From field to roadside

Stocked with produce from our own area farms and those of southern Alabama and Georgia, area roadside farm markets are flourishing this summer.

At the corner of Richburg Lane and Industrial Drive, Tiffany and Kevin Melton perused the rack of locally harvested honey and locally made syrup before settling on boiled green peanuts fresh from the kettle.

“I love supporting the local people,” Tiffany said. “I don’t like doing the corporate thing.”

The familiar stand has stood on the site for 30 years, said proprietor Brenda Martin. Her large, plump tomatoes are grown by a 93-year-old gentleman in his garden, she said.

Farther south on State Road 85, Crestview resident Maxine Lee was introducing friends from Valparaiso to her favorite roadside farm market just south of Aplin Road.

“Have you tried the peaches?” Lee encouraged. “They’re nice and sweet.”

Under the stand’s festive umbrellas, Danielle Fessenden sells the giant, sweet watermelons and peaches her husband Blake brings directly from farms in south Georgia.

At the Crestview Farmers’ Market in Old Spanish Trail Park, Robert and Debbie Hall filled the stand with peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and other produce, grown in the gardens of the Dorcas couple and their neighbors.

“We eat what we sell, and we only eat the best, so our customers get the best,” Debbie said proudly.

A few blocks away, Louie Shaffer bagged a basket of Chilton County, Ala., peaches for Jesse Sanchez and his family at his Seventh Avenue and North Ferdon Boulevard stand.

“Be sure to check out these big shrimp!” Bob Maxson called out from the adjoining table. Maxson buys his shrimp fresh from fishermen at Bayou La Batre, Ala.

In Baker, the Brooks Farm stand just south of town is a familiar local institution, stocked daily with produce harvested from Junior and Dorothy Brooks’ farm.

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