Just a few miles off Highway 280 near the Shelby County town of Sterrett there’s a farm where, during the summer, you can find blue-faced children enjoying the great outdoors as their parents pick tasty berries for their favorite recipes.It’s the farm of Joe and Alicia Smith, and at this U-pick operation sampling the harvest is not only permitted; it’s encouraged.”We are marketing especially to family groups. We don’t spray our blueberries with pesticides, so they can come out and eat them off the bush as they pick,” Joe said.Besides blueberries, the Smiths also grow strawberries, honeydews and squash on their 90-acre spread. “We have 35-40 acres in crop production each year,” Joe said. “Right now, we have 10 acres of blueberries, and we’re probably going to maximize at 12-15 acres of blueberries in the next two years. We also are adding blackberries and are considering several other crops.”The Smiths, who were named the Alabama Farmers Federation’s Outstanding Young Farm Family in the horticulture division, market much of their produce through the farm’s U-pick store.”Over the last 20 years, we’ve developed a calling list of people who come here after finding out about us through ads in the newspaper or just driving down the highway and seeing our signs,” Joe said. “They fill out a little calling card, and we give them a personal phone call when each season comes around. We keep a pretty good clientele that way.”In addition to the U-pick operation, the Smiths have a healthy commercial trade.”We move all of our squash and honeydews as well as some blueberries through the Western supermarket chain,” Joe said. “They’ve been real nice in distributing our products among their 14 stores in Jefferson and Shelby counties. And, the stores are able to move more produce because they can put a sign up saying that it was grown on a local farm.”Despite their success in marketing their products commercially, the Smiths remain passionate about the U-pick operation. Perhaps that’s because it gives them an opportunity to practice their other love–teaching.Both are educators by trade. Joe teaches government and economics at Chelsea High School, and Alicia is a second-grade teacher at Chelsea Elementary School.”I feel like Joe and I are really helping educate the community about farm life,” Alicia said. “He teaches at the high school and brings home students to work on the farm. They learn lots of things, from how to drive a tractor to how to read a ruler. I teach at an elementary school, and I bring a lot of agriculture into the classroom. This year, during career week, we brought strawberries to the classroom. We let the children sample the strawberries, and we talked to them about how strawberry plants actually grow.”For many of the Smiths’ customers, though, the farm is the best classroom of all. “We see a lot of moms that come here with their children,” Alicia said. “I think mothers, like myself, are always looking for a good, wholesome place to take their kids. It’s educational because they can pick the blueberries, and the kids feel really proud that it’s something they accomplished. They can come out and pick the blueberries and then go home and bake things with them.”Even the store at the Smiths’ farm can be a learning experience. Because the U-pick operation is only open from 8 a.m.-5 p.m., the Smiths apply the honor system for early risers and night owls. During blueberry season, if customers come before the store opens or after it closes, they are invited to weigh their harvest, calculate the price and leave their money in a metal box.While the Smiths’ marketing approach may seem a bit relaxed, they are anything but casual when it comes to managing the farm and protecting the environment. Because irrigation is vital to any horticulture operation, Joe is especially careful about managing his water resources.”Right now, we are pumping all our own water. We’ve got two irrigation ponds, and we have three wells that we pump out of on the place. That way we can monitor how much water is going out, and we can recycle what’s here,” Joe said. “We used the soil and water conservation folks to set up fields, so instead of the water draining and running off the property, we are able to let the ground water run back into our ponds.”Another weather factor that can wreak havoc on a fruit and vegetable farm is cold weather. To guard against devastating losses due to a late freeze, Joe employs a combination of sprinklers and “artificial” wind.”Our strawberries are very vulnerable to late cold snaps. We have low-water-usage, overhead sprinklers that we can turn on to keep the frost from damaging any buds or plants,” he said. “On the flip side, for our blueberries, we use a big wind machine. We have a 14-foot prop stuck 35 feet up in the air with a V-8 engine at the bottom of it. It turns 75 miles an hour and creates a 30-mile-per-hour wind that will reach up to 10 acres in diameter. It does a good job of keeping our blueberry crop from being lost to a late frost.”A fourth-generation farmer, Joe said his family actually started farming the land he now owns in 1910. “They started with cotton and corn, and we’ve gone from cotton and corn to cattle and chickens, and now we’re up to the U-pick stage,” he said. In the future, Joe hopes to be able to retire from teaching and farm full time.Although Alicia wasn’t raised on a farm, she now says she can’t imagine living anywhere else.”I remember my parents being very concerned about me living in the country,” Alicia said. “I’ll never forget the first time they came up and I was on the tractor bushhogging. It was a big shock to them.”Joe and Alicia say their six-year-old twins, Shelton and Ann-Kathryn, also enjoy farm life. “We are blessed to be out here,” Alicia said. “They can ride horses, go fishing, take tractor rides and work here. It’s a great place to live.”