POWERGRAMS

20 fry, half-mature and mature varieties. The company that stocks the ponds buys some back at $1.99 per pound after about a year, when mature fish weigh about 1 pound. The OEC has an aerated tank that Pike and students use to haul fish in for larger purchases, while the public can buy catfish directly from the ponds. These sales earn $3,000-$4,000 annually. There are two gardens where students plant corn, tomatoes, squash, beans, collards and turnip greens. People pick their own when the vegetables are ripe, which earns another $1,000 or more annually. There are also fruit trees, including 30-40 blueberry bushes, growing on the off-campus campus. Any plants that aren't taken off the Handley High farm are taken to the Roanoke ACE store or a local flea market, where students keep up with sales, inventory and restocking. Handley OEC students feed and water 10 chickens, then collect and sell their eggs for $3 a dozen, far below grocery store prices. "That's a big moneymaker for us," Pike says. But the real money honey hole is in the beehives. There are 14 hive boxes on campus, another 10 off. Students man the hives, taking out the combs and using top-of-the-line Maxant industrial beekeeping equipment to fill case after case of 32-ounce Pur bottles with pure honey. Last year, they produced 57 gallons, which amounts to about $4,500. "It sells as fast as we can get it," Pike says. "It's our best-seller." The students aren't done when they screw on the honey jar caps. They make beeswax cakes they divide into lip balm that go for $1.50 per tube. "It sells big-time," Pike notes. And local sports companies buy the wax for hunting bow strings. Bottom line, all of the students' work brings in $10,000-$12,000 profit annually, which goes right back into the OEC. Pike points out a dozen power poles recently dropped onto the property by an Alabama Power line crew to use as fencing for an 80-by-60-foot barn built for the OEC's first rodeo in March. Soon, five calves will arrive to become another aspect of OEC training. "We try to add something new every year," says Pike, who attributes his jack-of-all-trades skills to growing up in a rural setting, helping his forester father. "Everybody needs to learn how to grow food," Pike says. "These students want to be here working and learning. I don't have any disciplinary issues. Whatever they do in life, they will benefit from these classes." ML AWBREY Situated among a couple of stuffed bobcats and a wall of antique tools, there are Alabama cookbooks, Brumate cups, cedar shavings, deluxe chick incubators, early jersey wakefield cabbage, farmyard feed … and thousands of other items in every other letter of the alphabet. Step around Fitz the large Lab and over Cleo the cat, and you'll find Pat and Patrice Awbrey, third- and fourth-generation owners and operators of ML Awbrey Inc. Pat is semi-retired, dropping his hours from around 80 a week to 60 now that daughter, Patrice, has come back to town to eventually take over their store that opened on Dec. 1, 1909. She is fast-talking between customers, running to the phone as it rings. Pat is way out back helping a customer in one of their buildings that take up most of a city block on Main Street. They traverse the wood floors of the original structure, where most customers enter under tall metal awnings to find green-painted wood shelves that James Jackson Awbrey stocked early in the 20th century. "Hey Mr. Luther," calls out Patrice, 30, who was valedictorian of Handley High School and majored in radio, TV and film at Auburn University, where she graduated cum laude. "Hello Mr. Farmer," simultaneously says Pat, 67, a 1977 Auburn agricultural economics honor graduate. It's unusual for one or both of the Awbreys not to know a customer by first name. Father and daughter grew up in the store. It was a far cry from the current business that stretches through a former pool hall and a one-time barbershop. The Main Street mainstay has expanded from the original room that carried basics like cloth bags of flour, sugar, fertilizer, seed and animal feed, to now offering practically everything under the sun in the adjacent buildings. "My first memory of doing any meaningful work was when my brother broke his leg when he was 15," says Pat. "I was 5. I helped him roll in the wire from the street." "My earliest memory was Patrice's Pumpkin Patch," says Patrice. "Dad used to build it up front with hay bales and he would let me color in the sign." Patrice was a sales rep for four years after college, never thinking she would return to her hometown. "I woke up one day and said, 'I'd rather be at the store,'" she says. "I never expected her to come back, never in a million years," he says. "Patrice loves it and I'm glad she does." So, Patrice returned to ML Awbrey and began upgrading what her father had already enhanced by leaps and bounds from his predecessors. "Everything was delivered in small quantities when I was growing up; it was all things people couldn't raise on their farm," says Pat, who keeps old ML Awbrey ledgers showing debts for items like socks, shirts, pants and shoes. People still come in to Pat and Patrice Awbrey own business their ancestors opened in 1909.

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