As Tobacco Loses Currency, a New Cash Crop Blooms

Bell buys back the plants for twice the amount the seedlings cost but does not buy back plants that die. The cycle repeats itself in late spring, when the growers get another wave of seedlings. The season ends in April and then is over until the next year.

Gary Mangum, the co-owner of Burtonsville-based Bell Nursery, said each farmer gets a three-year contract to start, and after the third year the deal goes from season to season.

"In our nine-year history we haven't walked away from any relationship," Mangum said. "We need the growers as much as they need us. We've invested too much time to replace and retrain."

The Bell Houses take their inspiration from the Dutch, who are known worldwide for their expansive climate-controlled centers. Brainstorming with others, Walsh wondered whether instead of building sprawling greenhouses, farmers could band together to create a network of smaller operations, much like the chicken houses that dominate the Eastern Shore.

Walsh and others urged Bell Nursery to try the idea and a meeting was scheduled at the library in Denton, near the Maryland-Delaware border. From the 20 farmers who showed up, two agreed to be test cases.

The selling point: Flowers could be healthier, cleaner and more profitable than raising chickens. And the farmers would get help. There would be close supervision to help farmers reduce the risk of losing the flowers.

In addition, Walsh schmoozed banks, credit companies and finance firms to convince them that the idea wasn't crazy.

"The smart, big farmers outright rejected the thing," Walsh said. "The profit margins look so good, everyone was suspicious. In agriculture, you can't make so much and do so well without there being a catch."

The Lohmeyer family took the gamble. Their greenhouses in Caroline County on the Eastern Shore, not far from the Delaware border, are a work of art. Farmers come from miles around to view the Lohmeyer operations.

The polyethylene roofs, automatic sprinklers and barley-based heating system that keeps the flowers in a crisp, 98-degree environment even on the coldest January day have made the Lohmeyers the poster child for Bell Houses.

Profitable, too. The four greenhouses across two acres turn a $175,000 annual profit, which is far more lucrative than the $150 an acre annual subsidy that the federal government pays them not to plant on much of the farm.

"We heard about Bell and went to an economic meeting in Denton to see what they were offering," said Charles Lohmeyer, who wasn't making much money raising chickens and growing soybeans and corn. Business was so bad for the farm family that his son, Keith, ran a convenience store down the road.

"I gave that up when this become profitable," he said.

Bankers laughed at Charles Lohmeyer's proposal to build a greenhouse. But he eventually borrowed $238,000 for the first of his four half-acre greenhouses.

To maintain diversification, the family still raises 56,000 chickens in a nearby poultry house.

"It's definitely a profitable thing, and we are only working six months a year," Keith Lohmeyer said. "When we are done, I go on vacations. At 81 years old, my father finally got a passport. He and I are going to get in a minivan and head toward New Orleans in July and up to Nova Scotia in September."