LaGrange Farmer’s Market
“You and I,” he said, “are old enough to remember what things ought to taste like.”
The laugh spilled out of me, and we shared a moment of really knowing. For once, I didn’t mind being called “old.” My friend Cody Nix was right. There’s a certain way things can taste. A way they ought to taste, and there really aren’t any shortcuts to getting there. As the famous phrase among the young TikTok crowd goes, “if you know, you know.” And young people, “if you don’t, you don’t,” and I’m sorry that you don’t.
How should things taste? How do they get that way?
It starts with good ingredients: real food, whole food; food that you can’t get from a package or a box. Fresh, immediate food that still has life and power and taste in it.
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I am old enough to remember. I remember my grandmother’s hands peeling the sweet potatoes that would be candied for Thanksgiving. I remember my great grandmother’s sweat dripping as she picked the field peas in the garden in July. I remember my uncle frying fish in the backyard, fresh crappie he had just caught himself.
I remember hand-cut collards and vine ripe watermelons and tomatoes.
And I had a flood of all of those memories the first time I walked into the LaGrange Farmer’s Market, soon after our move to town several years ago. At the time, I had not yet met my friend Cody Nix, the Market’s owner and fourth generation of men in his family to work in the produce business.
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Immediately I texted my wife: “This is where people who cook come to get the good stuff.”
“That’s probably the difference between our customers and folks who shop in big grocery stores,” Cody told me, “they’re honestly probably smarter about what they want, the quality they expect, and they cook.”
Amen, they indeed do. Not only are the fruits and vegetables a cut above at “Cody’s place,” as we call it in our family, but there are lovely conversations to be had with the other shoppers about what they’re cooking and how they’re going to do it.
The love of quality produce and the special relationships built with customers who seek that quality out is built into Cody’s DNA.
“My great grandfather peddled produce door-to-door in Columbus, Georgia, with a horse and buggy,” Cody said. “That’s how all this got started. He got into wholesale produce, and then eventually, my father decided to open his own store. One of my first memories of childhood is running through the aisles of the Market and all the fresh Christmas trees after Thanksgiving.”
To me, in today’s world, it seems like quite a gamble to be in the “whole foods” business, as people cook less and less and look for convenience and shortcuts everywhere.
How can you get folks to make an extra stop and seek out quality when there’s a big box supermarket selling everything from charcoal to dish soap to pre-made mac and cheese (Lord, help us) just down the road from wherever they live in town?
Ironically, this “get big” market pressure led Cody’s Dad, Rusty Nix, to open the family’s first direct-to-the-customer retail farmer’s market in Columbus in 1983.
“He could see the writing on the wall with the wholesale business. We were still small players, and big outfits like Sysco could supply supermarkets with all the items they carry in inventory. There was not going to be a place for us much longer. He decided to open a store instead.”
The rest has been a remarkable history for Cody, his partners, family, employees, and customers.
It’s been fantastic, but it’s not easy. The work is hard, physical, and relentless.
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“Everything we sell is perishable. We have to move quickly, and we buy based on seasonal availability and the quality and price of what’s available. We go the extra mile to keep prices down and to have the very best. I think that’s what’s kept us running all these years. People believe in our quality, and they know that we are a value, even though it means one more stop.”
The Market’s purchasing is rooted in some very long-term relationships between producers and the Nix family. “We haul all our own plants and flowers up from Florida ourselves. We go to Cordele, Georgia, and haul our own watermelons from farmers we’ve known for a long time. We buy wheat straw now from a man who sold zipper peas to my Granddaddy,” Cody said. “He still loves to tell me, ‘your granddaddy was a sport! I sold him peas for 50 cents a bushel!” Today those peas go for about $32 per bushel. They’ve become a delicacy, and you won’t often find them carried by the enormous retailers.
“There aren’t machines to handle picking the more delicate peas. They’re still picked completely by hand. It’s exciting to folks who love them when they come in. It’s a special food because it’s not easy to come by and it reminds the older people of the older ways. You’ll see torn snap beans sometimes that are picked by machines, but zipper peas, pink eyes, cream peas, there’s no way to replace those. We have personal relationships with the folks who still grow them, and we care about their crop.”
Cody knows his produce like nobody else I’ve ever met. “People think tomatoes are all about whether they are field-grown or greenhouse-grown. Ours are all field-grown, but the truth is that’s not what matters. The issue is, did it get ripe on the vine, or was it picked green and then exposed to a room full of ethylene gas? There’s no other way to get the excellent tomato flavor; it’s got to ripen in its own time on the vine. That’s how the sugars develop. We don’t gas our tomatoes!”
And just like you can’t rush a ripe tomato, you can’t rush relationships either. The Farmer’s Market employs a team of about 14 folks, many of whom have worked at the Market for years. “Our longest employee has been here twelve years,” Cody says, and several others have been with the Market for five or more. Many of the Market’s customers go back years and years as well.
“It’s not just the produce that brings folks in,” Cody says. “Part of the fun of a trip into the Market is visiting with the cashiers and stockers and catching up with how everyone is doing. We’ve got some folks who come in every day just to buy what they’re going to cook that day, and so eventually, you really get to know one another.”
It takes a little more time to go make one more stop and get “the good stuff.” But man, is it worth it. I feel rooted when I walk the Market’s aisles, thinking about the farmers who grew the food and the laborers who make my nourishment possible. The collards I buy from Cody carry a direct line back through time to his great grandfather, peddling them by the bundle on a wagon in Columbus. The sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving incarnate the presence of my grandmother and take me back to the many times I sat with her and my family at the table. The convenience of the big store will always have its place, and I’m thankful that I can access its abundance. But the gifts of care and love are shared at the table only when we take the time to let it all matter. That’s what the Market and its people are about.
By the way, Cody’s very favorite item of the year? Minneola Tangelos from Florida — those and all the great citrus and the Christmas trees will be in soon!
The LaGrange Farmer’s Market is located at 606 Greenville Street, LaGrange, Georgia. Its sister location, The Parkway Farmer’s Market, is located at 2180 1st Avenue, Opelika, Alabama.