Sunny Creek Farm a silent powerhouse in the food world

Over the past 21 years, two men have funneled their passion for growing a still rather underappreciated wholesome, nutritious crop, right in their backyard of western North Carolina.

What has sprouted from their dedication is a venerable food juggernaut, responsible for growing healthy produce that line the shelves of supermarkets and garnish the plates of dishes made in restaurant kitchens all over the Southeast and beyond.

Located in a secluded, wooded area in Green Creek, Sunny Creek Farm has silently grown into one of the nation’s top producers of sprouts in the U.S., and into one of Polk County’s most successful privately-owned farms, selling $6 million worth of produce every year, according to owners and founders Lee Ewing and Ed Mills, who serve as president and CEO of the company, respectively.

Lower in calories and fat, and richer in vitamins, proteins and anti-oxidants in comparison to their mature counterparts, raw sprouts — the germinated form of plant seeds, such as alfalfa and broccoli, or beans, such as mung or soy — are considered by many nutritionists to be a “superfood.” Unlike traditional crops, sprouts do not need soil to grow, only water, and are ready to be eaten within several days of growth.

Lee was introduced to the food by his mother, who would grow them in a bottle that sat on their kitchen windowsill in their home in Los Angeles. Sprouts were a part of his everyday diet, with Lee often enjoying them on his sandwiches, he said.

Lee moved to North Carolina when he was 26 years old, and began working in Tryon in the kitchen of the Pine Crest Inn. On the menu were dishes that incorporated sprouts — the quality of which Lee felt was below par in comparison to what he enjoyed as a child.

“I felt I could put out a better product,” Lee says.

Put out a better product he did. Lee opened his own farm, Green Creek Sprouts, out of his home in 1990, where he grew bean, clover, alfalfa and radish sprouts, and began selling his product to retail customers in the region.

Lee’s success soon caught the attention of Ed, who had operated his own growing business, Sunshine Maker’s Sprout Farm, around 50 miles away in Fairview, North Carolina, since 1987. Like Lee, Ed had been eating sprouts for years before getting into the business, incorporating them into his ultra-healthy diet consisting of raw foods, he said.

Rather than continue to butt heads, Lee and Ed decided to join forces in 1997, and founded Sunny Creek Farm.

Over the past 21 years, the business has become the top sprout producer in the Southeast and among the top growers in the entire country, producing around 1 million pounds of sprouts every year, with varieties including alfalfa, broccoli, daikon radish and mung bean. With around 50 employees on staff, the farm is also the third largest private employer in Polk County, the owners say.

“It’s come a long way from growing [sprouts] by hand in a bucket,” Lee says.

On top of growing sprouts, shoots and other products in-house, Sunny Creek Farm also partners with growers from around the area to sell and distribute specialty produce, such as ginger, lettuce and heirloom tomatoes, to supermarkets and restaurants across the region.

“It takes a lot of stress off growers,” Ed says. “They can just worry about growing their crops instead of trying to find someone to buy them, or someone to distribute them.”

With raw sprouts linked to several reported outbreaks of foodborne illness since 1996, Lee and Ed both make food safety their top priority at Sunny Creek Farm. Seeds are sanitized before they are placed in vats to germinate, and the effluent water from the tanks are monitored for Salmonella, E. coli and listeria in the facility’s state-of-the-art water monitoring lab — located right on-site — throughout the growing process, with employees discarding the entire vat if even a trace amount of harmful bacteria is detected.

The facility’s safety standards far exceed those set out for sprout production by the Food and Drug Administration — in fact, the agency has used footage of the farm’s safety protocols in action for its own training videos, Ed says.

“It’s like if the IRS visited an accounting office and told the owner ‘we like the way you guys do your taxes,’” Ed says.

For more information on Sunny Creek Farm, people may visit sunnycreekfarm.com. •

Ted Yoakum is the managing editor of Foothills Magazine and the Tryon Daily Bulletin. He can be reached at 269-588-1040 or ted.yoakum@tryondailybulletin.com.