For longtime Pinal family farm, ag education is future

As machines have replaced workers and technology and genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, have changed the way of life for area growers, the farm has evolved. Students and agri-tourists, rather than migrant workers, are now the most frequent visitors to Caywood Farms.

Each year hundreds of people, mostly in tour groups or student field trips, visit Caywood Farms to learn about Arizona agriculture and cotton’s journey from seed to textile.

As the family and the farm have adapted to industry and agricultural changes over the decades, Caywood Farms has become the perfect place for people to learn about cotton, said Nancy Caywood, the third generation of her family to work on the land.

“The farm was always a busy place,” Caywood said. “There was always someone working on a tractor or people in the fields. And it’s still busy but we focus a lot on education now.”

Educational trips to Caywood Farms have a mission.

“We want to nurture an awareness about natural and renewable resources, including agriculture, so they can be conserved and managed,” she said.

Crops are still grown on the property and managed by Caywood’s son, Travis Hartman. But Caywood, an educator, has transformed parts of the farm into a welcoming place for visitors.

A classroom and office have been built, and an antique tractor that once plowed fields now pulls tourists on hayrides through cotton or alfalfa fields.

And while family and farmworkers once spent weeks picking cotton together by hand, agri-tourists now pick and pull apart cotton for the fun of finding the seed.

Before the days when tractors replaced people, picking cotton was a hard job, said Sammie Caywood, 92, Nancy’s mother and a lifelong Casa Grande resident.

“We spent many Christmas days picking and working in the field,” she said. “We’d always have to wait for the first frost and then we’d spend weeks picking it by hand.”

The job was not easy, and farmworker fingers were often poked by barbs in the cotton or would become raw from the repetitive work.

“It was a hard job,” she said.

The Caywood Farms property has been in the family since the mid-1930s and has long grown cotton, corn, alfalfa and a few other crops. Sammie’s husband, Tommy Caywood, now 96 and the family patriarch, has lived in Casa Grande since he was a child. He married Sammie in 1947 and for many years, they farmed in Stanfield.

Together, they’ve seen many changes in agriculture. Sammie remembers the day she and Tommy learned that mechanical cotton pickers were being sold.

“I remember thinking that they’d never take off and people wouldn’t buy them,” Tommy said. “We were just used to doing things by hand. I’d even mix some of the chemicals by hand, using my hand to stir them.”

The family bought its first mechanical picker in the 1950s and since then, they’ve seen basic farm machinery become GPS-enabled and far more technical.

“There’s a computer on every tractor now,” Tommy said.

Tommy no longer mixes chemicals by hand. Hand-sprayed insecticides were eventually replaced with crop-duster planes and then, GMO crops reduced much of the need for chemicals all together.

“Now you need expensive equipment to grow cotton, and the price of cotton hasn’t kept pace with the cost of the equipment,” he said. “But the technology has been good for the industry. There are fewer insects and we don’t have to worry so much about bugs. Some things are easier.”

Even the cotton plant itself has changed.

“It’s not as tall as it used to be,” Sammie said. “It used to get up to five feet tall. Now the plants are smaller but the yields are bigger.”

The former migrant cabins are now vacant. Some are used for storage.

“I’ve thought about trying to fix a few of them up and putting them on Airbnb,” Nancy said.

Over the years, the Caywoods have seen some of their neighbors sell land to solar companies or developers. And a continuing drought has meant a cutoff of their water supply from the San Carlos Irrigation and Drainage District, but Nancy said the family hopes to hang on and continue farming.

The agricultural tours have helped the family diversify its income while educating people about farming. Transitioning the farm to a place where people learn was an easy leap for Nancy, who taught elementary school for several years and later developed and taught at an agricultural education program at the University of California’s Desert Research and Extension Center.

Caywood, who holds a master’s degree in agricultural education, later brought the program home to her family farm. Caywood Farm Tours started slowly several years ago with a few winter visitors taking hayrides, listening to stories and listening to old-time fiddle music — Caywood is also an accomplished fiddler and in 2016 was inducted into the Arizona Old Time Fiddlers Association Hall of Fame.

The farm now hosts several bus tours, classrooms on field trips and other visitors who pick cotton or other crops and learn more about how the plant is grown, processed and used. Caywood often plays her fiddle for tour attendees to enrich learning. The farm also hosts parties, events and other activities, including some Chamber of Commerce events.

Agricultural tours are held October through March, but Caywood said she sometimes gets groups requesting a tour during the off season.

Each tour highlights the advantages of modern day agriculture and stresses that farmers are stewards of the land. They also pay tribute to generations who farmed the area.

“Farming was hard work in my parents’ day but it was a good life,” Nancy said. “It still is.”