My name is Jason Smith, owner and current president of Lone Pine Enterprises L.L.L.P. Lone Pine was officially started in 1972 by the founder, previous owner, and president of Lone Pine Enterprises, Mr. Carl Garrich was my, great uncle, and mentor. Carl was one of the pioneers in today’s organic industry. Lone Pine was conceived when a man from Boston and a man from Hereford, Texas got in touch with Carl Garrich’s account; regarding the beginnings of Lone Pine.
“The reason they got in touch with me was because of Gloria Swanson, the movie actress. And with word of mouth all the way. Gloria Swanson was a health food advocate, and a friend of mine had a cousin in Los Angeles who was directing a picture, and she knew him and she said, “They grow rice in Arkansas, surely there’s someone there that might want to grow rice for us.” so he told his cousin, here in Little Rock, who was a good friend of mine. My friend then told me about this idea. Then we got in touch with the people from Boston and the people from Hereford, Texas who were starting out in the health food business. They came to Carlisle and visited with me, and we came to an agreement. I started growing organic rice and from then on I’ve been in the organic crop business.
I grew up farming rice with my father, and then on my own, not using the chemicals. Being all these buyers were wanting was rice farming the way it was performed, when I started off farming, I felt confident that I could do this because I was in the industry long enough that we grew all rice this way to begin with.
I learned my rice farming skills from my dad. It was a matter of converting back, to growing the way rice the way it was grown back in the 1920’s. Not knowing what we could produce, as far as volume, is what was most concerning to me. Given this concern, we came to an agreement where both sides felt was fair and both sides agreed would have been profitable to me, and profitable to them; if I made a good crop. The first year I made an awful good crop. The company in Boston took everything, grown that year, that I grew organically. It went under the brand name of Erewhon Trading Company.
Después de ese primer año, Paul Hawken vino a Carlisle AR. Tres, o cuatro, veces para ver, estos campos de arroz orgánico, para ver cómo los campos crecieron. Afortunadamente, el año siguiente tuvimos una muy buena cosecha. A ambos nos fue muy bien con el arroz orgánico cultivado, cosechado y vendido a los consumidores de Erewhon Trading Company.
Paul Hawken’s said, by the end of the second good crop of organic rice, that it would probably be better if I would “Name my own brand and then distribute the organic rice to all the distributors around.” Having a brand name, for this the organic rice grown, to sell the Erewhon Trading Company distributors rather than he taking each year’s organic rice crop, then shipping it to the various places, would cut the price down. Doing this would especially cut freight costs. During this timeframe I didn’t know what to name my new business. As I was considering a business name, we were around a big pine tree, located in my front yard, and I just thought” why not name it Lone Pine?
Y ha salido perfecto; es corto, bueno. y ha sido maravilloso.
Al haber cultivado arroz con su abuelo desde que era pequeño, sabía que originalmente así era como se cultivaba el arroz en las praderas de Arkansas. Recordaba que en los años veinte y treinta, los granjeros recogían el estiércol de los establos de los caballos y del ganado, que se acumulaba durante los meses de invierno. En primavera, estos agricultores esparcían el estiércol en sus arrozales y lo incorporaban a la tierra como fertilizante para la cosecha de arroz que pronto se plantaría. Carl sabía que la gruesa capa de arcilla dura, de unos 15 a 20 cm bajo el suelo, que se encuentra en gran parte de las praderas de Arkansas, combinada con el estiércol recogido del ganado durante los meses de invierno, producía un cultivo de arroz viable, por voluntad de la madre naturaleza.
In 1971 Carl struck a deal with Paul Hawken to grow 80 acres of short grain rice as he and his forefather, as well as most farmers, routinely did decades earlier. Now this almost lost art was to be coined “organically grown”. Erewhon Trading Company guaranteed Carl first crop up to 80 bushels an acre as insurance for any losses that could occur. Carl first crop yielded 130 bushels per acre. The first crop was a success and the next step was to find a rice miller. After some looking in the local area Carl found Cormier Rice Mill in DeWitt, AR. Cormier Rice Mill agreed to mill the organically grown rice for Carl. The following year, in 1972 after the second successful organic rice crop produced and sold to Erewhon Trading Company, Paul again met with Carl and this time suggested that he give a name to this new organic farm. Once Paul Hawken suggested this idea to Carl paused looked around his farmland, house and barn. He saw a single pine tree growing in between his house and cattle barn that had been there for a few years now. He answered to Paul Hawken “I believe I will call my organic farm Lone Pine”. Unfortunately, that “Lone Pine” tree finally died around the same time my great uncle passed away. This occurred from being struck by lightning many times over the years. The old pine tree has weathered many tornados, and storms, over the decades. Roughly 20 years ago, a new pine tree has sprouted from the seed of the original “Lone Pine’s” pinecones. This new generation of Lone Pine still stand today and pleases all of us very much.