Farmer John’s in Elizabethton is a busy place in July. With so many crops at their peak of ripeness and freshness, customers keep stopping by the produce market at 2100 West Elk Ave., filling up their baskets with such goodies as South Carolina freestone peaches, just-picked blackberries and blueberries, half-runner beans, corn on the cob, plums, nectarines, and North Carolina home-grown red, yellow and green tomatoes.
The bounty of another successful growing season is on full display at the small store, which not only looks beautiful with all the ripe fruit and vegetables, but smells of the fruit at peak perfection. But there is also another level of products for sale which requires more than just rapidly transporting fresh crops to market. There is a wide array of items from Walnut Creek Foods from the Amish country of Ohio, including quarts of pickled foods, preserves, jellies and jams.
There is also a big assortment of Walnut Creek snack items and candy. The produce comes from a network of farmers and suppliers that have been built up over decades of selling fresh produce. But it has not always been summertime plenty for Farmer John’s, and the business began after a father and son had both lost their jobs and wondered what they could do to survive.
Jeff Daugherty remembers those dark days in 1983. Both Jeff and his father, John, had worked for years at one of the largest grocery store chains in the Johnson City area at the time, Wright’s. John had worked his way up .