Once upon a time there was an older couple living in a big city. The city was filled with lots of people and lot of cars and lots of noise. Neither of them had been raised in a big city; they had each come there because work paid more than in their small towns. But it was in the big city that this older couple met, fell in love and got married. Their shared dream was to move out of the big city and retire to a farm in the country where there would not be lots of people, cars, or noise—and that is just what they did.

That couple was Ann and Pearce Bailey. They were living in the Dallas area when they found the land of their dreams in early 1996 and decided to buy 15 acres of beautiful native grassland prairie. The soil had never been tilled and was covered with native Texas wildflowers and prairie grasses. Pearce’s background included a degree in Agricultural Economics from Louisiana State University, and he had always wanted to have a farm where he could work and play in when he retired. Ann was from West Texas and loved the thought of again having wide open spaces, blue skies and starry nights. After much research on a number of crops and a suggestion from the Texas Veterans Land Board appraiser, the couple decided to raise blueberries.

After closing on the land in the late spring, they invested countless hours of hard, hot work into cleaning scrub trees, mowing, burning trash and marking areas for development. A one-acre pond was dug that September and it filled almost immediately. The first building project was to put up a barn that could be used to hold the equipment that was quickly accumulating. Ann was still working in Dallas and Pearce was working in Ft. Worth and they were living in Plano. Their daily commutes left only limited time to tend to their new property. But in February 1997, Ann accepted a transfer to the Sherman area. The barn was started shortly after that, and Pearce began planning construction of the house he had been designing for two years.

Pearce’s retirement was planned for the fall of 1998, so in April 1997, he and Ann decided to put the house in Plano up for sale—well aware that the sale might take six to nine months. But on the day Pearce walked out to his truck to buy a “for sale sign at the local hardware store, he met a couple driving slowly down the street looking for a new home. They decided to purchase the house that day…with the stipulation that Ann and Pearce move out within a month!

The barn somehow got finished in the next four weeks, and Pearce and Ann moved to the country. For the next 16 months, they made their home in the one-room barn and a 27-foot fifth-wheel trailer while their house was being built. They shared their living quarters with their two precious dogs, Punkin’ Head and Lady Bug, and their best friend, a cat named Nothin’.

All of the berries were planted during this time and a complete irrigation system was installed. Pearce oversaw the building of the house and drove 160 miles back and forth to work each day. Ann sat on her bed in the barn and made all of the drapes and curtains for the new house. The couple survived the terrible heat wave and drought of 1998, but the tiny berry bushes suffered that first summer and 25% of them had to be replanted. By August, the house was finally finished and the couple moved in. Pearce retired from the federal government in September and started his real work of tending the land.

Bailey’s Berry Patch officially opened June 1, 1999. The blackberries were more plentiful than the blueberries, but the first year was a success all around. Visitors would arrive at daybreak and picked each day until every ripe berry was gone. Thank goodness a well was put in this summer to keep the pond at a constant level for irrigation, since the summer of 1999 turned out to be another year of heat and drought.

The next three years brought several seasons of change, both on the land and in the home. Punkin’ Head passed away in fall of 1999, but the winter was warm and wonderful. The berries started blooming in February and continued until mid-April. Plans to be open three days a week quickly were amended to seven days a week. A few days after the 2000 berry season ended, a beautiful, six-week old black lab puppy by the name of Hope joined Ladybug and Nothin’ as a part of Pearce and Ann’s family.

The following year, Pearce planted another acre of blackberries, and the season opened on June 1st—later than it should have, since Ann retired on Memorial Day and Pearce had to attend her retirement party. The bees had a great time pollinating all the blueberry bushes and some of the berries ended up bigger than marbles. The farm had honey for the first time that summer and it was all gone in three days. The muscadine grapes also ripened earlier than anticipated, and they were wonderful to eat right off the vines. The farm continued to grow, and Pearce spent a good part of the fall preparing another acre for more blackberries.

April 2003 brought the largest hail storm that the Berry Patch had seen, and many of the berry bushes were damaged. But the pickins were still plentiful, and visitors came out in droves all season long. It wasn’t until Pearce later compared the number of gallons of blueberries produced in 2003 to the number produced in 2002 that he determined more than 60% of the blueberries were lost because of the storm.

2004 was a warm, wet and wonderful year.  We invited our first vendor to come to spend the season with us.  What a joy to share with these wonderful people.  Pearce really looked forward to the days that Wildwood Bakery and Texoma Coffee Roasters were both here.  No better way to start a good day than an excellent cup of coffee and a big, fresh cinnamon roll.  The pulots bloomed beautifully and the crop was large and excellent.  The crowd has really started to grow and we had to hire a number of teenagers to help.  Rain, rain, rain….   What big, beautiful blackberries and blueberries!!!!  So much fun...... We are now carrying our own line of wonderful preserves and pickles and everyone loves them.

Lady Bug had really aged over the summer and everyone had to really look out for her.  We finally ended up losing her just before Christmas.  I miss her so much.  Nothin’ doesn’t seem to be bringing birds, frogs, etc. into the house any longer (thank goodness).  Hope is still our guardian angel.

2005 was unbelievable.  We poured more concrete for more vendors.  We booked entertainment for each Saturday and people came and came and came.  The day before Father’s Day over 1000 people enjoyed the full size stagecoach and the 1880’s jail complete with gunfighters, gunfights and everything.  We had woodcarving and quilting demonstrations, a fabulous face painter, a concession for everyone to enjoy and wonderful people selling everything from organic eggs to honey to glass beads.  We hired Sharon and Mac to be our assistant managers and Linda Lewis, our wonderful church choir director, worked every Tuesday and Saturday running a golf cart with buckets of fish food and performing “kid control”.   By this time we were up to 67 different preserve, pickle, syrup and dressing products.  That year we added our t-shirts that have “Bailey’s a Little Patch of Heaven” on the front of them, a great baseball hat with our logo and a soft line with blueberries printed on them.

We added a new dog to our family this year…a beautiful Pomeranian that we found at a shelter in Durant.  She is a sweetie and she loves people.  We named her Faith.  Now we have Faith, Hope and Nothin’.  Such a wonderful group of girls (and they think that they are sisters).

2006 started well and then went “all the way down hill” on March 30th. Everything was blooming beautifully when we went to bed that night and then we were hit by a small tornado and a BIG HAIL STORM during the night. Nothing was left. No blooms, no leaves, trees has been unscrewed out of the ground and “stuff” (trash cans, chairs, plant pots, etc) was scattered all over the place. What a shock!!! Then a month later, we had another bad hail storm. I went back to work part time and Pearce started trying to clean everything up. Broken limbs needed to be trimmed off of the blueberry plants and the plum trees. The large thornless blackberry field in the far north side of the property was beaten down so badly that Pearce ended up taking the whole field out and then replanting it in February, 2007. With a lot of fertilizer, water and hard work the farm looked much better by the time the year ended.

Oh! By the way. We did open one day….that was day was July 1st and we opened for the 1st Annual Red, White and Blueberry Festival. The Festival had been set up to support the Sadler Volunteer Fire Department. This small force of people had helped extinguish a couple of grass fires that had come close to us when we first got started. We decided to go ahead and have the Festival even though we didn’t have any berries ourselves. Pearce drove over to a farm in E. Texas and bought berries that we could sell to the people who came. There was a nice crowd that day and all of them seemed to enjoy the fun, games and food prepared by the firemen and their families.

We are looking forward to 2007!  The berries are growing on the vines and all indications point to a great year for everyone!

2007 was another one of those special years. Pearce had done such a good job “babying” the berries in 2006 that we had another wonderful bloom season. No hail and no bad winds that spring. We knew that there would not be as many berries as we would have wished for since a lot of the berry plants had to be replanted in 2006. We opened the season on May 31. The blackberries were ready to start being picked. The first of the blueberries were picked on June 5th.

And then the rains came…. It started on June 16th and rained 20 days of the next 28. We ended up with a total of 18 inches of rain during that time period. We stuck to our schedule on all but 2 of our regular days. It finally got funny!!!! All of us were wearing those ugly “crocs” (rubber shoes). The gravel road between the house and the barn was running ankle deep in water. We talked time after time about building an ark or about Bailey’s river. Pearce kept the tractor parked next to the cars and everyone knew that he would be right there to pull them out.

Everyone seemed to have a really good time. We planned every Saturday to be something special…. Had food when we could get the concessionaires in and had entertainment on a regular basis. We closed on July 15th - by then it was hot and dry and the air conditioning felt really good. We had gleaner come out 3 times to pick the balance of the blueberries for different N. Texas food banks. That always feels good.

We are ending 2007 now and have no clue what 2008 will bring other than we do know that there will be a lot more blackberries than there were in 2007.