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 to be the store manager of the Wright’s grocery on G Street.
His son, Jeff, had worked his way up to be the frozen food and dairy manager of another Wright’s store on Watauga. Their comfortable lives came to an end when foreclosure ended Wright’s corporation. All the grocery stores were closed, and John and Jeff had to search for new ways to make a living.
Fortunately, both were able to find jobs at another grocery store chain, White’s. But they remembered the recent family crisis and looked for a way to supplement their income as they started over at White’s. In 1984, they noticed a small lot on U.
S. Highway 19E that had formerly been Street’s Flea Market. They worked out a lease and each borrowed $1,000 to get started, and Farmer John’s was born.
Jeff explains that his father was named John, but his first name is also John, even though he goes by Jeff. So, the name of the new business was a good one. The business grew rapidly.
They had to expand the small building four times between 1984 to 2001 to accommodate the number of loyal customers the store had attracted. But not everything was going well. Jeff’s father started having severe health problems, including a heart attack and a stroke.
Then, the property they were leasing was sold. They were forced to close down their business. After all the hard work, the family was right back in the same predicament.
Jeff was working harder than ever. He took a job at Walmart. He also took other jobs to make ends meet, including taking a newspaper route, delivering the paper seven days a week, 365 days a year.
His wife, Crystal, was also working hard, delivering car parts for Auto Zone. But Crystal had not given up on the idea of bringing back Farmer John’s. One day she delivered some car parts to a small used car lot on West Elk Avenue.
She saw the lot at 2100 West Elk Ave. and thought it would be nice location for reopening the business. They soon reopened Farmer John's.
It was late fall when they started, so instead of produce, they went out into the woods and cut down a lot of Christmas trees. They had a good Christmas season, and after 10 years of being closed, Farmer John’s was back in 2011. Jeff remembered how fast a business could come to an end and kept his job at Walmart and his paper route.
But he encouraged Crystal to restart the business. After delivering papers all night, he would often go on to collect produce for the store, then head to his job at Walmart. But if Jeff thought he had it rough, Crystal soon convinced him that she needed help.
“They are killing me,” she told her husband about the number of customers she was getting. Soon, Jeff was back at Farmer John’s with Crystal, and things have continued to grow. Jeff said there is a steady rhythm to the business that matches the growing season.
Beginning in late winter, the store starts selling fresh strawberries and other springtime delights from Florida growers. Then, the produce from closer to home starts coming in. In addition, the store gets even more beautiful with the lots of flowers coming from LaFollette’s Greenhouse in Surgoinsville.
From Easter to early June, there are flowers for sale in pots and baskets as well as in bundles. With the summer comes the real bounty, with a wide variety of crops offered from all around the region. With fall, the appearance of the store changes yet again, with plenty of pumpkins surrounding the store, edged with lots of mums.
It is now time for apples, starting with apples from nearby North Carolina. But Jeff said the best apples will come from the farms of Pennsylvania. Apples in nearly every variety will be on sale throughout the fall and into the winter.
With the cooler weather, Christmas season brings another look to the store, with citrus boxes for sale and candy that wouldn’t last in the warmer seasons. The store reaches its slowest pace with the coming of January and February. The wide variety of apples, and other crops like potatoes and onions, keep customers coming in.
Even though Jeff plans for the slowdown in revenue, it still is a worry for a man who has lost his job to foreclosure and lost a thriving business when the property was sold from under him. He looks forward to the strawberries coming from Florida to start a new season..
