Loose Leaf Notes

The following was published in the summer issue of All About Her, a regional newspaper insert magazine.

If you drive through Floyd County in late spring, you’ll notice family garden plots ready for planting.  In the summer those same plots are filled with corn, tomatoes, beans and more.

Although many Floyd Countians home garden, very few grow vegetables for sale at local markets, as they did up until the early 1960’s when, due to economic pressures, many farmers began to farm part-time and concentrate on agricultural commodities sold outside the county, such as beef cattle, dairy and Christmas trees.

The families of King Brothers Farms and Orchards in the Bent Mountain part of Floyd and Roanoke Counties have never stopped full-time farming.  For seven generations they have carried on the mountain tradition of growing and producing food for themselves and as a way to make a living.  Today, two brothers, their wives and sons raise beef cattle, wholesale and retail apples and peaches from their orchards, and sell a wide variety of homegrown vegetables at the Roanoke City Market.

“We’ve always farmed,” said Gladys King, standing by the pre-Civil War King family home, which sits on 150 acres.  Above the property is a 20 acre apple orchard.  Three acres of peach trees are spread out beyond the barn. The family also farms an adjacent property in Roanoke County and a nearby piece that was passed on to King by her family, the Connors, who were also farmers.

“I was told the kitchen was down there,” King said, gesturing downhill in the backyard.   “They always kept the kitchen away from the house because the kitchen is usually what caught on fire.”

She explained that Floyd centenarian and retired Check Elementary School Principal Effie (King) Brown was a boarder at the house when she first started teaching.  Effie, who later taught Gladys’ husband Howard (Chip), would walk to the Pine Forest Schoolhouse, which is now a private residence.

Pointing to some dents in the home’s red painted bricks, King remarked that her husband’s mother was told by her grandmother (who was a child during the Civil War) that they were marks from soldier’s cannon shots.   “This house has been in my husband’s family since it was land granted,” she said.

Speaking about the benefits of locally grown food, King said, “It taste better and it’s better for you.” She explained that cheap food from outside the country is not a bargain when it comes to health.  “You don’t know what their regulations are.  You have no idea what they sprayed with. It could be DDT” (banned in the U.S. in 1972).

Another benefit of farm life is working outside in the fresh air, “even when you don’t want to be,” King joked. She recalled one Christmas Day when it was 20 below zero. “We had cows down, tractors that wouldn’t start, and a renter that didn’t know how to start a fire.”

King and her sister-in-law Nancy, who have four grown children between them, do the vegetable farming on ten acres, starting their plants in greenhouses.  “When the children were little, they’d help us in the morning and we’d take them swimming in the afternoon,” King said.  Today, during peak growing season, everyone still helps out.   “You work hard.  When we’re into vegetables, it’s seven days a week,” said King, who vacuum-pack freezes or cans some of their homegrown vegetables for her family.

During apple season, the King family hires half-a-dozen workers to help pick red delicious, golden delicious, stayman, rome, and some old varieties of apples.  From September to November, they sell from a shed on the farm, which is about 3 miles off highway 221.  Customers also have the option of picking their own.

Further down the road from the homestead and orchard, the King brothers, Will and Howard, and Howard and Gladys’s son, Mark, took a break from fixing a fence to chat.   Will King explained that they use mostly organic growing practices on the farm and spray the orchards only minimally when necessary.  The conversation turned to the recent infestation of stink bugs and all the damage they have done to Virginia fruit crops.  The brothers, who cattle farm year round, agreed that there is a lot more for farmers to worry about than weather these days, referring to the accidental importation of bugs, beetles and moths with no natural enemies to keep them under control.  They also commented on how important it is that children know where their food comes from.

Gladys King, who works part time as a tax assistant during tax season, is an active member of the local Farm Bureau Woman’s Committee, whose goal it is to educate children and the public about the benefits of farming and to bring agriculture into the classroom.   Four years ago King designed a prototype afghan to benefit the committee’s work.  Available for sale at the Floyd Farm Bureau and at the town’s Harvest Festival, the afghan features a map of Floyd, a County seal and images of all the farming commodities produced in Floyd.

At one time King’s family raised pigs, chickens for eggs, and slaughtered their own beef.  Her Mother-in-law, who lived in family home until her passing about a decade ago, kept a milking cow.  King feels fortunate that her family has been sustained by the land and that they are able to provide quality food for others.

“You have to love it,” she summed up the farming life.  “God’s been good to us.  Not everyone’s lucky enough to have what we have.”   ~ Colleen Redman