W


HEN SHE CLOSES HER EYES, Connie Locklear can still envision her father walking through the fam- ily’s field, plowing the earth with a


mule and planting his crops. It’s been 60-some years, but she clearly recalls the fence around his garden, the way he stooped low to the ground and collected seeds. “Daddy would gather his seeds, he would put


them in a glass jar, and he would put a slip of paper in it of what year he put the seeds in there,” she says wistfully. He died in 1990, but Connie held on to his seeds


with a handwritten label reading “1988.” She kept them tucked away safely for years, a portal to the vision of him planting each time she looked at them. More than a decade after his death, she unscrewed the lid on one of her father’s jars, slipped her fingers inside, and took some out. Then she planted them and hoped they’d grow.


CONNIE AND HER HUSBAND, MILLARD, BOTH GREW UP in farming families on the southeastern Coastal Plain in Pembroke, home of the Lumbee Tribe, to which they belong. They each left the farm life behind in pursuit of other careers, returning to farming as a sort of retirement plan after decades away. Last year, the couple was named Small Farmers of the Year by the Cooperative Extension at North Carolina A&T State University. Their 26-acre plot, New Ground Farm, is part of


a tract of land in Pembroke that was cultivated by Millard’s family for generations. It’s located at the corner of Alvin Road — named for an uncle — and NC Highway 72. Their land is just around the cor- ner from Mt. Airy Baptist Church, where Millard’s parents were laid to rest, and surrounded by the homes of cousins, an uncle, and other relatives. “Everybody on this land is family,” says the


fifth-generation farmer, who was born right here in 1954. “This land has always been farmed


OURSTATE.COM 229


Long before they started New Ground Farm on family land in 2015, Millard and Connie Locklear had farming in their blood. Now, they grow peppers, tomatoes, muscadines, and much more on 26 acres in Pembroke.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20