RALEIGH, N.C. -- In the winning photograph, Lee Berry stands naked as a plucked turkey on his Richmond County farm, grinning like Don Juan in a baseball cap, hiding his naughty bits behind an armload of prized collard greens.

Between the rows of leafy vegetables, he practically radiated sensuality and vitamin A, so the judges overwhelmingly picked him to win the coveted agricultural prize:

North Carolina’s sexiest collard farmer.

“It’s not the size of the collard,” he told the Richmond Observer last year. “It’s the way you display it.”

The Sexiest NC Collard Farmer Contest roars back for a second year, and though Berry has hinted at a second run, at least two other competitors are fluffing up their leaves, including a potential Collard Queen.

Last year’s contest drew thousands of voters, spawned a line of collard-related merchandise and fueled requests for a wall calendar.

“People ask, ‘Are they single?’“ said the contest organizer. “Someone who could grow collards like that is not single. Someone who could grow collards like that does not cook their own food.”

The annual search for sex appeal among loose-leafed crops is the brainchild of The State You’re In, whose anonymous creators operate as a “faceless influencer” aimed at promoting all things Old North State.

“I lean into everything NC,” this online impresario told me. “People here love Bojangles, Cheerwine, Mt. Olive pickles and collards.”

One could be forgiven for seeing the collard centerfold as an elaborate parody, especially since the contest’s URL, collardsonly.com, takes a jab at Farmers Only, the dating website that beckons with, “You don’t have to be a farmer ...”

But joke or no joke, the contest proved wildly popular, and it may have tapped unintentionally into the hidden seductive power collards possess.

In one of last year’s entries from Daniels Farm in Wilson, the contestant lovingly caresses a leafy bunch as if it were his lover’s silken hair.

“I just want someone to look at me the way this man looks at his collards,” wrote Wendy Colwell Nipper on The State You’re In Facebook page.

Glamour and charisma are notoriously hard to pin down or define, relying as they do on fickle tastes and artificial standards.

But to dig one’s fingers into the soil, to nurture a young plant and tend it through harsh frosts, to harvest it in loving bundles and gather it close, caressing its curls ...

There’s nothing sexier.

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