Page 11 - Tree Line - North Carolina Forestry Association - First Quarter 2023

By Amanda Murphy, Director of Communications, and Kat Peters, Communications Intern
Mike Powell and Amanda Murphy had the opportunity to travel to Rowland, NC in August of 2022. Rowland is
located on the border of North and South Carolina and the soil there is ripe for agriculture. Powell and Murphy met with Louie, Aaron, and Teresa Bodenhamer at Bodenhamer Farms & Nursery for a tour of their operations.
The farms cultivate all types of com- modity products, and the Bodenhamers invited their guests to sample the muscadine grapes. The typical way to eat these grapes is by squeezing the sweet middle out and discarding the shell. Louie and Aaron suggested eating the entire muscadine grape right off the vine, and it was a pleasant surprise how delicious the treat was.
The following is an edited version of an interview with Louie Bodenhamer.
Q: Tell me about yourself. How long have you been a
member of the NCFA?
A: I grew tobacco for 38 years with my son, Aaron, but left Kernersville to
move to Rowland, NC after the tobacco allotments were removed. Tobacco quotas or acreage allotments were a supply control feature of federal price support for tobacco.
When I moved down here, I got into forestry. I didn’t want to cut timber, but
a buyer offered me money for 50 acres
of timber. I asked a forester to plant longleaf pines for me, but he couldn’t get his hands on any seedlings. I took my tobacco greenhouses and made 2,500-foot greenhouses to grow seedlings for a buyer.
The only thing that interested me was trees. I hired a nursery manager from the state of North Carolina and we went into contract with Wayne Bell, out of Alabama, the largest forestry grower in the U.S. at the time. They’re called IFCO today. When IFCO purchased Wayne Bell, they didn’t continue my contract. I decided to go
Opposite page, background image: Container seedlings at Bodenhamer Farms. Clockwise from bottom left: Bodenhamer converted their tobacco curing facilities to harvest and propagate pinecones for seed. Aaron and Louie Bodenhamer speaking with Mike Powell, NCFA Director of Forestry Programs. Cover crop growing at the farm near the border of North and South Carolina.
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
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