‘You-pick’ farms attract picky customers

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- Hunched over in their oversized hats and gloves, Raymon and Nina Price weave in and out of rows of chile plants in the morning sunshine, delicately pushing aside branches to find their treasure: long, shiny green peppers.

Within an hour, the couple have picked two large buckets of peppers -- about 20 pounds.

“I pick all the straight ones. Look how firm and mature they are,” said Nina, proudly smiling as she holds several gleaming chiles in her gloved hand.

The couple are among the customers at Joe Lujan’s “you-pick” farm in Las Cruces, where people have flocked for the last 45 years to pick their produce themselves.

Nestled between pecan groves and surrounded by desert, Joe Lujan Farms is 40 acres filled with five varieties of chiles as well as squash, okra, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and a small pecan orchard.

On a recent Saturday morning, the farm was bustling with customers either out in the fields or milling around the farm store, chatting with other customers while waiting for the chiles to be roasted and packed.

Joe Lujan, 75, greets each customer with a handshake or hug, asking about their family and health. His wife, Martha, seems to know everyone who comes in, and their dogs, Buddy and Bandit, soak up frequent pats and head scratches.

Along side the friendly conversation and relaxing atmosphere, Lujan said, his farm offers customers something they won’t find at a grocery store: freshness and selection.

“They see where it’s grown with their own eyes and pick it with their own hands. They don’t need a sign in a store to tell them how fresh it is,” Lujan said.

Freshness translates to better taste, says Rosalinda Martinez, 55, who was picking chiles recently with her two granddaughters.

For her family, eating chiles is a daily ritual.

“We’ve got to have our chile -- it’s our staple,” said Martinez, who buys four 50-pound bags of hot green chiles every year.

Lujan said his family started the “you-pick” business model to save on labor costs.

“When labor got so bad, that’s when we decided to go to this ‘you-pick’ and let people do the labor part, which is the hardest part,” he said.

The farm used to have 100 acres contracted to a food production company in California, but Lujan said he stopped 10 years ago because the company “wouldn’t pay us what we needed to break even and make a little money.”

“The ‘you-pick’ is the reason I’ve been able to do this for so long,” he said.

Martha Lujan said the farm sells about 12,000 pounds of chiles per acre, with most sales generated through word of mouth and repeat customers.

The Prices are among those who come to the farm regularly. They pick chiles several times a week during the season, which typically runs from mid-July to the end of October.

“We think it’s worth the effort to pick your own chile. And looking at it from the ‘green’ angle, we don’t have to use our own water, since we used to try and grow our own,” Raymon Price said.

New Mexico has a few “you-pick” farms, offering apples, raspberries, even pumpkins.

Most successful “you-pick” farms are near large cities, offer more than one crop and have staggered harvests to keep a steady flow of customers, said Terry Crawford, an agricultural business professor with New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

“Most people who go out to pick fruits and vegetables use it as a recreational activity, so you’ll get all kinds of customers on the weekend and no one on Wednesday,” Crawford said. “It’s a cheap way to get exercise, entertainment and food with little cost. The trick is getting the customer to come out and pick versus when the crop is actually ready.”

Lujan hires a few pickers to harvest his fields periodically to maintain his yields and allow him to sell to those who can’t or won’t do the work themselves.

Rains and a cool spring delayed this year’s harvest by several weeks. More storms moved in just before Labor Day, destroying 15 acres of peppers.

“It’s been five years that we haven’t hardly made any money to speak of,” Lujan said.

Despite the hardships, Lujan says he stays in farming because of tradition and those closest to his heart. He and Martha’s youngest daughter, Lucinda, her husband, Amado Rivas, and their daughter, Amanda, live and work on the farm. When he gets discouraged, Lujan says, he remembers how much his grandchildren enjoy the farm.

“Farming is a family tradition,” he said. “My father grew cantaloupes. . . . It’s like asking an alcoholic why they drink. Who knows? It’s really for them.”