I'm Jim Skinner, owner and president of Backyard Citus Care, Inc. My family has been in the citrus business for three generations. My grandfather Raymond Skinner Sr first came down from Connecticut to Florida in 1919 to help his sister Florence Tyler and her husband Frank move down to Sarasota/Manatee to get in the real estate business. It took weeks. There were few decent roads, and many ferries to get across rivers where bridges would be built later. There was one bridge in Georgia that didn’t have enough boards on it so you drove part way out, got out and moved the boards from behind you to in front of you in order to cross. They had to cross the Manatee River by ferry. Raymond, “Poppop”, moved down in 1924.
 

In 1919, my grandfather first arrived in Florida from Connecticut in his Model T Ford. He found his heart's desire in the citrus business, which he developed into Midway Groves, a gift fruit shipping operation and gift store selling the best tasting orange juice and fruit around.

 

Uncle Frank bought 120 acres with a 20 acre grove surrounding a little road, US 301, midway between Sarasota and Bradenton. They planted more citrus and advertised you could build your house in the middle of an orange grove. They plotted the roads and lots, put in concrete curbing, an asphalt central road, and started putting up a few houses - some of them Sears and Roebuck kit houses. You could have an entire house shipped to you, complete, with plans and all the pieces numbered for just a few thousand dollars. They sold a number of lots, but then came 1929 and the Great Depression.

 


People came to look, couldn’t afford to build, but wanted the fruit, so they made a store and a packinghouse in a big barn on the property and Midway Groves came to be. They eventually bought back all the lots, many for taxes, used the curbing to make culverts and drains, planted all the varieties they would need for a fruit shipping business, and they bought and planted more land. There was a train track at the back of the property where they could load boxes of fruit to be shipped up north. With the advent of refrigeration the gift fruit shipping business was just beginning - they were pioneers in the business. Poppop was a founding board member of the Oneco-Tallevast volunteer fire department, and many of our employees were volunteers. My grandfather, then my father Raymond Jr, and eventually my sister Peggy Williams were past presidents of the Gift Fruit Shippers Association. Popup & Dad were also past chairmen of the local Rotary club.




 

A family business developed, and after WWII, my father took the helm and my sister and brothers worked at various aspects of the business. I started as a boy helping around the groves - picking pecans for $.25/quart from the ground under three trees we had by our house in the grove, stuffing envelopes with brochures, labeling juice jugs after school, working in the store, doing the janitorial service on the store and offices at night. As a teen I picked fruit, and hauled the fruit in by hand in 90 pound “field boxes”. I watched and helped as irrigation advanced from flooding ditches running through the groves using canvas pipe; to stringing 15’x 4” steel, then 20’x 6” aluminum sprinkler pipe between the 1/8 mile rows; to giant rainbow sprinklers - traveling “volume guns” that would creep down the space between the rows, shooting a 4” stream of water in a circle 350’ in diameter; to low volume micro jet systems - as a man I designed and installed hundreds of acres of these systems.
 

After high school, I went to the University of Florida, one of the premier schools of citrus in the world, and studied under many of the researchers who wrote the articles we’d read in the trade magazines. I graduated with honors - top 6% of my class - in 1975, and returned to run the groves for the next 20 years. I was involved in every phase of the business - the growing, picking, packing, and shipping of the fruit. I founded and wrote an employee newsletter, started a “free-to-you” clothing exchange for the employees. I was on the Citrus Advisory Committee - growers from all around meeting to advise UF on what research to follow - for several years. I eventually broke off on my own with Midway Fruit Company, running those groves and others, as well as contract picking and hauling.



 

I became foreman of the grove opperation and became much more involved the growing, treatment and care of citrus trees and their fruit. After 70 years of succesful business, Midway Groves closed and I began to help homeowners with their citrus problems. I created Backyard Citrus Care and began offering a program of reasonably priced, environmentally friendly, custom care for each home citrus tree.


 

I offer a consultations and yearly care and programs as well as spot
treatments to condition citrus trees for optimum health and performance. But in the ‘90’s over planting of groves and competition from Brazil and other countries led to a glut in the market, and wholesale prices for fruit fell by 400-600%. You couldn’t get the cost of growing the fruit for it. Midway groves, sold out of the family cheap, eventually closed. I finally had to lay off all my men and I was running 250 acres of grove split up in 4 locations, by myself - working “can see to can’t see” 6 ½ days a week.
Then in April 1995 one night I had an idea, worked it all out in my head in the wee hours and woke up with Backyard Citrus Care fully formed in my head. I put together a spray rig, did some advertising, and started spraying people’s trees with my golden doodle Dexter by my side. I invented the business as I went along. No one else was doing what I was doing - there still isn‘t. I worked alone for many years, but eventually got some help and expanded until we have to date nearly 1300 clients and we range from Parrish to Punta Gorda. It’s very rewarding work as we often bring trees back from death’s door. It makes people happy, and that makes us happy. Many, perhaps most, of my clients are like old friends.
I’ve expanded our services to do some landscaping, planting and pruning of citrus and other trees, and pressure washing as well as low pressure roof cleaning that is gentle on your roof. I’ve turned my hand to a many odd jobs for clients from installing a French drain to carry away runoff from a roof to installing plant beds all around a house to a number of other things.

Well that’s my story and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Give me a call at (941) 925-1999
if I can be of some help, and Sammy - my miniature long haired dachshund - and I or one of my helpers will be by to see you. Thanks for listening. I offer a consultations and yearly care and programs as well as spot treatments to condition citrus trees for optimum health and performance.

Jim Skinner

January, 2011