Davison’s Country Store

At the turn of the twentieth century, a small farmstead country store opened in Carters Valley, Tennessee, to the rattle of horse-drawn buggies and the various goings on of the Davidson family farm on which the store was situated. Looney’s Store functioned as a means of trade and barter for local and traveling customers until the Great Depression closed its doors, seemingly for good, in the early 1930s. With no daily foot traffic and no full bins of various sundry items for sale, the old wood plank floors and farm windows with a view of the pond out back were covered in the dust of slow time, and though the nooks and crannies of Looney’s took on new tenants—spiders, snakes and hornets’ nests—the store remained empty. And 70 years went by.

Looney’s remained that way until 2002, when Bill Davidson and his wife Deborah decided to throw the doors wide open and let in a new era of farmstead trading by reopening the place as Davidson’s Country Store. From the first harvest of spring strawberries to Halloween, the store is open seven days a week. This decision was made partly out of necessity, in their efforts to diversify their farm. Originally tobacco farmers, the family had to make some tough decisions when the tobacco quotas were drastically cut in 2000. They knew that to stay in farming, they had to replace their tobacco crops with crops they’d never grown before, and they needed to do it quickly and profitably to maintain a farm once supported by tobacco.

Bill and Deborah sought out information from the University of Tennessee Extension that provides support to farmers in the Davidsons’ situation as just one component of a larger community improvement and development initiative. They also received support from groups like Jubilee Project, a nonprofit funded by various USDA programs, foundations, and United Methodist churches. Through the member-owned Appalachian Spring Cooperative developed by Jubilee, Bill and Deborah gain access to information and workshops on such topics as crop diversification and sustainable agriculture, as well as topics related to the business-side of farming, such as market research and business management. The Davidsons and other cooperative members work together to market their products on the Internet and in gift baskets to churches and area businesses. And the Davidsons have their foods processed by the Clinch-Powell Community Kitchen, a social enterprise of Jubilee Project.

In addition to the cooperative, the Davidsons have worked closely with the University of Tennessee Extension to develop their crops and get help with marketing.

Bill and Deborah, with their daughter Katie, and their son, Will, have slowly carved out an entrepreneurial niche for themselves on their farm.

“We’ve enjoyed it,” Bill says, “but it’s been a rough ride. It’s like changing careers at 45. All these are new crops.” Bill and Deborah sought out information from the University of Tennessee Extension that provides support to farmers in the Davidsons’ situation as just one component of a larger community improvement and development initiative. The family has also received a small business grant for operating the country store on the farm, which is yet another way Tennessee is making strides toward supporting agritourism.

Having several open-for-business months during the school year allows the family to offer the Carter’s Valley Surgoinsville schools the opportunity to bring groups of students in for tours of the farm and its various enterprises. Potentially the most popular activity for the school system is the pumpkin painting month of October, better known on the farm as Pumpkin Valley Days. From mid-September to Halloween, school groups with parents and teachers pile onto the farm to pick a pumpkin and decorate it for the holiday. The tent and surrounding area currently used for this community activity will soon get a facelift to make the experience even more enjoyable. The Davidson’s intend to add wooden benches, a restroom, and in general make a more permanent structure of the activity area.

But the Davidson farm’s agritourism efforts don’t mean any less farm work. The family grows enough fruits and vegetables to keep their store stocked from April to October with fresh produce as well as to make their fine, preservative and additive free jams, jellies, and salsas. Bill explains that they have their jarred goods made “just like our grandmothers did, where we don’t have to use a preservative.” The Davidson Country Store sells only Davidson products for the time being, with the exception of goods from local jewelry and basket-weaving artists who sometimes exchange featuring their work in the store for a few hours of manning the till. The farm also supplies distributors, such as Sanders Produce Market, which specializes in providing quality local products to its store in Kingsport, Tennessee, 20 miles away, as well as to area restaurants. “I try my best to support the local farmers as much as possible,” Tim Sanders said of his transactions with the Davidson farm. He also buys Amish goods wholesale for distribution, as well as produce from small farmers in nearby Scott County.

All of those produce items in the store mean a lot of time in the fields, sometimes for the whole Davidson family, and it also means a little trial and error, as they add new crops and attempt to improve old ones. “You’ll make mistakes with all of them, just starting out,” Bill says. “First year, we had the strawberries, but we couldn’t get the pickers.” Deborah chimed in with a laugh, “Yeah, that’s the year we got out there and picked. Our whole family was out there picking.” And then there is the chance of crop disease or bad weather. The Davidsons speak knowingly of hours spent glued to the television set, watching a storm reportedly dropping hail move just miles from their vulnerable crops, a storm that destroyed the entire strawberry crops of some neighboring farmers.

“It’s a huge gamble,” Bill says, “and you don’t know how much you’re out. It’s worse than gambling,” he decides, since there is really no telling how much can be lost. Speaking like a veteran farmer, he tells of the year the family lost several large crops to a single disease. “The more experience you get the better off you’ll be. But we had no idea we’d lose all the watermelons and the fall squash. And we had them all sold to Food City. We lost our order,” he says. Yet the Davidsons see the hard work and occasional set backs as fair trade for the enjoyment of continuing to farm as a family. The Davidson kids, Will and Katie, get to experience all the joys and struggles with the family, which may provide them with an invaluable life lesson in hard work and success, but at the very least they get to do their favorite things on the farm. For Will, that’s learning to safely use the big farm machinery, and, if someone asks Katie, she tell them it’s “eating the strawberries.”

Of course, the Davidsons have long since bounced back from the disaster of the disease that killed several crops, and now the store is always stocked with some type of fruit, such as raspberries, blackberries, strawberries or grapes, and they even grow hard to find items like heirloom varieties of green beans. They also stock the store with loads of tomatoes, squash, melons, sweet corn, and, in a few years, their young peach trees will offer a whole new fruit to the Country Store. They have big plans for the store in terms of both produce and new and improved community activities. No matter what, though, the Davidsons will continue to farm. “I’m hard core,” Bill says with a smile. “We’ll do it until we die or go broke, one. Somebody will have to make us quit.”

Written by Aubrey Videtto, Photography by Chad Stevens