Kings grow from family garden

Published 1:28 pm Thursday, June 15, 2023

Ron and Vicki King of King Family Farms have a variety of vegetables and canned items at their table at the farmer’s market each week. But before they started at the market, Ron had learned farming as a boy.

“Growing up, we always had a farm, you’re talking about the late ‘50s early ‘60s; it was not like it is now,” he said he and his brother farmed with mules when they were younger.

It was a family affair for Vicki, too. Just like Ron, her parents had gardens and canned their food for their family. Ron remembers the days of working with his parents.

“We had a big garden, and mother gave everyone in the neighborhood vegetables, and me and my daddy, we always raised feeder pigs,” Ron said.

Ron and Vicki continued raising pigs for about 45 years, even while he was teaching and she worked at a bank. His daughters and granddaughter showed pigs in competition. After their granddaughter stopped competing, that’s when they got out of the pig business. When Ron retired more than 10 years ago, the couple decided to start expanding their garden even more.

At one point they were going to three markets a week. Now, the Athens market is the only one they come to, and they’ve been doing it for more than a decade.

“We talk about quitting every year. We were going to quit this year, but we decided, ‘Well, we’ll go to Athens.’” He said it’s easy to make it out to the Athens market because they don’t have to bring their own tables or tent.

He said the setup is easy with the tables that the farmers market provides, and he said that the organizers, Athens Main Street, always know exactly what they’re doing, which is helpful when they pull up to the market.

“When we first started here we probably knew 90 percent of the people. Now it’s right opposite; you don’t know 90 percent of them,” he said. “That’s good, a lot of people come in.”

“At one time, we had 70 sows. Can you imagine how many pigs we had?” King asked. “We cut back, and we always raised a pretty good size garden.”

He said that’s when they just started doing more of the vegetables. His favorite thing to grow right now is cucumbers. They grow small ones, and it can be a challenge.

“We got an irrigation system, we’ve got them on plastic so we can fertilize and do what we need to do through the drip line,” he said. “But, any of our vegetables, I like. Our cabbage is really doing good right now.”

He said they’ve done a lot more collards than they have in the past, but a lot has sold, too. Some things don’t always work out, such as how they planted turnip greens but they were overtaken by the grass. So, they’ll till them up and try again.

“We try to raise several different items that they can have to choose from,” he said. “We kind of know what people want. People want onions; you’ll be surprised how many onions people will buy — and squash.”

He says they raise a smaller straight-necked squash without a lot of seeds. They pick a lot of squash, and he said sometimes they even bring too many.

When they don’t sell it all, they give it to a friend who passes the produce along to church family members that are no longer able to grow their own gardens, ensuring that they still have access to fresh vegetables.

“The older people that don’t get to farm anymore, they enjoy them,” he said.

In addition to their vegetables, the couple also does a lot of pickling and sells many different canned items at the market.

“We start that canning stuff early in February, late in January,” he said.

It’s always hard work, but he said that, all in all, they keep doing it, because they enjoy coming to the market and seeing how happy people are about the fresh food.

“It’s nothing easy about it, makes you wonder ‘where’s these hands come from?’” he said, looking over his hands.