Big Ideas, Big Challenges, and Making Them Happen with Tim Belk

Driven By with Sam Coates

My guest today is Tim Belk. Tim, his wife Sarah, and his children operate Wild Hope Farm out of Chester, South Carolina. This is a fantastic episode about leveraging your skill sets to make a true family affair. As Tim says, while being CEO of Belk, he and his wife Sarah were like two ships passing in the night. This organic farm allowed them to do something together and leverage her idea of becoming an organic farmer and his experience as a retail operator and CEO.After the Belk Family sold their department store with close to 300 locations and 25,000 employees that had been in their family since 1888, Wild Hope Farm was started.The organic food market is robust, and as you’ve heard in previous episodes of this podcast, farming isn’t easy.This is an excellent episode with Tim where you will hear: ‍

• How to assess a market, start a farm like this from scratch- from idea to planning to execution and all the lessons learned along the way
• The power of community- why the Belk Family has always committed to their community and how they are doing it today with organic farming and healthier lifestyles
• Building an incubator of farmers- making change by attracting people passionate about the cause and giving them what they need to send them out and succeed on their own
• Plus much more!

Please enjoy this week’s episode with Tim Belk!

Links: ‍ Wild Hope Farm- https://www.wildhopefarm.com/ ‍CEO of Belk- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belk ‍Organic farming: https://www.sare.org/publications/transitioning-to-organic-production/what-is-organic-farming/