Text and photos by Michael Gery
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At a time when more and more of our farm products come from corporations, it’s good to know that family farms are still with us. Corporate agriculture has its place and effectiveness in North Carolina and throughout the nation, but one thing corporate farms can’t grow is character. If you know a good, old farm family, you know what I mean.
The Roberson family of Robersonville in Martin County is one of those good, old farm families. Soon after they began walking and talking, Josh and Kenneth “Kip” Roberson 3rd, now in their 20s, learned farming from their dad, Kenneth Jr., who learned it from his dad, Kenneth Sr., who learned it from his dad—all in the same place. At one point or another they each went out to the old “family tree” in the woods off one of their fields and carved their name in that tree. Kenneth Sr., who says he still sleeps in the room where he was born, for his 80th birthday this year bought some more farmland nearby. He buys it when the buying looks good, and over the years the family acquired acreage from Conetoe to Bethel to Gold Point. Along the way they gave a name to their family farming operation: “Scattered Acres.”
Josh and Kip learned even more at North Carolina State University, and you can tell that they already apply contemporary business thinking and methods to their work. Their dad picked up some off-the-farm education, too, at Pembroke. “Schooling is OK,” their granddad told me. “But it’s not worth anything unless you get out here and use common sense.” That sense comes from understanding the place you’re farming and responding carefully to change. Even when he was a chicken farmer as a young man, Kenneth H. Roberson knew not to count his chickens before they were hatched. But once they did hatch he counted them closely. He knew his chickens so well that when he’d haul those broilers to a weighing station he had already calculated in his head to the pound what the scales would say even before he drove onto them, and if they didn’t say it he knew there was something wrong with the scales and would get weighed again. The senior Roberson also knew not to put all his eggs into one basket. This family has had a feed mill and owned a tobacco warehouse for more than 50 years. Today his sons, Kenneth Jr. and Henry, grow cotton, tobacco, soybeans, wheat, peanuts, strawberries, blueberries and produce. They operate greenhouses. His son, Tim, owns The Fillin’ Station, a popular restaurant and catering business in Robersonville.
“If you do anything in moderation, you’ll be all right,” the elder Roberson says with a grin. “Even tobacco. Anything can kill you if you overdo it.”
He adds that it helps to enjoy what you do and to have a wife and family working along with you. All that seems to be going on at the Roberson farm. Everyone gets involved in one way or another.
Kenneth Sr. learned to appreciate a good day’s work early in his life after his duty as an infantryman in World War II. He was left for dead and remained unconscious for three days after his unit fell victim to an explosion. Doctors told him he wouldn’t be able to walk, among other things. But he came back to the farm and never quit, even when Bennette Wilson went off to New York City to become a model. He went up there and carried her back to marry him.
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