BRIAN MACKEY:
It is the 21st show. I'm Brian Mackey and it is officially spring and it actually kind of sort of feels like it, especially this past weekend, at least on Saturday. The birds were chirping, the grass is getting greener and tulips are blooming at Eckert's Farm in Belleville, Illinois in the metro east part of the 21st state. That's where you can find an upcoming season dedicated to the colorful flower and check out their tulip trail where you can stroll among thousands of different pigments of tulips. Joining us now to talk about all of this is Chris Eckert, president and CEO of Eckert's Country Store and Farms. Chris, welcome to the 21st show.
CHRIS ECKERT:
Good morning. Thank you so much for having me on.
BRIAN MACKEY:
Appreciate you being here. Listeners, you can join us today, 802 2 2 9 4 5 5 Maybe you want to join the Tulip craze? Let us know about it. 802 2 2 9 4 5 5. So before we get to the tulips, just tell me a little bit about Eckert's Country Store and Farms.
CHRIS ECKERT:
Yeah, happy to. So we're an eight generation family farm located in Belleville, Illinois. We actually have multiple locations around the St. Louis metro area, plus another location in Lexington, Kentucky area. So we serve as a pick your own apple pumpkin peach farm. So families have been coming out to Eckerd for generations to pick apples and pumpkins and make family memories. And we have a here at our main location in Belville, we have a year round specialty food store and restaurant and we also make hard cider and have a hard cider tasting bar here at bobo.
BRIAN MACKEY:
So how did the idea for tulips come about?
CHRIS ECKERT:
We are always looking for new and innovative ways to create excitement for our guests to come out and spend a day in the country and see how things grow. Tulips are something that we've seen other farms do around the country as a matter of fact. So, we're not the only one doing this. There's other farms all over the US that have been doing tulip festivals for a number of years and it's a nice fit because it's an early season crop, it gets people out to the farm earlier than ever and it's always fun to learn to grow new things too for farm folk. And this has been a learning curve for us no other too. So, it's been fun all around.
BRIAN MACKEY:
Yeah, I wondered if this was like a business play almost, right? I mean you think of, I've seen a number of pumpkin patches develop and orchards and it seems like a lot of them have two-month business windows for the year. Obviously, you're looking to expand well beyond that. Yeah,
CHRIS ECKERT:
And I would also say that our guests want other reasons to come to the farm. If it's a 65-degree day in January, we inevitably get calls, what are you picking today? And it's hard to pick anything in January, but we're always trying to find new things to offer our guests that want to come in and have an experience on a farm on a beautiful day. We want to have as many weekends and days as possible where they can experience our farm.
BRIAN MACKEY:
What are you picking in January? I'm picking a flight to Florida is what I'm picking in January. So, alright, so tell me about what it takes to plant a field of tulips.
CHRIS ECKERT:
Well, we're learning, so we plant these in November, December timeframe. So, one of the things that we were told is you really want soil temperatures below 50 degrees so that they don't sprout after you plant them. You want them to go through their dormancy cycle. That can be a little bit of a challenge as you go south. We're pretty warm sometimes in November here in Belleville. Our planting actually went in a little later than we wanted it to this year for a number of weather reasons. It got wet and we just couldn't get things done. So, it was really right before Christmas when the tulips actually got planted. We planted right at 300,000 tulip bulbs this past year and they come from Holland. They’re shipped over to Michigan and they're refrigerated and it was a half a semi-load of tulip bulbs that we put in the ground.
It took us about two days. We borrowed a tulip planter from another farm actually up in the Chicago area. They were very generous to allow us to use their tulip planter this year and test the market. But it goes relatively fast once the soil conditions are right and you can get it in the ground. So right before Christmas we got our tulips planted and then we got some nice cold weather and they just need to do their work in getting their roots established through the winter months before they start to shoot their green tissue up towards the sky. So fortunately we got 'em planted in the nick of time and I think they're coming up and looking really nice.
BRIAN MACKEY:
So you mentioned a tulip planter. You piqued my curiosity there. Is this like a combine size machine or what are we talking about?
CHRIS ECKERT:
They come in multiple shapes and sizes, but the machine that we use mounts on the back of a tractor where you pull it with a regular John Deere tractor and it plants about a strip four feet wide of tulip bulbs, but they really just vibrate out of this hopper and the faster you vibrate it, the faster they flow out. So it's a little bit of an art to kind of get it figured out on what you need, but it's about 10,000 bulbs per acre is the recommended seating rate. So it takes a lot of bulbs to really make a sea of tulips.
BRIAN MACKEY:
Yeah. So can I ask what this costs?
CHRIS ECKERT:
Sure, yeah. Tulip bulbs are about 25 to 30 cents a bulb. So in our particular situation we ended up investing about $70,000 in tulip bulbs. So it's not a small investment upfront to go in the ground, but it is a beautiful thing. They're starting to flower now and it's getting us all very excited.
BRIAN MACKEY:
Yeah. Well tell me, so we're on the radio for people, which is all of us can't see it. What would you see if you were looking out at that field right now?
CHRIS ECKERT:
Well, we are just now starting to bloom, so we are opening Wednesday this week for the Tulip Festival and it's really hard. The hardest part of tulips is predicting when they're going to be viewable because it's very much impacted by how hot the weather is in the spring. And obviously last week was crazy. We were 16 degrees on Monday and we were 95 degrees yesterday. So it's been a little bit of a challenge to say, okay, this is when we can open. But I think Wednesday is about the first day that there's enough flowers out that you can get that picture and really take in the sea of colors that are out in the field. Our field, it's about in total four acres, we have a gravel path that winds its way through the field and the tulips are planted in lines of different colors through that patch and then intermingled with that are different scenes and photo opportunities that people can take advantage of when they come out. We've also created a sitting area that's kind of like an English garden in the middle of the patch and we have a bar out there where we sell our hard ciders and mimosas. So it's just kind of a day to come out and spend and join nature and join all the colors of the tulips and getting some great photos to share with your family and friends.
BRIAN MACKEY:
I got to say, you've mentioned that a couple of times now, and I know we first became aware of this through an Instagram post I think I would imagine so you're an eighth generation, or I dunno if you are an eighth generation, but I know there are eight generations at the Eckerd farm, something that the fourth and fifth generations probably didn't have to think about too much is how it would look on Instagram. Talk about how much mind space that occupies for you and your other family members who are running this business and planning what you're doing year to year.
CHRIS ECKERT:
Well, yeah, it has been quite the change through my generation. I'm the seventh generation in the family to manage the farm here and our eighth generation is just coming in to the management team right now and social media did not exist when I started working at Ecker. The internet was just coming into play. So what we notice is our guests really love sharing the experience that they're having and the way we share our experiences today is through video and photos on social media. So there's something about getting back in nature, getting to a farm in particular that really gravitates with our customer, it resonates with them and they want to come and have that experience and share it because it makes them feel really good to be where their food comes from, to be closer to nature, to see things growing and get away from the hustle and bustle of their city lives or whatever situation they're in. It's just an escape from a moment in time and they love to capture that and share it. So yeah, in some ways we're a giant Instagram backdrop here at Eckerd’s, so we love it.
BRIAN MACKEY:
Absolutely. So, alright, so let me remind listeners, we're talking with Chris Eckert, president and CEO of Eckerd’s Farms about the tulips blooming at Eckerd’s Country store and farms in Belleville, Illinois. There's a new tulip trail this year, 300,000 tulips in a variety of forms and colors. So I wonder if your location talk about that. Does the proximity to the Mississippi River have something to do with being able to help tulips thrive? Given where we associate their native habitat over in Europe?
CHRIS ECKERT:
I think that probably a tulip expert would say we are not the ideal climate for growing tulips. The reason is not because tulips don't grow here. The problem in our climate is it's pretty warm and the warmer the days are, the shorter the bloom time. And that is what is kind of the challenging part of this festival for us because if it stays warm for the next couple of weeks, it will shorten the amount of days that we can enjoy the bloom and color in the field. So one thing I would advise is no matter what tulip vessel you're really looking at going to in what part of the country, you really have to pay attention to the dates and when things will peak and not peak because it changes almost daily. That being said, I think being close to the St. Louis metro area here in Bevo does give us some benefits, not just at tulips, but with our ability to grow peaches. We get a little heat island effect off of the city of St. Louis and that moderates our temperatures a little in the winter, in the spring. So it allows us to grow some things that you may not be able to grow 50 miles north of here because of that particular effect. So tulips I think are going to be beautiful. The only challenge for us is they might just be a shorter season than we really want 'em to be.
BRIAN MACKEY:
Alright, last question. What happens to the tulips once the season is over it?
CHRIS ECKERT:
The particular place where we grow our tulips is going to be transformed into our lighted Halloween trail in the fall. So we use the same space for two different festivals. So we will just till the tulip bulbs up that are there and then plant corn into that same ground and utilize it next fall for a different purpose. Then we will come back after fall and we will plant new tulip bulbs In our particular kind of environment where we're doing tulips for a showy festival and photography, the recommendation is really to plant new tulips every year because a new bulb is going to give you a bigger, brighter flower than a bulb that's been in the ground for a year or two. So a lot of farms that do these are replanting all the time. Some will use the same field for a couple of years, but generally speaking, most people are planting tulips every year.
BRIAN MACKEY:
Interesting. Alright, well thank you so much. Chris Eckert of Eckert's Country Store and Farms in Belleville. He's the president and CEO of Eckert's Farms. Thanks for sharing your work with us today on the 21st show.
CHRIS ECKERT:
I thank you for having me
(MUSIC)
Through the window. By the window, that's where I through the tulips with me. All
BRIAN MACKEY:
That is it for us today here on the 21st show. Again, you can find more information about the Tulip Trail at Eckerd's Country Store and Farms in Belleville at our website, 21st show.org. While you're there, you can also find all the ways to contact us. You can join our text messaging group. You can find our email address, social media, and our podcast feeds. That's talk@21stshow.org. You can also find our podcasts on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen coming up tomorrow. The Tuskegee Herman have been celebrated for their military victories and for breaking racial barriers in the Army, but 27 of them went missing in action. Most were never recovered. Their stories are the subject of a new book Forgotten Souls. We'll talk with the author Cheryl Whitlow Thompson. It's all coming up tomorrow on the 21st show, which is a production of Illinois Public Media. I'm Brian Mackey, thanks for listening.