Our story began more than 200 years ago, when John Martin Sr. left the Carolinas, found a wife in Georgia, and built a log cabin not far from the banks of Kelly Creek.

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Generations passed. There were wars, storms, and hard times, but the family, and our neighbors, were fed. In 1925 the farm bought a school bus that hauled children to school and watermelons to market. Then tractors replaced the mules.

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Still, very little had changed for little boys growing up on the farm. John's earliest memories are riding in the tractor on his granddad's knee. Summertime meant helping sell peaches, sweet corn, and watermelons from the back of the truck.

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Then, when John was only thirteen, his grandfather passed away. Grief stricken, with only 50 head of cattle and little in the bank, John's grandmother was sure she'd have to sell. She never did. John came every day. Riding his motorbike to the farm after school. Doing everything that needed doing. By sixteen, he had graduated high school and was running the farm fulltime.

 

"I grew from a boy into a man putting up over a thousand 4x4 round bales of hay a year, unloading them all by hand so the only loader could stay in the field. Slowly, I began to build my own herd to manage alongside my grandmother's."

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John found his own Georgia bride, "a city-girl who didn't know any better than to plan a June wedding during hay season" and brought me home to the farm where our own son, Jess, grew up with many long rides on big tires. Together, we built one of the most productive row-crop operations in the region. We fed people across the globe. The Vice President of the United States spoke at the awards ceremony where John was honored as the Alabama's Farmer of the Year. Newspapers from Seattle, Washington to Washington, D.C. shared his story.

 

Then, in 2020, exactly two hundred years after John Martin planted his first seeds in this dirt, our neighbors were worried about where they were going to get food. Jess, who had already earned his Eagle Scout award, decided to help. We built this website as a way to connect to community members who wanted local farm-grown food. Jess ran that business until he graduated college. And John and I decided that, as much as we loved being part of the global supply chain for food and fiber, we loved feeding our neighbors even more. In 2020 we planted our first strawberry plant and our 35,000th! We still grow strawberries without pesticides or herbicides, so our neighbors can sit their babies right down in a row and eat them right off the plant. The way we hope the eighth generation of farm babies will do one day.