We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Arthur Mosley II. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Arthur below.

Arthur, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

The legacy that we strive to leave is simply empowering people to help take control of their food. We certainly strive to grow the best garlic possible, however that has never been the main goal. Our goal is always to encourage people to attempt growing their own food. Whether that be garlic, or tomatoes or other vegetables, we want our customers and anyone we interact with to feel like the have a resource to lean on when it comes to gardening. While gardening and specifically growing garlic brings us the most joy, make no mistake, at Hickory Flat Garlic Company (HFGC), we strive to make others better, make others want to be better and beyond that, we want to make everyone pass that feeling along.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have always enjoyed gardening as a young boy. We had a small family garden growing up. Both of my grandparents also had gardens and I have found memories of my maternal grandfather and his large garden that he kept in his retirement. Having my hands in the dirt has always given me joy and gardening is a nice escape from a busy life. In additional to running the Hickory Flat Garlic company, I also have a full time 8-5 job at a regional bank. In additional to my 8-5, I also coach high school basketball at a local high school in our community. We started growing garlic casually back in 2010 just to change up things in our home garden. We had no experience growing garlic, but soon fell in love with the process.. In 2016, we began investigating what it might look like to grow enough garlic to sell at our local farmers market. After some fits and starts, we finally planted our first crop of about 450 plants for market in the fall of 2018 for the 2019 market season. The result was an abject failure as we had a heavy freeze that year that impacted our first market crop. We did have some garlic to bring to market, but not near the amount or quality that we desired. We chalked the setback to “Murphy’s Law” and decided that we’d give it another shot. Fortunately for us, we have been able to bounce back from that dreadful start. We have just finished our 5th season as a vendor at the Canton Farmers Market in North Central Georgia. We’ve been humbled by the growing support that we have received from our community. It brings us a smile to execute our customer base about the different varieties of garlic and how they pair with certain dishes. We never tire of telling our customers of how there are over 600 different varieties of garlic in the world and how they all have their own unique flavor profile. In addition to growing garlic, we also grow basil, tomatoes, peppers kale, collards, and other seasonal vegetables. We strive to grow all of our produce without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. We have gone away from pesticides and herbicides over the last three years. That does make pest and disease management difficult at sometimes, but we are committed to bringing a product to market that we can be proud of and that was grown naturally.

Our goal has never been to grow the best garlic or basil or best tomatoes. Our goal has simply been to spread joy and help make others feel better, help make others want to be better and then want to encourage everyone to pass that feeling along. I don’t know if we will ever meet that lofty goal and that’s ok. We will keep on keeping on while we have breath in our body!!!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

We are probably not as proficient as we need to be on social media and we are working to improve that. First and foremost I believe it is important to be present. We often wondered how much is too much with social media. We have found that some platforms work better for what we do. We initially started with the usual suspects, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and You Tube. Initially we were just posting all of the great things that happened in the garden, but truth be told, I think it humanized our business and the truth of gardening when we started to share our failures as well. We try to limit the amount of words we use in picture descriptions. We’ve also gone to use more short form videos to show updates of our garden including what we are bringing to the market each week. We started a series called the Friday Farm Report that is posted on all of the platforms mentioned above. In addition, to just showing off what we have going on at the Hickory Flat Garlic Company, we also included a seasonal, reflections short form video. We realize that not everyone we interact with can buy our product, we also know that there might be someone out there that might just need some encouragement, or even hope, so we also consider ourselves a “Hope Dealer”. We have been grateful for the feedback that we get on the “Sunday Reflections” videos as well.

We are a small outfit and don’t have the margin to hire marketing personnel. For us, this has all been organic growth, but consistent posting and engagement has helped us to build our brand.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Being a “solo-prenuer”, our reputation is only as good as our product and as good as the product that we can grow. Additionally, we have found that when we don’t have something in stock, our best bet is to help redirect our customers to another vendor at the market that might sell what the customer is in search of. We don’t believe that we are in competition with anyone in particular. Our goal has never been to sell the most garlic or tomatoes or onions.

Additionally, educating our customer base has been key to us. We stay curious with our customers and look for opportunities to help share knowledge including our failures. I believe our customers appreciate that approach.

It also helps when the garlic that we grow, has a superior flavor to what our customers have been conditioned to buying from the local supermarket. We are forever grateful for people that not only take a chance on our products, but it’s humbling when they come back and buy again and especially when they bring a friend.

Contact Info:

• Website: hickoryflatgarlic.com
• Instagram: @hickoryflatgarlic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hickoryflatgarlic
• Twitter: @hfgarlic
• Youtube: @hickoryflargarlic