Alan Bailey is a third generation farmer in Sussex County and one of the newest members of Delaware Farm Bureau’s board of directors. “It’s kind of in the blood, I guess,” he chuckled in a phone interview. The family farm, dubbed J Bailey & Sons, Inc., is located just outside of Greenwood on the Maryland/Delaware[…]
Category: Meet Your Farmer
Meet your farmer: Adrian Mobilia
Adrian Mobilia and his wife Jessica have found their agricultural niche in southern Delaware. The couple purchased a 26-acre farm in 2015 where they built Salted Vines Vineyard & Winery which continues to grow every year. But their stories don’t begin there. Both came from lifelong farming backgrounds. Mobilia is a fourth-generation farmer from Pennsylvania;[…]
Meet your farmer: Connie Fox
Farming seemed to come naturally for a young Connie Fox who found herself at the Philly and Baltimore stockyards with her father at Christmastime and during the summer where livestock was sold and purchased at auction. Little did she know she would grow up to become a farmer much like the ones she met on[…]
Meet your farmer: Theodore and Rebecca Bobola
Growing up on the family farm, Theodore “Teddy” Bobola. learned about hard work, commitment and the joy in watching something sprout from the ground up. Now, he and his wife Rebecca get to share those values with their own children on the same farm while advocating for the industry as active members of the Delaware[…]
Meet Your Farmer: Mary Bea Gooden
Mary Bea Gooden, who farms in Woodside, Del., takes after her parents. “Mom and Dad were ‘goers.’ Mom’s mom was a goer. It’s in our blood,” she said. Gooden herself has been going strong since she was a child. Her parents, Olin and Bea Gooden, started farming in Woodside and purchased the next farm up.[…]
Meet Your Farmer: Steve Breeding
Steve Breeding has been a farmer all his life. “It’s all I ever wanted to do,” he said. He even switched high schools from Seaford to Woodbridge in Greenwood so he could be in FFA. Seaford didn’t have an FFA program at the time. His sister-in-law, Karen Breeding, teaches in the ag program at Woodbridge[…]
Meet Your Farmer: Dale and Kathy Phillips
Dale Phillips is a third-generation poultry grower on Gravel Hill Farm in Georgetown. His grandfather, Harold Short, now deceased, started raising poultry in 1951. Phillips took over for him in 2005 and has since replaced the original chicken houses with two new structures with a total capacity of 60,000 birds. Phillips grows for Allen-Harim. He[…]
Meet Your Farmer: Jacob and Melissa Urian
Jacob Urian, age 34, is a good example of today’s young farmer in Delaware. Well-educated, he has been a conservation planner at Kent Conservation District in Dover for more than six years. He is a Certified Crop Advisor, nutrient management consultant and certified pesticide applicator. Urian and his wife, Melissa, live in a house on[…]
Meet Your Farmer: Bill and Joan Powers
There have been farmers in Bill Powers’ family for generations. “My cousin’s kids up in New York are the eighth generation in farming there,” he said. In his direct line, farming skipped a generation with his father, William Powers Sr., who worked for the New York Central Railroad. In 1977, when that company merged with[…]
Meet Your Farmer: Richard and Donna Wilkins
Richard Wilkins, who farms in Greenwood, was elected president of Delaware Farm Bureau at its annual meeting Dec. 3. Wilkins, who received DFB’s “Distinguished Service to Agriculture Award” in December 2015, was elected president of Kent County Farm Bureau in October 2017. A past treasurer and past vice president of KCFB, he had been president[…]