Nancy Bergeron
Journal Correspondent

• Lillie LA

Nellie Hancock isn't one to let pine straw gather under her feet. Instead, the Union Parish resident wants to turn it into a cash crop that she hopes will help make her family's dream of being together come true.

With the help of her husband, John, and son, J. P., Mrs. Hancock, 45, plans to convert 85 acres of pine plantation into a working mulch-producing business. She hopes the income will pay for the mostly wooded 179-acres the family bought here two years ago.

The Hancocks want to grow the straw business so that John and J. P. Hancock can quit the construction jobs that keep them on the road for long stretches of time, and come back to Union Parish for good.

Pine mulch is a popular material for landscapers and gardeners. because it breaks down quickly, the mulch must be replaced every several years. So there's an almost unlimited market for the pine straw the Hancocks want to produce. Nellie Hancock would like to put the first groves into production this fall.

"One of our dreams has always been to have a little place, not really huge, just a nice place," said Mrs. Hancock. "I've raised three kids on the road. We bought this place and we want to get it where we can come home and enjoy it before we get too old."

She is sitting at a card table in the air-conditioned but unfinished room that someday will be the breakfast room of the couple's ranch-style home on Cook Road, just off U.S. Highway 167 North.

"What we're wanting to do is get the groves cleaned up, get it going so we can harvest the pine straw and it will pay for itself," Mrs. Hancock said.

Their acreage is registered as a Tree Farm, but Mrs. Hancock said "the agriculture department does not consider pine straw to be a cash crop. All they see it as is a by-product of growing trees."

And one that forestry consultant Eddie Evans of Ruston says can be lucrative.

"You don't have any trouble getting rid of all the product," he said. "It's pretty good money."

An average acre of pine trees will produce approximately 100 bales of straw. Each rectangular bale weighs 35 to 40 pounds. Clean, good quality straw sells for around $5 per bale wholesale, and up to $8 retail.

With three harvests per year - one in the early fall, one late fall, and another in early spring - that's $1,500 an acre.

"Across the southern states, baling pine straw, there's an open market," Hancock said.

Evans agrees.

"You can sell every bale you can manufacture," he said.

Cozette Boyd and her husband, Marshall, of Calhoun, have approximately 125 acres of pine under cultivation in Ouachita and Lincoln parishes. They too, say that the market is there.

"The demand's definitely greater than the supply in the area," Cozette Boyd said.

"I have people waiting on it," Marshall Boyd said.

According to the latest statistics on the Louisiana Department of Agriculture's website, in 2001 the 13 listed Louisiana balers produced 65,265 bales of straw for a gross farm value of $326,325.

Hancock said she got the idea of harvesting straw from the couple's loan officer and from Evans. The pines on their place were already planted in plantation-style rows that are between eight and nine feet apart.

Evans said the Hancock's young pine stand--the trees are between 8 and 12 years old--is good for straw harvesting.

"They have a good prospective orchard once they get it going," Evans said.

The Hancocks have cleared about six acres. But already the underbrush is beginning to grow back.

"It's very, very labor intensive," Evans said.

Ground between the rows must be kept weed- and limb-free. That's so straw that falls between the rows will be clean. It's that straw that's harvested and baled.

Though Nellie Hancock doesn't shy away from hard work, she admits she'd like to have some help. She wants to get in touch with other people who might want to go into the straw mulch business and explore forming a cooperative endeavor in which participants help each other work their groves.

Sharing equipment and manpower would benefit everyone, she said.

"They've got their muscles. We can get together and get it done," Hancock said. "I don't know where it's going to go, but I think it's worth a shot."

She admits her jump into agricultural entrepreneurship is bittersweet. The down payment for the tree farm was insurance money from their younger son's death.

But Hancock said the couple's son "would be pleased," and would want them to pursue the mulch business.

"We've dreamed of a place like this for years," she said. "God's seen fit to give it to us. He gave it to us for a reason. There's not too much I'm not willing to do to try to make it work."

Back