A Letter From Miss Sas: The Roadside Stands That Feel Like Home

Y’all,

Last month, I finally stopped at a roadside produce stand on 231 South, just across the Florida line.

That stand has been there for years.

I have passed it who knows how many times, but somehow, that was my first time pulling in.

Usually, if we’re looking for good tomatoes and fresh vegetables, we head toward Slocomb. We’ve got places like Four Seasons Marketplace in Cottonwood, too.

But then I got to thinking about it.

Nearly every little town around here has a produce stand or farmers market of some sort.

Some stay open all year. Some come alive when the right crop is ready and close back up when the season is done.

You just learn these things when you live around here.

You know which direction to drive for tomatoes, where somebody sets up with produce in the Dollar General parking lot, and which little roadside sign means there are fresh eggs sitting just up ahead.

Nobody gives you a map.

You just know—or you know somebody who knows.

A few months from now, they’ll start pulling up the fresh peanuts. I’ve already been watching the fields grow. Corn in one. Peanuts in another.

Then last week, I passed a tomato farm down near Marianna that I didn’t even know was there.

A whole field of tomato plants.

Now, I know tomatoes have to grow somewhere. I’m not saying I thought they appeared by divine intervention in a cardboard box beside the road.

I just don’t think I had ever stopped to picture a field full of them.

Tomatoes have always felt smaller than that to me. A few plants in somebody’s garden. A row staked up behind the house. Somebody standing at the edge of the yard with a grocery sack, trying to give away the extras before they all ripen at once.

But there they were—a whole field of them growing just down the road from home.

I love that about this part of the world.

A farmer can turn the Dollar General parking lot into a produce market for the afternoon.

Somebody can put out fresh eggs beside the road, hang up a sign, and trust that the right people will stop.

You can drive one direction for tomatoes and another for fresh vegetables. Then peanut season rolls around, and everybody starts watching for those first bags to show up.

Every little town seems to have its own place, its own growers, and its own season everybody waits for.

These stands would be easy to pass without thinking much about them.

But they’re part of what makes home feel like home.

They remind us that supper doesn’t begin at the grocery store. Sometimes it begins in a field you’ve driven past a hundred times without ever really seeing.

And sometimes, the best thing you can do is slow down, pull over, and see what somebody local has grown.

Your supper will probably be better for it.