Chuck and Linda (Borom) Agar thought they were homesteaded in New Mexico where he had a consulting company and taught at New Mexico State University but they just couldn’t get her family farm in Pike County out of their minds.

“The first time I saw the farm was Christmas 1960,” Agar said. “I immediately fell in love with it. Linda and I decided that Christmas that one day we were coming back to her family farm.”

The Agars bought the Borom family farm in Pike County in 1975. The farm has been in her family since 1848.

It was nearly 15 years after the farm found its way into Agars’ hearts and lives that they began their venture into farming with pecan trees. They were soon planting a state-of-the-art pecan orchard.

Today, they have 800 pecan trees and a dozen varieties on 40 acres on their farm near Ansley. Elliots and Stewarts are their top varieties and Chuck grafts the wood to improve the many of the varieties.

Their efforts earned them the 2011 Pike County Farm-City Speciality Crop Award presented by the Pike County Chamber of Commerce Farm-City Committee and the Kiwanis Club.

“We read all we could find about pecan orchards and began grafting and top working trees to keep the trees a top production and to obtain scab-resistant trees,” Chuck Agar said. “This is the fourth year that we’ve had drought conditions and, without moisture, the trees are weakened. Grafting can make trees more disease resistant and we also have a rigid spray program we go by to combat scab, shuck worms, aphids, case borers and other insects.”

Agar fertilizes with slow-release litter from poultry houses.

“Spraying and fertilizing are necessary to make a good crop,” he said.

“And an irrigation system would be ideal as we continue to grow our orchard. Our goal is to have a thousand trees and we’re working toward that.”

Agar thins the orchard from time to time to give the trees more room to grow.

In addition their specialty crop, the Agars also have a first-class cattle operation and sell registered replacement bulls and heifers to ranchers in the area.