James Brewer has been retired since 2011, but he has stayed busy putting his love for good food, the outdoors and community service to use in a small farming operation.
Brewer has seven acres of land on Mississippi 7, where he has lived since 2007. He grows tomatoes, squash, okra, peas, cucumbers, cabbage and different kinds of greens in addition to raising fish and chickens. His products have been popular at the Downtown Greenwood Farmers Market, among other places.
Farming requires a lot of work, but seeing customers smile makes it worth it, he said.
“When a customer tells you, ‘I drive 15, 20, 30 miles every Saturday just to come up there to get your tomatoes,’ it does make you feel good,” he said. “And when they walk down there and walk by everybody else’s tomatoes just to get yours, that makes you feel good.”
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Brewer, 67, grew up on a cotton farm in Seal City, the eighth of 14 children. All of the children worked in the fields — “We didn’t have a choice; we had to eat” — and he started chopping cotton at the age of 5. So he got used to the hard work early.
“I’m the type of person to be content wherever I am until I can do better,” he said.
James Brewer says part of the appeal of farming is spending time outside. (By David Monore)
He attended R.B. Schlater Elementary School and then Leflore County High School, graduating in 1973. In high school, he worked various jobs in Greenwood in the summers and then returned to the fields in the evenings.
After completing a business degree at Mississippi Valley State University in 1977, he began a long career with the Mississippi Department of Corrections. He worked for MDOC until 2011, mostly at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
Brewer said his family had a vegetable garden in Seal City, and after he married and moved to Cleveland, he grew vegetables there, too.
When he was in his early 20s, he visited an aunt in Winona and helped his father-in-law do some carpentry work on her house. His aunt fed him well, and he noticed that the food she pulled from the deep freezer was homegrown.
“The food was so good,” he said. “I didn’t care whether I got any money or
didn’t want to leave until I got some of that good food.”
He taught himself how to grow vegetables, planting mostly peas, tomatoes and okra for himself at first and later adding cucumbers and greens. He sold some items here and there over the years; then, after retiring, he got more into selling vegetables and found they were popular.
He was approached around 2014 about selling vegetables at the Downtown Greenwood Farmers Market, which he has continued to do.
Also, for about six years, he has been active in the North Delta Produce Association, a cooperative that distributes produce to Walmart, Kroger and other businesses.
In addition to his vegetable gardens and a fish pond that has catfish, bass, bream and crappie, he has about 100 chickens. He said he started with two chickens around 2016, decided to raise more free-range ones and built a place for them.
“I can’t hardly keep the eggs,” he said. “I may get 10 to 15 dozen a day, and I can’t keep them.”
He sells some chickens during the winter when they’re not laying as much and there’s less demand for eggs, but he won’t sell them this time of year: “Right now, folks are begging for them, but I won’t sell them because my egg demand is too big.”
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Just as Brewer taught himself about growing, he also learned the business side on his own, and he continues to learn by attending seminars, reading Mississippi State University publications and observing other people’s farms.
“You don’t always have to have a bunch of land to make money,” he said. “It’s just the type of crops you raise and where you sell it.”
He said he’s in good shape financially and didn’t get into gardening to make a lot of money; he just hopes to get back as much as he puts into it.
“I tell anybody, ‘If you want to get rich overnight, don’t go into farming,’” he said. “Because today you may make money; tomorrow you might not make nothing. You have to not be set on money. You have to be set on ‘I enjoy making people happy. I enjoy watching stuff grow.’ You’ve got to find your satisfaction somewhere else. And if you get that satisfaction, the money’s just about going to come.”
With that satisfaction, there have been some surprises.
James Brewer holds a tomato just picked from the greenhouse on his farm.
He said a woman once came to his home to buy some turnip greens, and he offered to pick some turnips for her. But she didn’t want to wait. “She actually started eating turnips right out of the field,” he said. “And I had never seen anybody eat raw turnips before. But she said, ‘Oh, these smell good’ and picked them up and started eating them like that.”
He knows his crops are at the mercy of the weather, but he said he doesn’t worry about it because “whatever the Lord wants to bless you with, he’s going to do it.”
When flooding last year wiped out the corn, peas and other crops that he had planted early, he decided to replant later with greens, and they turned out well.
“The only thing I said was, ‘Maybe the Lord just wanted me to have a late garden,’” he said.
James Brewer’s fish pond contains catfish, bass, bream and crappie.
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Brewer is modest about his success, but he’s willing to give other people advice when asked.
“They think I’m good, but I don’t think I’m good,” he said with a smile. “But they’re always stopping by, asking me how to do different things, and I don’t mind sharing.”In fact, he is interested in forming a nonprofit to educate young people about farming. Most of the people he works with in the cooperative are 50 and older, and it would be good to get more young people involved, he said. He envisions taking them on field trips, giving demonstrations and bringing in guest speakers.
He said students have seemed interested when he has spoken in schools, and if one student is interested, he or she might tell others.
“Some of them don’t want to get into it because they think the work is really, really hard,” he said. “But ain’t nothing hard once you get involved and really like it.”
James Brewer says his chickens’ eggs are very popular: “I may get 10 to 15 dozen a day, and I can’t keep them.”
He said he plans to keep growing things as long as he can. He tends to his crops mostly by himself, although he does have some helpers during harvest.
He said that as far as he knows, his health is “super,” without the aches and pains many 67-year-olds have.
“I know a whole lot of folks who should’ve been 67 years old and are no longer here,” he said. “I’m still here. I can do what I want to, eat what I want to, go where I want to. So I think that’s super.”
He and his wife, Albirdia, have been married 42 years and have two sons and three daughters. He attends Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church near Moorhead, where he sometimes takes vegetables to give to others.
Part of the appeal of farming years ago was that it made him more self-sufficient, and that’s still true.
“I’ve got my fish pond back out there, I’ve got my chickens out there, got my eggs, got all my vegetables,” he said. “So if the stove stops operating, I still can eat.”
He also keeps an eye on the big picture and relies on his faith.
“I came from a poor family, but the Lord’s been good to me,” he said. “He always got me in the right direction so I can keep my head above water, as they say. And I never complain — if I make it or if I don’t.”
- This article first appeared in The Greenwood Commonwealth's 2022 Farming edition, published in May.
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