Family Grown & Operated

Ten years ago, the Brown family began selling produce from an eight-foot card table with a tent and an honor-system box at the end of their driveway on Highway 69 east of Hartford. From there, it has blossomed into a fully staffed roadside market.

“From there we grew a little more every year. About six years ago we added on a little pavilion and then later added on where we could have cold storage,” said Korey Brown.

Now, Brown’s Farm Fresh Produce is one of the 125 markets across the Commonwealth accepted into the 2022 Kentucky Farm Bureau Certified Farm Market Program. They have every type of vegetable grown in Kentucky, beef from her father’s farm in Ohio County, pork products from Owensboro and a greenhouse full of flowers.

“We sell everything that we grow, but not everything that we sell was grown here,” she said. “We really work well with other Kentucky farmers.”

She said Fuller Farms in Beaver Dam helps provide some of the strawberries they sell as well as pumpkins. They also get help with tomatoes from other farmer friends and work closely with Reid’s Orchard in Owensboro. The Browns provide them with their produce as well.

“It’s just farmers helping farmers.”

Brown said that the family had always been into some type of farming having run a dairy farm previously, but had never grown produce before beginning this venture.

Eleven years ago, while she was undergoing chemo treatment for breast cancer, Brown’s husband, Michael, read how gardening could help non-reoccurence chances.

He told her he thought they should get some “high tunnels” and grow some produce. They went to some local Mennonite farmers who helped them initially with every step of what to do from what to plant and how to do it, Brown said.

“We had a little of everything when we started out but we had no idea what we were doing,” Brown said. “We planted 750 squash plants that first year at one time. We had so many squash.”

Now they specialize in strawberries, sweet corn, cabbage, onion, squash, tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, beets and fresh cut flowers as well.

Their mums, fresh flowers and hanging baskets are always popular sellers.

The business literally started out on a prayer, according to Michael Brown.

“We prayed a simple prayer and we asked the Lord to just put it in people’s minds to come buy our products and every year it has grown and he has blessed us every year,” he said.

That prayer is a constant among the Browns.

“We do pray that every day,” she said. “Without the community support we are nothing.”

The community support has been wonderful since the beginning.

“I love the relationships we have gotten to make here and miss them all during the winter months,” she said. “It is really more like a community than a business. I always say if you are in a hurry you don’t need to come here because we are going to talk and visit while you are here.”

The relationship between the Browns and the customers was evident as Brown paused to greet them by name as they came to pick up items.

The Browns also love the fact that the business is truly a family affair. Their children as well as nieces and nephews and teens throughout the community regularly help on the farm and at the market.

The Browns are currently expanding their mum pad so people can pick their own mums, Brown said they are hosting field trips for schools and daycares. This fall they will host a 10-acre corn maze for the first time.

“Agri-tourism is definitely an avenue we would like to explore a little more,” she said.

Farming and running a roadside market may have not been something the Browns envisioned for themselves 10 years ago, but “it is the best office view you can have,” Brown said.

The roadside market is open from the first weekend in April until Halloween. The hours are Monday-Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.