Looking across waving fields of green, it’s the question many farmers across the Tar Heel State are asking themselves. Do I have what it takes? Are my leaves big enough, my greens green enough, and my bunches full enough to win the title of the sexiest collard farmer in North Carolina?
For Patrick Brown of Brown Family Farms in Henderson, the answer is a resounding yes. Brown was just declared the winner of the 2024 contest, which was hosted for the second year in a row by The State You’re In and decided by popular vote on the Collardsonly.com website. He calls it a win for all of his fellow growers: “I think it’s just an accolade for farming after such a difficult year we had dealing with climate. It’s just something to enjoy during the holiday season.”
This year twenty-three farmers vied for the crown, posing with their cabbages in their fields (or in the case of one contestant, in a bathtub) in photos that ranged from sincere to seductive. The website sets out to make collards—once the scourge of picky eaters—cool again with T-shirts with slogans like “Peace, Love, and Collards” and even Southern collard green chocolate bon bons, but the real icing on the cake is the pinup contest.
Brown received over 3,500 votes to earn the coveted crown. How did he manage to win it? “We do what we do every year, which is plant vegetables during the month of August to be able to harvest them around this time of year,” he says. But don’t let his modesty fool you. A lot of work, dirt, and farming knowledge led him to his throne. “My dad started farming when he was eighteen years old, and he pretty much taught me everything I know,” he says.
The winner of 2023’s inaugural contest, Lee Berry of the Berry Patch in Ellerbe, has a few words of advice for his successor. “Enjoy it, have fun, and advertise it as much as you can because it really brought business in for us last year,” Berry says. “It was a really good conversation piece.”
As far as the best way to eat collards goes, Brown has some advice of his own. “I only know one way to eat them, and that’s boiling them in the pot and having some good flavor from meat such as a ham hock or some turkey.”
