Edward M. Hodges, an alumnus of North Carolina State University, farmed from 1952 until he retired for health reasons and sold the farm in 2000. He bagan farming with his father, James Edward Hodges, when he returned from the Korean War. At that time the farm was known as the Green Meadows Farm. The farm was located on the south side of North Carolina Highway 33 about 7 miles east of Chocowinity toward Aurora (what is known as the Hodges Stretch). The farm was originally a portion of the William Augustus Blount plantation, Meadowville. During the 1940s, before Ed joined the farming operation, his father raised turkeys on the farm and had a contract to supply turkeys to North Carolina State College.
When Ed joined the operation in the early 1950s, they raised Poll Hereford cattle, and on the land not used for pasture for the cattle, they raised corn, soy beans and hay. At some point in the early to mid-1960s the cattle business was no longer profitable so all the land was cultivated for the raising of corn, soybeans and wheat. The only deviation from this would be in the years of a major hurricane when the corn crop was blown down; they would purchase hogs and let them forage the corn fileds. The hogs would be sold when the corn crop had been consumed, usually in the spring.
Around 1980 James Hodges retired and left the farming operation. Ed had expanded by leasing neighboring farms and purchasing another farm. The former Green Meadows Farm (the name was dropped when the land was totally cultivated) remained the focal point of the operation. The farm was sold in 2000 to a Greenville, North Carolina, entrepreneur and now is the site of the One Fish, Two Fish, Catfish Farm.
From the guide to the Edward M. Hodges Farm Papers, 1953-2000, (Special Collections Research Center)
