How Does JoCo Grows Support Farmers?

Jonathan Breeden: [00:00:00] On this week’s episode of The Best of Johnston County Podcast, our guest is Nicole Youngblood, one of the Johnston County Ag Extension Agents on Highway 210 in Smithfield, and her job is to tell the story of our farmers through JoCo Grows.

So if you’re interested in how you can help local farmers, what the Ag Extension Agency can do for farmers and you as citizens, listen in.

Welcome to another episode of Best of Johnston County, brought to you by Breeden Law Office. Our host, Jonathan Breeden, an experienced family lawyer with a deep connection to the community, is ready to take you on a journey through the area that he has called home for over 20 years. Whether it’s a deep dive into the love locals have for the county or unraveling the complexities of family law, Best of Johnston County presents an authentic slice of this unique community.

Jonathan Breeden: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Best of Johnston County podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden, and on today’s episode, we have [00:01:00] Nicole Youngblood, one of the North Carolina State Ag Extension agents here in Johnston County.

Her office is at the Ag Extension building on 210 in Smithfield, and we’re gonna talk to her a little bit about her time growing up here in Johnston County, her time at NC State, why she became an Ag Extension agency agent, what the Ag Extension agency does, and a little bit about agritourism and how it’s being sort of marketed now as JoCo Grows.

But before we get into that, I would like to ask you to like, follow, subscribe to this podcast wherever you see it, whether it be on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, X, or Instagram, or any of the other social media channels of the Best Johnston County podcast. The Best Johnston County podcast comes out every single Monday and has now for over two and a half years.

So you can go back and listen to many of our previous episodes. We’re well over 120 episodes now. We’ve had the vast majority of the county commissioners. We had Congressman Brad Knott. We had the county manager, Rick Hester. We’ve had lots of great people on this [00:02:00] podcast. If you love Johnston County as much as I do, this is the podcast for you.

Welcome, Nicole.

Nicole Youngblood: Hey there. Glad to be here.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, good, good. I was looking forward to this. We had the S- the Smiths on,

Nicole Youngblood: Yay

Jonathan Breeden: from Smith’s Nursery. So you can go back and listen to that one. That was ran a few weeks before this one ran and I told them that you were coming on, and they were like, “Boy, that’ll, that’ll be good.”

Oh. She said that, that, that you c- you could talk as much as I can talk.

Nicole Youngblood: Oh, goodness. No, I love them. They were actually first… My first job was there, so they gotta show some love for their friend Nicole, so. So- But I’m biased too, so …

Jonathan Breeden: right. So what’s your name and what do you do?

Nicole Youngblood: So my name’s Nicole Youngblood.

I grew up here in Johnston County, and I currently serve as the agricultural marketing and communications extension agent. It makes my business card silly long. Really long. Like, why? Right.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well, I kept thinking that you were in charge of the extension office, but you said no.

Nicole Youngblood: No. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not in charge, but I am engaged in helping a lot,

Jonathan Breeden: so Hey, that’s good.

That’s good. That’s good. so, I mean, you, you grew up in [00:03:00] McGee’s Crossroads,

Nicole Youngblood: right? Yep, I grew up at McGee’s Crossroads. I was born in Smithfield at the hospital there, and other than going to NC State for four years, I’ve been in Johnston County.

Jonathan Breeden: I gotcha. So, and you went to, you did FFA.

Nicole Youngblood: Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: You were big into FFA-

Nicole Youngblood: Mm-hmm

Jonathan Breeden: when you were there. I guess you went to West Johnston?

Nicole Youngblood: I went to West Johnston, but People don’t know this. We have a lot of middle school FFA chapters in Johnston County. So I was in the MXM FFA.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh my goodness.

Nicole Youngblood: East Crossroads-

Jonathan Breeden: Okay

Nicole Youngblood: FFA

Jonathan Breeden: I did not know that there were middle school FFA.

Nicole Youngblood: Go mustangs.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good. So anyway you went to NC State and graduated in what? 2016?

Nicole Youngblood: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. And you got a degree in?

Nicole Youngblood: Crop production.

Jonathan Breeden: Crop production.

Nicole Youngblood: Crop production.

Jonathan Breeden: So what was your thought at that time?

Nicole Youngblood: So I thought that I would come back and maybe one day be a field crop agent. Extension agents have different specializations and I thought I was gonna come back and I still work in the field, but I thought I would be more involved in agronomic [00:04:00] suggestions for farmers, helping them with soil testing, figuring out any fertility issues, any problems that you might find in the field.

I thought I was gonna be kind of a hands-on troubleshooter in that way. But an opportunity it was kind of a grassroots effort of farmers in our county that said, “Hey, our county’s changing. How can we help our agricultural industry, you know, be competitive and kind of shift and shape to stay or to maybe even become more relevant to our consumers?”

And so our farmers said, “We need somebody to come tell that story,” and it just worked out where I was like, “You know what? I love our farmers. I love this County. I’m gonna go give it a shake.” So here I am.

Jonathan Breeden: Here you are. So I guess you became an ag extension agent here at the end of 2022. What were you doing before that?

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah. So my first job right out of college, I worked for the North Carolina Ag Foundation. I worked in alumni relations, so the College of Ag and Life Sciences at [00:05:00] NC State. I was a program assistant that helped put on things like the Cows Tailgate any of the donor events for the college.

I helped you know, move furniture. I was doing.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Nicole Youngblood: A lot of huff and work.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Nicole Youngblood: Which was good. It builds character, right? And then after that, I went on to be a program specialist with North Carolina Farm Bureau, and the insurance company’s great, but a lot of people don’t know there is the North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation, which came before the insurance company, and is essentially an advocacy and policy piece of Farm Bureau that advocates for farmers. It is the voice of North Carolina agriculture.

Jonathan Breeden: The, the farmers’ lobbyist.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: And I know they don’t like to use that word-

Nicole Youngblood: Hey

Jonathan Breeden: but they, they do. I worked at the legislature

Nicole Youngblood: Everybody needs a lobbyist.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. No, I worked at the legislature.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: And you can check that box. I’m a Farm Bureau member. You say that you want some of your dues to go to the advocacy or not, and I think most people do.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah. So-

Jonathan Breeden: So I get my insurance through Farm Bureau, have forever, and Kevin Creech right here at 4042 and all that [00:06:00] stuff before that with Sid Sauls I mean, you know.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah

Jonathan Breeden: So anyway, that’s great. So, so anyway, so you became the ag extension agent in end of 2022. And I guess when you came here, you were gonna be the communication person for the ag extension office.

Nicole Youngblood: Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. So tell me, what does the Ag Extension office do? And I know it does a lot, but I don’t think everybody knows everything that it does for the farmers and the citizens of Johnston County.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah. We are very fortunate in Johnston County because we have a large staff that has specializations. If the most effective parts of extension is having someone that knows enough about an area of agriculture that they can actually help you. So if you’re a farmer and you call it would be frustrating for you to get one person that was supposed to know everything about agriculture.

So we’ve got people that do everything from tobacco, we have a livestock agent, we have a field crop agent, we have two horticulture agents, one that focuses more in consumer horticulture, so for homeowners, and then we’ve got [00:07:00] another horticulture agent that focuses on fruits, vegetables even sweet potatoes. You know, sweet potatoes, number one in North Carolina. So we have a lot of specializations there. But You’ve heard of 4-H?

Jonathan Breeden: Yes, 4-H.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah. So 4-H is housed within Extension, and we’ve got two 4-H Extension agents in our County. And we’ve also got an EFNEP educator Expanded Food Nutrition Education Program.

I probably butchered that acronym, but you know we love an acronym in agriculture.

Jonathan Breeden: No, that’s true. Yeah.

Nicole Youngblood: and that’s to help folks with limited resources be able to stretch their dollars and buy good healthy food for their families. And then lastly, family and consumer sciences. Everything from budgeting for your family to cooking healthy meals, preserving vegetables that you might get from the farmers market.

It is a wide range of things, and we’ve all got our lane and we work together to try to help. Really the goal is help Johnstonians live a good, healthy life.

Jonathan Breeden: I had no idea there was that many ag extension agents.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: I knew [00:08:00] about the lady that helps you eat better meals, ’cause I could use that.

Nicole Youngblood: Me too.

Jonathan Breeden: And I knew somebody helps you with your local garden if you have gardening questions about your garden at your house or what plants to plant at your house. Which they will help anybody that just calls and asks, and they have this website. I knew about that, which is sur- a lot of people don’t know about, but I didn’t know about all the other people. It’s like, is there like 10 people that work with you?

Nicole Youngblood: Oh, there’s like 13 of us.

Jonathan Breeden: 13?

Nicole Youngblood: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Breeden: I had no idea.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah. And, and we are on the move. I mean, anything from soil testing to like you kinda mentioned our Master Gardener program. We’ve got an army of master gardeners. I think we’re up to like 140 of them now. So you can imagine as our population grows, we need some help to answer some of these calls and questions- … about their garden. So we, I kinda joke around, I said, “Oh Lord, if the master gardeners ever get tired of us, they could just throw a mutiny.” But they wouldn’t do that ’cause they love us and we love them. But they’re in there answering that hotline Tuesdays and Thursdays where homeowners call in and say, “Hey, I’ve got this, like, gall on [00:09:00] this tree. What do I do?” And they come in and help us ’cause there’s a lot more citizens out there than there are agents, and so we’re trying to get some-

Jonathan Breeden: Okay

Nicole Youngblood: get some answers to our folks.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

And so all the agents are employees of NC State?

Nicole Youngblood: Ooh, this is where it gets complicated.

Jonathan Breeden: I’m just curious.

Nicole Youngblood: No, this is a great question. So generally speaking, most agents are, in our office, employed as NC State employees.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Nicole Youngblood: But I am a weird one in more ways than one.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Nicole Youngblood: So I’m actually a Johnston County employee. I’m 100% paid by the County of Johnston.

Jonathan Breeden: I did not know that.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah. A lot of people don’t know that. But historically, agents have been partially paid by the state and partially paid by the County. But there was such a call from our County’s farmers and from the community that said, “We need someone to do this.”

And so the County said, “Okay, well, we wanna support you, so go find your person.”

Jonathan Breeden: Well, how about that?

Nicole Youngblood: I know that’s no [00:10:00] pressure, right?

Jonathan Breeden: No, No pressure at all.

Nicole Youngblood: No pressure.

Jonathan Breeden: Right, right, right. Yeah, so that means if you don’t produce for the County citizens, then I guess the County commissioners might have to get somebody else. I don’t know.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah, I know. But really though this is the first position like this in the state of North Carolina.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Nicole Youngblood: And I need to be corrected if I’m wrong, but I’ll go ahead and throw it out there. I know that our neighbors in Wayne County have recently hired a position very similar to these responsibilities that I’m doing.

So it kinda is, oh, no pressure, but the whole state is looking to see how this goes ’cause it’s very new for the extension system. So I am really wanting to get it right because there are counties, I think, that could really benefit from someone helping farmers tell their story.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well, and you know, the funny thing is the County has finally hired a couple of public information officers.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: So the County can tell its story.

Nicole Youngblood: Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: You know, and I think that’s really good. And I know you’ve done a really good job with JoCo Grows, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about that in a minute. But I do wanna talk a little bit about just about how big agriculture is in North Carolina.

I think it can get lost [00:11:00] out here in the suburbs of house after house in western Johnston County where I live and work, and even McGee’s Crossroads now, that agriculture is still the biggest industry in North Carolina by a country mile. And it is still the biggest industry in Johnston County by more than a country mile.

And I don’t think people realize that North Carolina agriculture has a $111 billion impact. That’s a B, billion, $111 billion. It’s growing 8 to $10 billion a year, so we’re producing more agriculture products and we’re becoming more efficient, and we’re doing a better job of it. I love to hear Steve Troxler talk.

Yeah, you know what I mean. Other interesting stats about North Carolina agriculture that I’ve heard Steve Troxler say, and I looked up before I did this interview, North Carolina is the number one producer in sweet potatoes, turkeys, poultry and eggs, I think.

Nicole Youngblood: And tobacco.

Jonathan Breeden: And tobacco. [00:12:00] That’s it. Yeah, no, that was tobacco, not turkeys. The turkeys are later. North Carolina is second in Christmas trees, turkeys, and trout, third in hogs and cucumbers, fourth in peanuts and broilers, and fifth in cotton in the United States. That’s on your website. So,

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Anyway, so I mean, it’s pretty amazing just how big agriculture is.

Nicole Youngblood: Yes, it is. And the diversity of agriculture, I think at this point we have over 100 different like commodity group organizations in the state. So, I mean, it is deep and wide as far as what we offer.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and in Johnston County, I mean, the last time where I could find the economic impact in Johnston County in 2022 was $257 million.

Nicole Youngblood: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Breeden: Just in this county.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: I mean, that’s, that’s a quarter of a billion dollars of economic impact right here in Johnston County.

Nicole Youngblood: Yes. So it makes you wonder when folks think food comes from the grocery store it really is- A lot more than that, right? There’s [00:13:00] a, there’s a whole pipeline to get food to the grocery store, and all those products that you mentioned there’s a whole, there’s a, a farm family that’s making them and growing them.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and Johnston County is some of the leaders in these categories, and particularly sweet potatoes

Nicole Youngblood: Mm-hmm

Jonathan Breeden: in North Carolina. If we’re not first, we’re really close.

Nicole Youngblood: Oh, we’re f-

Jonathan Breeden: I think we may be first.

Nicole Youngblood: Johnston County always ranks in the top five of producing counties in North Carolina. So if you do the math on that. In fact, I’ll tell you a story. I recently went on an agricultural leadership trip to San Francisco, or the California. I went out there, and in the grocery store, the likelihood of those being s- sweet potatoes from North Carolina, it’s really high. And we have systems in place where sweet potatoes are available all year long, right?

We used to just think Thanksgiving, that’s the time. But the technology through NC State University, through our awesome growers here in the state, and, you know, shout out to my JoCo growers, [00:14:00] you know, they’re a part of those systems that make it where we can have sweet potatoes all year long. And the Sweet Potato Commission, the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission, is actually, their headquarters is in Benson. So if that’s any indicator, we are, we are tater folks.

Jonathan Breeden: I did not know that.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: All right. That’s, that’s fascinating. Yeah. We and I mean, we do I mean, we still grow a lot of tobacco here.

Nicole Youngblood: Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: And we have a lot of sweet potatoes. Do we ha- We have a lot of chickens? I don’t r- I, I don’t see a lot of chicken farms, but I bet we probably do.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah. Well, the way that that works is you don’t typically have a lot of subdivisions or housing near chicken farms-

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s a good point

Nicole Youngblood: just because people wanna live in the country until they realize, hey, animals make noises and, and- Oh … and they, you know, go to the bathroom and, you know, there’s trucks that bring food for these animals.

So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of pieces that go into growing animals. And so sometimes it’s not as visible to our consumers because they’re not always living right next to… If [00:15:00] they are, there’s normally like a tree break or something-

Jonathan Breeden: Right

Nicole Youngblood: a wind break,

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Nicole Youngblood: So-

Jonathan Breeden: So …

Nicole Youngblood: we’ll see it.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah.

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Jonathan Breeden: So we talked a little bit about the you know, your career, Ag Extension, all the different things it does, but your job is communications and marketing.

You’ve come up with this JoCo Grows I don’t know if you came up with it or somebody did. What is JoCo Grows? What is it trying to accomplish?

Nicole Youngblood: Yes. So I’d kind of mentioned earlier it was a grassroots effort. I would say that this idea was born from local farmers, like local Ag leaders in the County, and we also collaborated with the Johnston County Visitors Bureau and our extension office, kind of helped organize those farmers on, “Okay, what [00:16:00] exactly are you needing from this program?

What are you thinking about for this?” And so they met for a couple years, probably about five years or so, I think, before I was hired. And they kind of built the framework of what do we want the JoCo Grows agriculture program to do? And essentially that mission is to connect, bridge that gap between our consumers, that growing population of consumers here, with, quite frankly, a diminishing number of farmers.

Less than 2% of our population actively farms. So, you know, when you said that you can appreciate policy discussions and things of that nature, well, when you’re outnumbered in that way if we as a whole, as a community, want to have food here, want to have agriculture in our communities, then we kind of have to rally with our farmers, so to speak, and create environments where they are supported.

And so the way that we do that is we tell the stories. You can go to Food Lion all day long and go buy tomatoes, but [00:17:00] we’ve got farms in this County. You can go buy a tomato from Lee’s Produce, and you would prefer to do that because you get to know your farmer, right? And so we’re wanting to tell the stories of these farm families in order to make them hopefully more resilient in a space that’s really challenging for farmers to continue.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well, I mean, I just assumed, probably incorrectly like a lot of people, that most of the local farmers are selling to the grocery store chains in large volume and, you know, they’re not trying to sell to individual consumers, but that’s not the case.

Nicole Youngblood: Well, in our county, it’s kind of, kind of a mixed bag. You’ve got everything from I serve farmers that are half acre microgreen farms that sell at the Clayton Farmers Market, all the way up to thousands of acre row crop operations. And you know, folks in the middle It’s almost as if you’ve got to diversify, right? So when we t- when we think about business operations, [00:18:00] you wanna spread your risk, you wanna diversify your income streams.

And so the way that some of our more traditional farms are, are trying to diversify is doing those direct-to-consumer sales. So you go from being the price taker to being the price maker, right? And so when we see increases at the grocery store, people might think, “Oh, farmers are greedy and they’re just wanting more money.”

Well, the reality of that is that, that increase, that’s not going to the farmers. They haven’t seen price increases on, let’s just say, produce that they might sell in bulk. I mean, that’s not been that much different than the ’70s, what they were being paid then.

Jonathan Breeden: I did not know that.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah. So that difference is so it’s getting lost in the supply chain somewhere in the middle.

So if I as a farmer am gonna sell directly to a consumer, I then get to set that price, I get to build that relationship, and for some of our farmers, that has been effective for them. There are some farmers in our county You know, they, they might not [00:19:00] become a direct-to-consumer seller or, you know, grow beef, like freezer beef to sell directly to the consumer or produce.

They, you know, they might not wanna do that, and that’s okay. I have just as much of a responsibility to tell the story of our more traditional farms as I do a first-generation farmer that’s gonna start a roadside stand on the side of 70 Highway. You know, I have a responsibility to all of them, and they all have a unique story that we have to tell.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and there’s, and there’s a lot, and I’ve always tried to support local farmers, being the grandson of farmers and being married to a f- a farmer’s family. Y- you know what I mean? Like, like, so, you know, my grandfather grew tobacco and soybeans and corns. He was also a dairy farmer. You know, my wife’s family was in dairy, and then they had Angus, and then they, they did bean and corn and wheat and, I mean, so, you know, I’ve, I’ve been around it my whole life even though I grew up in a neighborhood and I live in the suburbs out here in Johnston County.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: But no, I, I, I think you’re right. And [00:20:00] I mean, I try to buy meat from 5J’s Farm here-

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah

Jonathan Breeden: in Johnston County. They’re great. And Wood Angus

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah

Jonathan Breeden: I try to buy meat from them. They do a great job down at McKees Crossroads, and, and they’re happy. You can definitely search Wood Angus, and 5J’s will be happy to sell you meat. It’s very good.

Nicole Youngblood: Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: It’s fresh. It’s truly homegrown. We had Lee’s Fresh Market on this podcast- Yeah … out of Benson where they slaughter and package some of this stuff and, and they’ve got tons of great things down there. And so, I mean, I’ve tried to help start to tell this story. The Smiths and everything they’ve done from you know, they go back a few weeks, they were just on, and from everything from the school field trips, to the hayrides, to being able to get your pumpkin, to feeding the goats, to now he’s got a full-scale bakery and he’s got traditional milk and glass canisters like you’d seen in the ’60s.

Like, I mean, he’s got a little bit of everything there him and his whole family. So I mean, there is a lot of stories to tell.

Nicole Youngblood: Yep. You just triggered a thought for me. The kitchen at [00:21:00] Smith’s, they got a chicken pastry you gotta try. It’s really good.

Jonathan Breeden: That’s what he said.

Nicole Youngblood: I tried it. It was really good. I went one day after work. I said, “I’m gonna try that.” But you bring up a point. It’s that diversity across our county. You can get anything from fresh-baked breads to sweet potatoes, you know, it’s strawberry season, and then not long after that it’ll be blueberry season.

There’s a seasonality. There’s always something that’s ready for you in Johnston County.

Jonathan Breeden: No, it’s fascinating. And you know, I was surprised that, you know, him and his brother and his parents, you know, they still sell a lot of plants. They still sell a lot of wholesale, but he says his retail is now almost as big as his wholesale.

And he’s got ice cream. You know what I mean? And I think that’s fascinating, and I think a lot of other farmers have done that too. The Boyette Farms with Clayton Fear Farm, which is tremendous. And Lights on the Neuse that they do there every year.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah, and that’s an experience, right? So we’ve even gone further than just selling someone a basket of strawberries. You’re also offering an [00:22:00] experience, right?

Jonathan Breeden: Scared the bejeebies out of me.

Nicole Youngblood: Yeah. I went one year. Sorry, Anna, that did scare me. But you know, it’s something fun for people to do. There are-

Jonathan Breeden: I won’t do it. I’m afraid.

Nicole Youngblood: I ain’t gonna lie, I did go when I was in high school, and I was like, “Huh, I’m tough.”

I come out of there, I was like, ” I’m not as tough as I thought I was.” I don’t know about that. But it’s fun. You should go. Don’t let me talk you out of it. But there’s so much phone scrolling, there’s so much people sitting inside kinda keeping to themselves, but more and more I think people are wanting to go back to having authentic experiences.

They want to go out and, you know, enjoy things with their families. And so farms are a great place to do that. It really is.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and we’ve got, I mean, I mean, I mean, got Sunlight, I mean, all the stuff they’re doing. Look up Sunlight Farms. Go to your website. Now your website is part of the Visitors Bureau website? It doesn’t have its own website?

Nicole Youngblood: Well, we collaborate together. Okay. It’s called jocogrows.org.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Nicole Youngblood: And ’cause they do a great job of keeping up with what events are going on in the county. Yeah,

Jonathan Breeden: that’s great.

Nicole Youngblood: And who [00:23:00] am I to pretend I could do that better than our friends at the Visitors Bureau? Right.

So we like to use our resources well in the county. No need to duplicate work, right?

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So, so you have a website, jocogrows.org, and then JoCo Grows has a webpage on the tourism website.

Nicole Youngblood: It links to it.

Jonathan Breeden: It links to it.

Nicole Youngblood: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. All right. That’s right. ‘Cause that’s where I found it, through the tourism website.

Nicole Youngblood: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: And what’s the tourism website?

Nicole Youngblood: Oh man, now you’re putting me on the spot.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah, okay.

Nicole Youngblood: All right. Sorry, Ashby. And Aaron.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. All right.

Nicole Youngblood: It’s probably Visit JoCo or johnstoncounty. … You know what? Let’s do something in the comments. Right. You guys post it. Let’s

Jonathan Breeden: see. Okay. We’ll get, we’ll get it straight.

We’ll get it straight. So yeah. So anyway, but the Johnston County Visitors Bureau has, has a great website as well. A lot of the stats I just said was on y- that website, JoCo Grows. So what stories, I mean, I mean, what stories are you telling right now? I mean, you know, I, these are the ones I know, which, y- what are some of the stories you’re trying to tell?

Nicole Youngblood: Absolutely. So some common themes. A a line that we like to use is, [00:24:00] “Every farm has a family.” And that can be the actual family that lives on that farm. But also when you as a family, you as a consumer go visit these farms, you kind of become part of their family. I can think of Ms. Deborah over at Pace Family Farms telling me about how families will come and they’ll buy their bucket of strawberries, and they’ll just walk down the dirt path at their farm ’cause you don’t necessarily see those very much anymore.

So it’s those things that you can’t exactly put a price tag on. It’s, it is that experience, it is that being a part of a community. And so you- we’re offering things that you can’t just get sitting at home on the couch. You gotta go out and experience it. And it’s also telling stories like, personifying our farmers.

So, “Hey, I’m a young farmer.” I worked really closely with the Young Farmers and Ranchers program, and so I had a, I learned a great [00:25:00] appreciation for the young people that do want to continue on in their farming operation, ’cause statistically, we’ve already talked about that’s not something that a lot of young people are necessarily going into at this point.

So really elevating their story to say, “Hey, this young farmer, she’s a mom. She sits in the carpool line just like you do to pick her kids up, and, you know, they’re going to soccer practice just like you.” So, farming has been romanticized in such a way that people don’t always see farmers as just we’re all just normal people in this together.

Right. So just really personifying that and making them approachable because generally speaking, your farmer wants to know you and answer your questions. It’s like you’re a lawyer, I wouldn’t go around pretending to know how to advise someone on law and what they should be doing, just like we can’t make assumptions about agriculture if we don’t actually know a farmer to talk to, right?

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Right.

Nicole Youngblood: So go straight to the source, and your farmers, your Johnston County farmers, they wanna know you [00:26:00] and they want you to get to know their farm.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So how can people reach out to you and learn more about what you’re doing and the Ag Extension Office?

Nicole Youngblood: Absolutely. So we have a strong social media presence, Facebook, Instagram, and we have a YouTube page that we started in recent years, and we are about to do our summer series.

We always do a summer series where we kinda take our viewers on a journey. So last year they got to see me in the kitchen making some mistakes, but we can learn by doing mistakes. And we just went out to local farms, got some produce, got some local foods, brought it back, and we collaborated with Carolina Packers, and so we took different meat products from our friends there and paired them.

It was like a, you know, like if you pair wine with something. We weren’t drinking wine, but we were pairing meat products with local produce. So this summer a little inside scoop, is going to have a youth leadership component. So I’m just gonna-

Jonathan Breeden: Right …

Nicole Youngblood: sprinkle that out there as a, as a

Jonathan Breeden: seed. So it’s YouTube Jo- How do I find it?

JoCo Grows?

Nicole Youngblood: Yep. [00:27:00] JoCo Grows Agriculture. Yep. It’ll pop right up.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. On YouTube, Instagram- And

Nicole Youngblood: Facebook …

Jonathan Breeden: Facebook. All right. That’s cool. And Carolina Packers is gonna be on the Best of Johnston County podcast in a couple of weeks, so listen back on that. We’ve been look- we’ve been trying to get that booked for almost two years.

Nicole Youngblood: Johnston.

Jonathan Breeden: We’re excited about that, right? That’s gonna be a lot of fun. And we’re gonna talk about all the great things about red hot dogs. But anyway, which is also kind of agriculture.

Nicole Youngblood: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I don’t wanna steal my friend’s thunder over at Carolina Packers, but you’ll find there’s a lot of agricultural history there.

They’re very much ingrained in the history and culture of agriculture.

Jonathan Breeden: All right. Well, that’s-

Nicole Youngblood: The culture and agriculture …

Jonathan Breeden: well, that’s great. That’s great. Well, we’d like to thank… Oh, the last question. I always forget.

Nicole Youngblood: Oh.

Jonathan Breeden: Last question. What do you love most about Johnston County?

Nicole Youngblood: The people. And that’s gonna be an answer I’m sure you’ve heard hundreds of times, but at the end of the day, we do all of these things for the people.

Jonathan Breeden: I don’t disagree. And 99% of the people, over [00:28:00] 130 podcasts by now, have said it is the people, because the people of Johnston County are simply some of the best people you will meet anywhere in the world, in particular the farmers ’cause farmers are always the best people, too. Yeah. So anyway, we’d like to thank Nicole Youngblood of the North Carolina State Ag Extension Office in Smithfield, in the Ag Extension building on 210.

She… Like she said, she’s a team of 13 people there that can help you with your garden, your farm, your crops, and even how to eat healthier and to stretch your budget. They do so many things, and we’re hoping to have a few maybe of her coworkers come on here over the next few months as well. So reach out to her, JoCo Grows.

Search that on Google, YouTube, everything, and you can find out about what she’s doing and how she’s telling the stories of the Johnston County farmers. And if you get a chance, support your local farmer. go to roadside stands, go to farmers markets, order from the meat suppliers like 5J’s and Wood [00:29:00] Angus and stuff like that right here.

Go to Clayton Fear Farm, go to Boyette Farms, go to Knights on the Loose, Noose. I mean, there’s so many great… Smith, Smith Nursery. Like, it is truly a lot of fun. I guarantee you’ll have a good time. You’ll meet nice people. It won’t cost a million dollars, and you’ll be better for it, your community will be better for it, and your children will be better for it because they will see a different way of life.

Before we go, we’d like to ask you to like, follow, and subscribe to this podcast wherever you see it, whether it be on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, X, or Instagram. If you’d also be so kind as to tag us in your Instagram stories Best of Johnston County, that’ll help us grow our reach, and give us a five-star review down below.

Until next time, I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden.

That’s the end of today’s episode of Best of Johnston County, a show brought to you by the trusted team at Breeden Law Office. We thank you for joining us today and we look forward to sharing more interesting facets of this community next week. Every story, every viewpoint adds another thread to the rich [00:30:00] tapestry of Johnston County.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www. breedenfirm. com.