36 • Outlook 2021
Courtesy Dawson Pugh
Middle Creek Farms: Continuing the family legacy by Summer Stevens
Summer Stevens photo
Preston Pugh inside a tractor tire at Middle Creek Farms.
Dawson Pugh wakes up every morning and gets to do what he loves. “I love to drive a tractor and I like growing food that people can eat.” Middle Creek Farms in Engelhard farms several thousand acres and has grown corn and soybeans for over a century. Pugh’s great grandfather, Preston Mooney, started the farm in 1920, then called Middleton Farms. A potato bag from the original Middleton Farms is framed in his office, which is the house where Pugh himself was raised. As a fourth-generation farmer at Middle Creek Farms, Pugh has seen his ups and downs in the farming industry. “Our biggest challenge is hurricanes,” he said. Five out of the last 10 years, the Hyde County farm has suffered from big storms that have all but eliminated the corn and soybean crops for
the year. For this reason, Pugh has invested in produce crops, for the principal reason that he can harvest them before hurricane season starts. He farms green beans, fresh market potatoes, broccoli, watermelon and the famous Mattamuskeet sweet onions, named after the lake located three miles from the farm. Not that diversifying is new to Middle Creek Farms. “I remember my daddy trying new things,” Pugh recalls. “We’re always looking for new opportunities in produce and trying new crops.” Though currently the farm grows corn only for feed, Pugh would like to get back into growing sweet corn. But the hard part isn’t growing a new crop, it’s the rest of the process, such as packing it, cooling it and finding refrigerator space to
