Story by:
Dana Lark
Managing Editor
Jeff’s office is almost exactly how he left it.
An Armstrong Cricket Farms trucker hat sits folded on the desk.
“He use to always keep everything just perfect,” Debbie said.
She looked at few papers yet to be filed in the filing cabinet across the room. Jeff wouldn’t have liked that.
Jeff Armstrong, beloved owner of Armstrong Cricket Farms in Glennville, passed away in November 2016 after a battle with cancer. Armstrong’s two daughters, Paige and Jessica, became joint owners, making them 4th generation cricket farmers. Over a year after Armstrong’s passing, the business continues to thrive.
* * *
Debbie Reddish, operations manager of Armstrong Cricket Farms, sat in a large, leather rolling chair behind a stately wooden desk and pulled a emery board from the top drawer. Several enormous mounted deer heads jut from the walls of the office, with their necks craned in every direction. The name “JEFF ARMSTRONG” carved out in wooden letters, sat at the head of the desk, next to a cricket figurine and a trinket dish formed from old shotgun shells.
Reddish’s perfectly styled hair falls to her shoulders. Her silver hoop earrings adorned with a single pearl peek out from behind her blonde, highlighted hair as she filed her fingernails. Her blue eyes beam with a youthful brightness, and her presence wafts of a warm apple pie, vanilla ice cream and a country song.
While raising a family of her own, Reddish wanted a job that would allow her flexibility and work-life balance. She’s grateful for the life that the family-owned farm has allowed her to have.
“I think my son was in the fifth grade when he realized for the first time that I wasn’t going on a field trip with him,” Reddish said.
After 38 years at Armstrong Cricket Farms, the business is just as much her story as it was Jeff’s.
* * *
Tal Armstrong, Jeff’s grandfather, started the business in 1947 by accident. Outside of his successful plumbing career, Tal was an avid fisherman with great luck on the water due to his trick of the trade: live crickets as bait. Tal would enlist his two sons to lift logs and capture crickets for fun.
In the 1940’s, commercial cricket farming did not exist. Armstrong kept the crickets in an old sugar barrel in the broiler room of his home in Glennville, Georgia. One morning, Armstrong went down to retrieve a few crickets from his nest egg for a day of fishing when he discovered something strange.
Tiny, black moving bodies resembling ants, were crawling around in the bottom of the sugar barrel.
“Once they got it out, they realized it wasn’t ants,” Reddish said. “The crickets had reproduced.”
Tal’s mind began to spin; he realized he was on to something huge. The heat in the broiler room sped up the cricket’s reproductive process, Reddish said.
However; these specific crickets weren't the cream of the crop for fishing. Tal loaded up his boys and drove to his hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, and searched tirelessly behind dumpsters for the crickets he remembered. The fishing gold-standard.
The business sprang from that moment, and grew quickly. The market for crickets spanned far and wide. Tal was forced to open a second location for Armstrong Cricket Farms in West Monroe, Louisiana, to help with the shipping costs for further west-based orders, Reddish said.
Tal passed away from a heart attack at the age of 48, and the business was passed along to his two boys. Tal’s children, Bill and Sonny, carried on the family business. When it came time for Bill to pass the torch to his children, it was 1995. Jeff, a third generation cricket farmer, moved to the Glennville location to carry on the Armstrong legacy.
When Jeff arrived, Reddish had worked at the Glennville location for over 15 years. Reddish was Jeff’s right hand, and she helped him become familiar with the Georgia business, the employees, and the buildings.
“Jeff and I tag-teamed,” Reddish said.
People like Eugene Dasher were there to welcome Armstrong. Dasher, Armstrong Cricket Farms employee of 62 years embodies the cricket business, and in turn, the business embodies him.
Dasher’s face is painted on the humongous wall mural outside the entrance to the farm. “I’ve done a little bit of everything,” Dasher said.
* * *
Jeff wasn’t your average man. He was larger than life, and had a huge personality with an even bigger heart. His charm and likability was instrumental in cultivating another profitable facet of the business in the pet industry.
Paige Ewing, one of Jeff’s two daughters, was 12 years old when her family made the move to Glennville from the West Monroe location. She remembers him preparing for trade shows and marketing the cricket business outside of the fishing industry.
“He was very personable and memorable,” Ewing said. People visiting the trade shows went out of their way to see the “cricket man.”
Soon after the Armstrong’s began attending pet trade shows, they signed a deal with Petsmart.
Ewing feels pressure to carry on the family legacy of 70 years, but her pride in the family business and the people it employs is immense.
“It was definitely a team effort to get through this first year but we’re learning a lot and transitioning,” said Ewing. “He cannot be replaced, we can’t fill his shoes.”
