“It all goes back to watching how my late father David Turek worked from our sales office,” said Jason Turek, the current owner of the fourth-generation operation. “We have always focused on our long-time relationships. Honesty and integrity are what we strive for and we are just so proud when we walk into a store, see our products and how they are marketed and displayed.“Frankly, there is not a lot of room for speculation,” Turek said, noting that the farm employs nearly 200 seasonal employees. “We run out of time up here because of the short growing season. With the way things are going, we try to stick to the same program as the year before and try to maintain our sales levels as well as what we grow. Of course, Mother Nature has a say in all of this so there is no exact science here, for sure.”
The New York business climate is also a challenge for Turek Farms. Besides the short growing season, Turek, who joined the business after graduating from Cornell University in the 1990s, noted that regulations, high real estate costs and competition for land makes working in the Empire State a bit tougher than other regions of the country.
“We have long known that everything is a bit more complicated in New York state,” he said. “Now, we are also facing competition for valuable land from people who want to use it for operating solar panels. It is just another thing that makes it harder to operate here.”
Still, Turek is eager to see the fifth generation of the family get involved in the farm and take it into the future and, perhaps, get involved in the environmental end of running the business. “We see some interest out of the younger members of the family to get involved,” he said. “Seeing that interest keeps me motivated and hopeful that they have seen what we have done over the years and want to get involved themselves.”
