If you see a stream of cars headed north on Ooltewah Georgetown Road in the middle of May, you can bet they are headed to the Smith farm for buckets of strawberries picked fresh that morning.
As you ride along in this pastoral area of Hamilton County, you will see workers in the field picking strawberries, and you’ll find Aubie Smith (Chattanooga ’95) either in the field, bringing buckets to the farm stand or driving a load of buckets to the nearby school or farmers market.
Smith is a third-generation farmer. His father, Wallace A. Smith Sr., was a school principal at Birchwood School and Westview Elementary, assistant superintendent, and namesake of Wallace A. Smith Elementary School in Ooltewah. The younger Smith’s passion leaned more toward farming. “When I was in high school and school was out, I drove out of the school and turned left to go out to the country, and everybody else turned right. Nobody wanted to come out here,” Smith says. “It’s like that song, ‘I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.’ It wasn’t cool.”
Now people can’t get enough farm-fresh produce and other products. His wife, Michelle Bettis Smith (Chattanooga ’96), who helps on the farm while also serving as technology integration coach for Hamilton County Schools, says they added a blank on each employees’ daily timesheet to put the “question of the day” from customers. “People are fascinated with agriculture,” she says.
The farm’s connections to the University of Tennessee run deep, and that is why their barn, which doubles as an outdoor classroom for field trips and children’s activities, is a canvas for an “Everywhere You Look, UT” mural. The Smiths are both graduates of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and they have many family members who graduated from UTC or UT Knoxville.
The Smith farm northeast of Chattanooga is a hub of activity nearly all year but especially in the spring and early summer during strawberry time. The farm was not always like this. Over the decades since Smith inherited this land from his father and grandfather before him, the farm has evolved into a value-added product enterprise.
Unbiased Business Assistance
The UT Institute of Agriculture provides a myriad of resources for farmers and producers, including the MANAGE (Measuring, Analyzing, Navigating, and Achieving Goals Effectively) program, which is part of UT Extension and the UT Center for Farm Management within the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. Farm specialists work with an average of 40 to 50 families a year on detailed financial planning. Last year, the seven specialists using MANAGE made 472 on-site visits across the state, providing individual and objective analysis of farms and their business operations. “We help them grow to be a stronger farm through planning,” says David Bilderback, a farm specialist in East Tennessee. “More and more, farmers are thinking nontraditionally. They are great problem-solvers.”
That is the kind of help Smith sought out when he wanted to start a dairy like his grandfather. Smith contacted UT Extension for advice. The area farm specialist at the time, David Perrin, who retired as Eastern Region director in 2023, visited the farm and used the MANAGE program. “(David) came and punched on his computer and took me to all these dairy farms. He told me not to do it. He said, ‘You won’t make it. The time is not right,’” Smith recalls. This was heartbreaking news, but Smith followed the advice. Perrin and UT Extension still had a role to play in the future of the Smith farm.
UT Connections at Work
Perrin worked with many farmers in the area, and another was Ray Tidwell, who grew strawberries in nearby Rhea County. Tidwell started his farm in the early 1980s, hiring some local workers and offering U-pick to the public. Over time, the inconsistency of the U-pick business became difficult to manage, so Tidwell hired workers through the government’s H-2A visa program. The program requires farms to provide housing and transportation for the workers to go to the grocery store and other places to get what they need. Perrin helped Tidwell with several things on the farm, such as using a computer to keep his books and finding reliable transportation for the workers.
Tidwell needed a bus for his 35 workers. Perrin knew Smith drove a school bus for extra income and figured it was a good match. “It was a big load off our minds,” Tidwell recalls. Smith drove the workers for 19 years, getting to know them and some about Tidwell’s strawberries along the way.
During this time, Smith’s farm was gaining attention as a place to take pictures in a sunflower field he planted for a dove-hunting club. Eventually he planted some flowers people could pick, and they came from all over to take part. “It went ballistic after the news media got a hold of it. There were a couple hundred cars here. It was craziness,” he says.
Some people just showed up and went on the land without asking. “Michelle asked,” Smith says, and that is how they met. Michelle Smith was taking pictures of her daughter, who had just turned 5. They were married in a sunflower patch he planted just for the wedding. The sign he used to ask her to marry him is still hanging, and people like to take pictures there, too.
Strawberry Season
Other changes to the farm were coming. While Smith was still driving the workers, Tidwell decided not to plant one year. Worried that the workers would have nowhere to go, Smith decided to give strawberries a shot. “I knew I could make the strawberries work. If they’ll come out here for sunflowers, they’ll come out here for strawberries,” Smith says. Tidwell cheered him on. “Aubie had seen that here at our place. Some days you couldn’t move in the parking lot,” he recalls.
The 2025 season will be his ninth. Last year, he increased his plantings from 12 acres to 16 acres, selling between 400 to 1,100 gallons picked every morning. After strawberries, Smith plants pumpkins for the fall. In early spring, they have a field of tulips. The 800 acres of the largest working farm in Hamilton County also are home to a herd of Black Angus and fields where Smith cuts silage to sell to other farmers and bales hay that’s even been used in the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival’s grand prix racecourse held downtown.
Thinking back to the initial advice decades ago to not start a dairy, Smith says, “If it wasn’t for UT, David Perrin and Extension, I wouldn’t be where I’m at.” Perrin agrees: “I think he’s made the right decision.”
