James Lynch has been farming for nearly 60 years and has no plans of stopping anytime soon, he says.
"My father cut my plow down and I carried my own mule to my farm in 1929," the 85-year-old Lynch said from the gas station he's turned into a fresh produce store. "I've farmed ever since then, except for four years when I was in the military and the 10 years I lived in Houston. Other than that, I've been farming every single year."
Andrew Rogers/The Daily Sentinel |
James Lynch, 85, runs a produce store on Center Highway, just before the loop, where he and his wife sell vegetables they grow on their farm as well as vegetables from other farms in East Texas. Lynch has survived throat cancer and continues his almost 60-year career.
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Lynch and his wife have been coming to their produce store, located just before the loop on Center Highway, nearly every day since July to sell the vegetables they've grown on their own land just outside of Martinsville, as well as other produce from other farms around East Texas. Together they spent two weeks cleaning out the old store and that once stocked cold tall boys and racks of beef jerky. Now the store is filled with freezers full of frozen peas and boxes upon boxes of sweet potatoes and eggplants. During the summer, Lynch said he couldn't sell enough of his watermelons and cantaloupes, which just happen to be his own personal favorites as well.
Lynch is a member of the Texas Farmer's Market Association and is licensed to sell produce from Texas and all its bordering states, but not Mexico, he said. That's fine with him, though, because all the produce Lynch sells is fresh off the vine and in some cases is still covered with a speckle or two of the dirt it came from.
"The produce from those states mean it still comes in fresh," Lynch said. "The stuff you buy at the local market is fresh, but the stuff that you buy at the local grocery stores isn't fresh. It comes in by cold storage, and that takes away the flavor."
As he prepares to close the store for the winter, Lynch said he is hoping to purchase the old Shell gas station and the land, then tear it down and build a larger building where other farmers besides himself can come and sell the fruits of their labor together. It may be an ambitious project for a man who has survived throat cancer and a stroke, but Lynch said he wants to complete the full-time farmers market and leave it to those who come after him.
"If I buy this property, the gas station won't be here," he said. "And from the time that produce comes in during the spring and until it goes out in the fall, we're going to have a permanent market here open daily."
Recently Lynch, who was an auctioneer for 40 years, was denied a permit by city officials to auction off farm equipment at the store because the parking lot is not big enough, he said. Sometime next year, Lynch said he wants to build the required 30-car parking lot before anything else is completed, and then will try again to get the permit.
With his customers in mind, Lynch plans to seek out authorization from the county to begin accepting payments through the Lone Star Card and the Women, Children and Infant (WIC) program.
"I'd like to give those people with the WIC Cards and the Lone Star Card some good food," Lynch said. "Those people are hard up, but they ought to have some good produce to feed their kids with, I think."
The last chance to get some fresh tomatoes, peppers and onions from the 'Lynch Farm' store for the rest of the year may be this week, since the growing season has effectively ended for those varieties. And while his store may not be open during the winter months, Lynch said he will still be growing turnips, cabbage and collard greens, which he plans on selling at the Nacogdoches Farmer's Market on Saturdays and Wednesdays.
Trent Jacobs' e-mail address
is tjacobs@dailysentinel.com.
