly motivated management team, and an incredibly dedicated group of employees.” Now serving as General Manager, Saunders said, “I do not consider myself a typical horticulturist or orchardist. He remained the farm’s sales and shipping manager for nearly 25 years, while fulfilling his passion as its resident engineer. Annie now runs the Farm Market at Saunders Brothers, Inc., and Price is going through the farm’s 40–week apprentice program to experience and learn about each area/component of the business first-hand before choosing a slot that best suits his innate skills and talents.Įventually Robert took over sales and oversaw the expansion of the sales team and shipping department to match growing inventory. His wife Pat taught art in the public schools and cared for their growing family of three daughters and two sons who are now grown: Annie Saunders Burnett, 28 Alexandra (Alex) Saunders Zarate, 27 Robert Price (Price) Saunders, 23 Patrick Edmund Saunders, 22 and Victoria Carol Saunders, 21. The nursery was beginning to grow, and he spent most days building greenhouses, designing and building irrigation systems and reservoirs, potting, managing crews, and loading trucks. When Saunders returned to the farm, it only had about 35 greenhouses, 30 employees, 100 head of cattle, and fruit was the lead crop. He married his college sweetheart, Patricia (Pat), in 1987 and noted, “That’s the smartest decision I ever made in my life.” She graduated from Virginia Tech the same year with a degree in Interior Design and later obtained her teaching certificate from Lynchburg College. When 25 of the 77 slips took root, he was encouraged to grow the small nursery while working full-time as a land surveyor.įorty years later, his son, Robert, was an avid engineering student at Virginia Tech, graduating in 1986 with a BS in Agricultural Engineering. Sam’s son, Paul Saunders, propagated his first boxwood in the spring of 1947. During the Great Depression three of the brothers managed to keep up the farm partnership with the assistance of dedicated helpers and sharecroppers. That kind of training and discipline has a long history going back to 1915 when Robert’s grandfather, Sam, and four of his brothers from a family of eleven children formed a partnership to share the money they made trapping rabbits. ![]() We picked peaches, potted plants, loaded trucks, dug ditches, got up hay, fed and worked cattle, and even milked a Guernsey cow daily during elementary and middle school.” I still have my first paycheck for $13.80 from the summer of 1968 when I was four years old. “As children,” Saunders recalled, “my six brothers and I composed the workforce on the farm. Cattle only find a hole in the fence when it is dark and raining.” Dinner was often at the picnic table with extra seats for friends, coworkers, and visitors. ![]() Propagating boxwood was our job and preparing the cuttings in the living room at home was acceptable. He remembered a few: “Work was part of life whether you liked it or not, no matter how late you stayed out the previous night. ![]() Growing up on a family farm as one of seven brothers was full of adventures that ran the gamut from fun to frightening. Saunders, a multi-generational farmer from Piney River, Virginia, who grows woody ornamentals, annuals, perennials, field ornamentals, grafted trees, peaches, nectarines, apples, and Asian pears, has been selected as the overall winner of the Swisher/Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year award for 2022. SAUNDERS NAMED 2022 SOUTHEASTERN FARMER OF THE YEAR ![]()
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