Fourth-generation farmer Sim Ogburn is the force behind Ogburn Berries and Produce, best known for its you-pick strawberries, roadside produce stand, and local farmers market stalls offering fresh, picked-each-morning vegetables and fruit. Sim earned the Wake County Agribusiness Council’s Outstanding Young Farmer Award in 2014.
Origin: My great granddad, the man I’m named after, bought the farm that we still live on somewhere in the late 1910s, maybe 1920. When my great granddaddy bought this farm, he was farming with a mule. The farm was growing some tobacco, a little bit of cotton at one time, some small grains. We’ve always had beef cattle and grew a little bit of hay for them.
Changing times: The Wake County Agribusiness Council gives out that award (Outstanding Young Farmer) for folks that are making big changes on the farm. That’s when I got back from college and started growing produce and strawberries. I really changed how our farm was operating.
I built a stand here on the farm, and we open it when the strawberries start getting ready in the spring, and we stay open until Halloween.
Fresh-picked: What makes strawberries and produce work here is population. We have customers that want to know where their food comes from, want it fresh. I believe we offer better products than what is shipped in and available at the grocery store. Now, we can’t provide everything all the time, because everything doesn’t grow here all the time.
Our strawberry season runs from early April, and most of the time we will make it till the first part of June. During that time frame, I think the strawberries that are grown here are better than anything that you can buy in a store.
We’re picking every day, and that allows us — on all the produce, tomatoes, corn, everything — to wait until it’s perfectly ripe to pick.
Plan to succeed: Farming is management. You’re managing when to plant something, when to plow, when to pick it, the labor to pick it, the fertilizer it needs, and when to put all that on and how to make that profitable. Dad always told me, if you can’t make a crop work with the pencil, there’s no need to put it in the ground.
- Perfect Summer Pairs
- Chronicles of an HOA: The Enclave at Sunset Lake
- Small Business Spotlight: Frankie Frankk’s Hot Dog Cart
- Recipes from Readers: Cake in a Cloud
- Strawberry Season
- Dig In & Drink Up: Larry The Cucumber
- Meet & Greet: Sim Ogburn
- See & Do: May to June 2026
- Made for Shade
- Crazy for Collectibles
