Family hustles to sell enough mint oil to save farm business

[XXPANTHAXX]

BY EMILIA ASKARI
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
October 30, 2008

Jim Crosby's voice chokes with emotion when he talks about the oldest
mint farm in the country, a 140-acre patch of fragrant green about 15
miles north of Lansing that's been in Crosby's family for four
generations.

He and his sister Linette Crosby, who co-owns the property in St. Johns,
are desperately trying to sell 70,000 bottles of farm-distilled
peppermint and spearmint oil by Saturday.

If they don't raise $348,000 by then, their lender has the right to
confiscate the oil and their farm equipment, effectively ending the
family business.

"That oil is our hope," Jim Crosby said Wednesday. "In each bottle is
all my hope, my dreams and my prayers."

A month ago, the duo sent an e-mail to about 1,000 former customers,
telling them of the situation and asking them to buy oil and forward the
message.

More than 7,000 orders have poured into the farm's Web site,
Get Mint: . High traffic has slowed the site at times.

Crosby is fervently hoping that potential buyers will have patience --
and that his bank, Greenstone Farm Credit of Lansing, will have mercy,
extending the deadline for raising the money.

Jim Schiller, Greenstone's chief executive officer, said Wednesday that
his company has no plans to show up at the farm on Saturday, saying,
"These things take a few days."

If Greenstone has to confiscate farm equipment, Schiller said, "It's
terrible. ... It hurts us."

Jim Crosby said that his financial troubles began in 2005 when his
father died. A few months later, Jim Crosby's uncle, who farmed an
adjacent parcel of 140 acres, suffered a stroke while harvesting.

Jim Crosby, 42, was left alone to run his farm and his uncle's. His
sister, 48, moved back to the family home to help.

Now the pair are doing everything they can to save the farm that their
great-grandfather founded in 1912. They still have some fields planted
80 years ago by their grandfather.

Ephraim Smith, a retired California State University-Fresno history
professor, confirmed Wednesday that the mint still on the Crosby farm is
the oldest in the country. The farm is likely the oldest continuously
operating mint farm in the country as well, according to Smith, who
produced a documentary on America's mint farmers.

"In the 1920s and '30s, one-third of all the world's mint oil came from
that part of Michigan," he said.

The Crosby family and volunteers plan to spend Friday at the farm,
preparing Internet orders for shipping and selling from the farm store
at 1250 East Parks Road.

On Saturday, Jim Crosby plans to sell his oils at the Lansing farmer's
market.

Lee Purdy, who uses Crosby's mint oil to cure headaches and sells
farm-baked bread at a nearby booth, said all the farmers at the market
are pulling for the Crosby family.

"They fully intend to pay their debt," Purdy, 49, of Argentine said
Wednesday. "They're just looking for a little more time. Well, there's a
whole nation of people in that frame of mind."

Contact EMILIA ASKARI at 248-351-3298.