HOLDER FARMS

We have been producing Longleaf Pine Needles for the last 22 years here in the North Carolina Sandhills.  We bid on tracts of Land, which are State Owned, Federally Owned, and Privately Owned to get the pine needles that we produce for market.

The needles are then raked into piles either with hand tools, such as, pitchforks, or with a small tractor which has a rake attached.  Once in a pile the needles are forked, with a pitchfork into another pile and cleaned of sticks and other debris.  No equipment is currently available to clean the pine straw, so it may have some of what ever exist on the forest floor present in the bales.

The bales are formed by placing the loose pine straw into a box baler by hand, compacting with the body weight of the person making the bale and he then ties, removes and stacks the bales.  The bales are then carried by hand to the nearest location accessible by a truck or farm tractor and trailer then hauled to the deliver vehicle where they are loaded and delivered to the retailer or the landscaper who makes them available to the consumer.