Interview with June Potter, February 19, 2018 (Part 2)

Interviewee: June Potter

Interviewer: Madeline AbbatacolaDate: February 19, 2018

Continuation/ follow up from first interview.

JP: So I think it's important that people know how to um handle transferring of business with generations and so on. And we had some really hard financial times in 1959, they, the FDA, Food and Drug Administrator had one said that if you ate cranberries you would get cancer. Now that's a big statement. And we all had to 00:01:00dump everything. I have a really good article about it um just recently they wrote up again to remind us of that time in history. So at that point my husband's family, uh parents, could not afford to pay the bills cause they continue to get, you know, when you dump everything and have no money. How do you start the next years? So that was in '59. By 1968, our father, no my husband's father came and he said okay we have all these bills that we can't, we can't keep borrowing. So, but you're young, so if you'll take over the bills, and it was a lot, we'll sell you the marsh for $1. But number two you have to allow us to live I our home for the rest of our life. And they were about 60 00:02:00then and they lived on to be 80 and 88. Alright, so that was a way our marsh can handle passing it on because of the situation. Well, where are we at 30 and 31 gonna find this big amount of money cause were just starting out young. So, I wanna tell ya, just a couple minutes here. Jim and I start talking to other growers, where were they getting the money. Okay and we found out that Travelers Insurance was offering to get into cranberry business because they had so many farms but nothing cranberry and they wanted to diversify. So we went and we got the loan, it was 7.5% interest and this was in 1968 and then later we borrowed FHA and Farm Credit, etc. Then in turn we realized our two children were taking, were capable of taking over at the same age in 1997. So, we said were gonna gift 00:03:00them shares starting out in, when they were 18 and 20 years old, we incorporated, we start gifting them shares. And then we kept gifting until they were 30 or 32. And then we decided we should separate them. The son of course wanted to be working with his father at home and the daughter had married and was 10 miles down the road. So we set up a marsh with them and divided them, they were totally on their own and not under our financial. So we kept the voting shares. We kept the voting so we would be the final say if something happened at the home marsh. And we continued to live there and um our family then was able to expand cause they each had their own decisions. If a marsh came 00:04:00available near our daughters well then they got to buy it because they were there and it was their decision. And so I have a thing, that I would kinda like to share here and I think this says it all. A farm is more than land and crops, it's a family's heritage and future. I like that.