CHOCOWINITY — With winter recently battering Beaufort County with sleet, ice, snow and frigid conditions, folks are more than ready for a taste of warm weather.

Shawn Harding of Southside Farms is making sure they won’t have to wait until summer for it.

Harding and the rest of the Southside Farms family have been working hard all winter overseeing crops of fruits and vegetables, some of which will be ready for spring shoppers. It’s all part of the Southside legacy.

“We started with strawberries 16 years ago, so that was kind of the start of all this,” Harding said during a recent tour of his hothouse operations, located on land that has been in the family for several generations.

“We actually started our strawberries in October and then we started our tomatoes in December for the 2015 season,” Harding said. “We start them in small houses and then transfer them to the big house in early February. There’s not a lot of down time here.”

Some people think winter is one long vacation for the Southside crew, according to Harding’s wife, Tracey.

“We laugh when people ask what we do this time of the year,” she said. “You can’t even explain it.”

There’s a great deal of planning in this type of farming, Shawn Harding pointed out.

“Plants are seeded at two-week intervals so you’re planning so it comes off in May,” he said. “There’s lots of greenhouse work in the winter. We have four greenhouses; two are dedicated to tomatoes, another is dedicated to hanging baskets and flowers and the fourth greenhouse has green peppers, cucumbers, eggplants.”

Southside is also currently growing collard, cabbage, broccoli and beet seedlings, according to Harding. They are grown in what is called a “float bed” just as tobacco seedlings were grown on the farm years ago.

But it’s the tomato crop that is taking up much of Harding’s time right now.

“It’s a full time job in winter time,” he said. “Right now we have about 1,600 tomato plants, with eight varieties.”

Also vying for attention are the farm’s other crops. Southside’s peach trees and blackberry and blueberry bushes must be pruned in anticipation of the summer season.

But it’s worth the time and effort, Harding insisted. The pay off is the fact that of all the produce he sells, at least 95 percent of it is grown in Southside soil.

“It just doesn’t appear,” he said. “You’ve got to do a lot of work in the off season. There’s a science to it … there’s a lot behind it.”

Southside Farms has tentative plans to open its retail market in mid-April, depending on the weather.

“When we open up, I want to have lettuce ready and I want to have tomatoes and spring onions ready,” Harding said. “That’s when the greenhouses really help in getting those things started.”

With a quick glance around at the tender greenhouse crops, it’s reassuring that better days are ahead.

“Hang on, spring is coming,” Harding said with a smile. “It’s all going to be coming out of here before long.”