Phillip Pelham and his son Nick are determined that every acre they own should be making them money. That’s the rationale behind converting fallowed fruit tree acreage to pasture and row crops. Cumberland Valley Nurseries, Phillip says, started out as a nursery, but fruit tree best management calls for leaving land out of trees for seven years after harvesting seedlings.

They started by planting grass and building a cattle herd. “The cows got us into row crops,” Phillip says. They started growing corn to feed the cattle and added soybeans to further diversify. Diversification spreads risk, says Nick. It also allows them to maintain their labor force year-round and spread cash flow over several months.

Phillip has been in the fruit tree business “since I got out of school. My wife and I started the nursery from scratch.” They merged into Cumberland Valley and bought out the last partner in 1998.

Nick says he’s been around the nursery since he was playing in the puddles at two years old and has worked here since he was 20. “I’ve never worked anywhere else. I’ve thought about doing something else a lot of times, but never enough to want to leave. Some months it’s better to be in the nursery than others, though.”

 In early May, they were preparing peach tree seedlings for June budding and planting early maturity soybeans. Corn was planted and up to a good stand.

“We are trying to be as efficient as we can with all our resources.”