Over the last decade, Bland Farms LLC in Glennville, GA, has grown from one of the better-known grower-shippers of Vidalia onions to a 12-month player in the category with operations around the Western Hemisphere. But owner Delbert Bland never forgets that the Vidalia product is what made it all happen.

“Vidalia’s the girl we brung to the dance and we definitely established and built our business around Vidalias,” Mr. Bland said. “All these other onions are additional volume we’ve been able to do because Vidalias weren’t available other times of the year. Vidalia’s still our pride and joy and our claim to fame. We’ve been very fortunate.”

Delbert and Sandra Bland. (Photo by Chip Carter)This year’s Vidalia crop faces challenges from seed stem, which is causing a significant percentage of the crop to bolt and go to seed, but Mr. Bland believes Vidalia will still make a good crop.

The weather “has been kind of crossed up to say the least,” with a warmer than normal December and January and a cold March that brought torrential rains, Mr. Bland said. Weather “affects maturity, how quickly they come off, all the stages the onions are in. We’ve had a lot of adversity this year with weather, as you always do when you’re growing a crop out in Mother Nature, but we’ve been very fortunate. The onion’s a tough plant and it deals with a lot of stuff.”

The Vidalia deal began April 15 and “usually when they start they start pretty fast, usually it’s wide open or you’re not doing them. We started shipping heavy mid-April and are getting cranked up more every day and are running pretty well,” Mr. Bland said.

Mr. Bland’s vision extends far beyond this season or even the sweet onion category. The company’s value-added division, Vidalia Brands, headed by Mr. Bland’s wife Sandra, has experienced success as a dressing, dip and toppings manufacturer, and has scored a hit in the snack category with its Vidalia Sweet Onion Petals, a zesty, crunchy baked product that has made its way into the produce department and is “blowing off the shelf,” Mr. Bland said.

The company is currently considering other offerings in the line.

“I like this chip category, I like the way this looks,” Mr. Bland said. “We’ve got several products in the works. We’ve got three or four on the table and we haven’t decided which one to go with next but sometime this summer we’ll come out with another one.”

It is a far cry from the early days when Mr. Bland’s father the late Raymond Bland, grew the company crop while Delbert Bland was in charge of marketing it.

“It’s unbelievable the infrastructure and people involved that make things happen. My father was a stickler about growing onions and growing crops but he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the business or any of the marketing,” Mr. Bland said. “He thought I was really reaching for the stars and had really lost my mind when we wanted to build storage and keep expanding.

“Times change. It’s OK to look back but you can’t stare,” he continued. “You’ve got to move with the times and we’ve done that.

“But at the same time, if you don’t know where you’ve been, you don’t know where you’re going, so in turn you’ve got to keep that culture and heritage that you have but you’ve got to move with the events that are happening in today’s world. It’s faster-paced than it used to be, no question about that, and you either get big or you go home.”