The North Carolina bell pepper deal for Farm Fresh Produce, Inc. looked good May 6. Speaking by phone from Amsterdam, where he was checking a sweet potato export arrival, Steven Ceccarelli, company owner, said his pepper harvest would begin in the range of June 20-24.

Farm Fresh’s expanding napa cabbage deal was to begin around May 9 and would run through June 10, Ceccarelli said. This is a late start because of cool early spring weather.

All of his vegetable plant-ings this spring “look green and lush,” Ceccarelli said. “It looks like a great takeoff” to a new season. “We have no insect injuries.” The fields survived severe weather in the Faison area in fine condition, he added. “All the rain drained off. The fields look healthy.”

Powerful precoolers were part of the new warehouse built last year by Farm Fresh Produce Inc. in Faison, NC.This season Farm Fresh is going into its second year’s use of a new refrigerated warehouse. Ceccarelli said a key feature is a vegetable precooler that can cool ten trailerloads to 34 degrees in six hours. “For North Carolina heat, it’s a very good cooler.” The investment is critical to success in order to maximize shelf life for customers, he said. The precooler’s strength is “definitely overkill,” he said, meaning it is more powerful than necessary. “But it’s definitely worth it.”

Starting from a “cautious” volume level on napa cabbage a few years ago, Ceccarelli “doubled up” his napa acreage every year, bringing the company’s volume in 2014 to 60 acres.

This will be Farm Fresh’s second year to use the “Farm Fresh” brand name on its napa cabbage. This is important so customers can correlate the high quality to the source, and easily repeat purchases.  

Sweet potatoes are the core business of Farm Fresh. In November The Produce News reported that Farm Fresh ships between 800 and 900 40-foot containers of sweet potatoes a year. About 600 of these containers are exported. The firm has “a large network of growers” who pack the “Farm Fresh” brand. All Farm Fresh products are GlobalGAP-certified.

Farm Fresh uses international markets opened by sweet potato business to open markets for many other U.S.-grown fresh fruits and vegetables.