[Narrator] Every morning Suzanne and Tony Piccola know it's going to be a busy day with
their coworkers.
At least it isn't a commute in traffic except on farmer's market days.
Since they gave up metropolitan turf for new ground in Coupland and started their organic
farm they work hard year round, but their latter to success is one they strung themselves.
[Tony Piccola] In 1980 we moved from the Dallas-Fort Worth area down to where we are presently
in the Austin area, because we were tired of city life and wanted a more peaceful, calm
existence.
[Narrator] They found it against an uncluttered horizon meeting the blackland prairie to their
first fifty acres they added another fifty as they got into farming.
[Suzanne Piccola] Sixty to eighty varieties of vegetables, we were trying anything to
see what would work on this ground.
Because this ground is not really good for vegetables.
[Narrator] But it's good enough to produce more than they can eat.
A fried suggested they sell the surplus at a farmer's market.
[Tony Piccola] The first day we went to the farmer's market on a Saturday we went there
with $20-$30 worth of product and we were so tickled that people bought everything we
had that it became contagious.
You know we just started growing a little more and a little more.
[Narrator] Once you get that feedback from customers and the good feelings they gave
you of how good a job you were doing and how great it an effect it was having on their
lives.
We thought aw well we can do anything.
In the 90's they decided to expand their market with a greenhouse.
[Tony Piccola] At the time we were growing outside, very few people did anything in the
winter, everybody just shut down and waited for spring to come.
And we were always looking for ways to make money and keep ourselves busy.
[Narrator] Customers soon lined up for out of season produce organically home grown.
The Piccolas built another greenhouse and then a third large one devoted to tomatoes.
[Tony Piccola] I think it was '99 or '98 and we decided we had to go bigger, because like
the farmer's market it just, it became something that people were anxious to see every winter.
[Narrator] In the smaller houses they grow various crops and herbs over winter and in
July they start the tomato seedlings.
The transplants move up into hydrated coconut fiber blocks in five gallon bags to be arranged
in drip irrigated rows in the big green house.
They produce until the next June when the Piccolas chop them down, clean up, and solarize
the house for a month.
By then their twenty-one hundred plants have produced over thirty four thousand pounds
of tasty, juicy tomatoes.
To extend their growing season for maximum output and minimum space the Piccolas train
the plants to a central stem clamped to twine looped over the rafters.
[Tony Piccola] They might be a foot tall when we start out and they'll grow indefinitely.
They grow up on the string and they'll grow up to the wire which is 10 feet high, and
we constantly let the plants down so at the end of their life which is in June they can
be twenty to thirty feet long.
[Narrator] As the plants grow up the Piccolas lower them and tie them off to keep them away
from the scowling roof.
Clamps and hooks support the weight of the growing tomatoes.
They harvest the lower ones and clip leaves and suckers to make way for the vines coming
down.
They're ready to harvest at Thanksgiving.
The Piccolas sell them and Suzanne's fresh pesto to Wheatsville, Central Market, and
Whole Foods.
Prepared specialties and homemade bread join seasonal produce at the weekly South Austin
farmers' market and the Austin farmers' market May through June.
They also sell Tony's organic fertilizer mixture.
They've been organic since the beginning.
[Tony Piccola] We just didn't like the idea of adding chemicals to the ground, to the
plants, and then essentially to our bodies so we just felt for our own health we would
go organic.
And actually at the time the organic really wasn't in our thought process it was just
non-chemical.
[Narrator] They never use pesticides and in a greenhouse are especially vigilant with
natural controls.
[Tony Piccola] This is an ideal environment for pest populations to go out of bounds really
quickly.
[Narrator] Since they do it all themselves it doesn't mean much time off.
Still they never doubted, well rarely, the other route they could have taken.
[Suzanne Piccola] I love being out in the country, I love being out where I can scream
if I want to.
To where I don't have somebody at my back gate 24/7.
[Narrator] Usually it's just wildlife at their back gates, including cats, abandoned by their
owners who find refuge in a new home with the Piccolas.
It's also the chance to live by what they believe.
[Tony Piccola] It's a feeling of independence more than anything.
That and I've thought if it ever came down that I had to get a job somewhere I would
probably roll over and die because I don't know that I could work for anybody else.
You know?
Having done this for well I guess 30 years by now being on my own.
It would be difficult to be an office and have a boss, being told what to do every day.
We just enjoy it.