Fresh Herbs A Growing Business
Published Apr 14, 2008
Fresh mint leaves are picked at Patty's Herbs in the Frio County seat of Pearsalt. The Alamo Area is famous for fresh vegtables, wild game, specialty products and even the bees that make agribusiness possible.
The landscape here may be forever associated with Texas cattle ranches. But agribusiness across the sprawling San Antonio region is much more than that. The region is also famous for fresh vegetables, wild game, specialty products and even the bees that make agribusiness possible.
“The climate is so mild here that we can grow our products outdoors for most of the year,” says Charles Johnson, president of Patty’s Herbs in Pearsall.
Johnson’s products consist of 18 varieties of herbs and edible flowers – many of them hard to come by. Patty’s Herbs are distributed by grocery stores across the state, including the rapidly expanding 300-store HEB Grocery Co. chain.
The business began as a garden plot in 1981 from which Johnson’s mother sold herbs to a couple of local restaurants. Johnson, an MBA who spent 15 years working in high finance, found the herb business hard to resist and returned to the family calling. Keeping up with demand from groceries and restaurants now requires a labor-intensive packing operation that pulls plants from across 40 acres and greenhouses.
In Floresville, Promised Land Dairy has also seen rapid growth. Beginning as a small local dairy, Promised Land developed a niche of supplying dairy products exclusively from Jersey cows. Most commercial dairies use Holsteins, but Jersey milk is considered more flavorful, with higher calcium content and more protein, says Gordon Kuenemann, Promised Land executive vice president.
Consumers in several states apparently agree with him. The dairy now supplies 2,882 grocery stores in 17 states from New Mexico to Virginia. A few years ago, the company grew too big to continue maintaining its own cows. Instead, it turned over all milk production to a local co-op of exclusively Jersey dairies.
“This is very diverse area,” observes Ralph Morgan, a Frio County rancher and county 911 coordinator. “The ranches here do more than you think. Because of the local brush and vegetation, this area has abundant wildlife. Hunters come here from all over the world.”
When they do, they might very well munch on one of the region’s other big products – peanuts. So important is local peanut farming that the Frio County courthouse lawn features a giant statue of a peanut.
“Vegetables are very big here,” says Jason Ott, county extension agent in Hondo, Texas. The growing season for green beans, cabbage and cucumbers is one reason why Del Monte operates a large local farm, he says.
None of which would be possible without bees. The region is home to large commercial apiaries that yield a flavorful honey from the local Guahillo plant.
But the hives also perform a more critical job, being leased and trucked out to agribusiness customers from California almond growers to local melon farmers.
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