New Jersey Monthly

Worth it!

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"Fake It Before You Make It"

These days, it's not uncommon to find Rich Worth clad in sneakers, blue jeans, a purple Frookies golf shirt and a herringbone blazer. Given his sartorial bent, it's probably a good thing he didn't go into the family business -- the first ready-to-wear women's clothing store in Boston. Instead, Worth earned a degree in psychology at Hobart College and, like other '60s idealists, was spurred by Crosby, Stills & Nash to go back to the land and set his soul free.

But, unlike other '60s idealists, Rich Worth took a distinctly capitalistic route. First, he worked as a bread salesman, doubling his route in six months. Then he started Town and Country Irrigation.hile working for two summers with an irrigation firm pulling pipe, he'd
detected a distinct lack of marketing sense in the industry; companies did nothing more than take out a Yellow Pages ad. Instead, Worth took Town and Country irrigation on the road: visiting garden shows, gathering sales leads and visiting prospects' homes with a presentation that made the irrigation system, as Worth puts it, "emotional" -- dazzling them with colors, trees, shrubs and handsome driveways.

"We really had no experience," says Worth. "This is where you had to fake it before you made it. We turned on a system after putting it in and never knew if it was going to work, which is pretty exciting."

Using his emotional sales pitch, Worth says he converted eight out of every 10 leads into sales, and Town & Country quickly became the second-largest irrigation company in Boston. Flush with success, Worth says he took his profits and went into real estate.

He landed a job with a real estate company in Norwood, Mass., to learn the business. Three months later, he walked into a small real estate office in Calais, Maine, and said that they needed to make him a partner -- and within an hour he was one. At that time, land in the area was selling for $20 to $50 an acre. Worth reasoned that land might be worth that amount to Massachusetts residents. But if he went down to Boston, New York or Philadelphia, Worth figured folks used to higher real estate prices would eagerly plunk down $75 to $100 for the $20 pieces.

"I was crazed to do well in real estate in order to get out and do farming," Worth says. "I couldn't just hand around, say this was my career, and take it at a pace. So I took it at a pace that was fiendish. We sold an incredible amount of property."

Worth did so well that at 24 he was able to "retire" to a 2,500-acre, organic blueberry farm in New Brunswick, Canada. The farm netted only $3,500 a year, but Worth says he has never felt more fulfilled than when he had a cellar filled with cords of wood, turnips, potatoes, chicken and moose meat. Three miles from his nearest neighbor, Worth -- who'd never even changed a tire before moving to the farm -- had to learn to be a mechanic, electrician, plumber and welder. In the summer, he'd unload tuna boats for cash. He loved
the hoe-downs and barnraisings with the some 20 other former suburbanites who'd been inspired to return to nature.

All that changed on Jan. 27, 1978: His wife and son Jonas nearly died during the child's birth. An episiotomy -- an emergency surgical procedure necessary to remove the baby -- had to be performed in the farmhouse. And some of his counterculture friends were upset that Worth had asked a physician to be present.(continued)

 

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