Cole King and his father, Dale, with Cole's produce wagon (Photo by Jay Paul)
The cicadas are singing, the chickens are gossiping, and, just as he does almost every summer Saturday, Cole King is watching his wagon.
A truck pulls up. “Got any eggs?” Mark van Houten asks.
“Yes,” Cole says.
“Get me a couple dozen, if you don’t mind.”
Cole’s father, Dale King, brings a tray of speckled quail eggs and brown chicken eggs. The quail eggs are tiny but delicious, Cole says. “We split like two dozen this morning, between me and my dad and my brother.”
It’s a scene you might see at any country crossroads — except for two things: The farmer is 12. And the farm is smack in the inner suburbs of Henrico County, not half a mile from the buzz of Staples Mill Road.
Van Houten was driving along Hermitage Road a few weeks back when he saw the stand. He had to stop. “Everybody knows that farm fresh is better than store-bought,” he says. “The eggs are fresh. And aside from all that, here’s a young man out here, you know, working! Which is always great to see.”
The project started last year, sparked by a little brotherly envy. Cole’s older brother works at Home Depot, King says, and Cole wanted a job, too.
“Cole, you’ve got to do with what you have, and make something out of what you have,” Dale told his son. “I said, ‘We’re on 3 ½ acres. Grow a garden. You can sell [what you grow].’”
“You can’t do that,” Cole objected.
“Yes, you can,” his father insisted.
So, under his dad’s tutelage, Cole started growing a garden. And what a garden it is, even in the sprawl of late summer. Red and green bell peppers swell on yard-high plants. Pale-orange pumpkins lounge among the vines.
Photo by Jay Paul
A flock of hens — Speckled Sussex, Red Sex-Link and one Brahma — coo, cackle and complain as they stroll around the yard. One busily shreds some kale. Twenty-three quail peep in an ingenious enclosure: the fenced-in underside of Cole’s old play structure.
King saved the property from development more than a decade ago. He had long admired the handsome but vacant brick Colonial on the hill. The family who owned it said developers were interested in subdividing the overgrown 3.5-acre property.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to build a house. I want the house that’s there, and I’m going to renovate it, and I’m going to keep it the way it is.’” They accepted his offer, and so a little piece of country was preserved in Laurel.
Keeping the chickens out of the garden has been the most difficult part of his venture, Cole says. “I put wire around the garden, and then they just started going under that.” Now he’s letting them wreak happy havoc on the cantaloupes and zucchini that don’t sell at the stand.
Every morning Cole picks his produce, waters the plants and tends to the birds. Almost every Saturday, he sits out front with his wagon — handmade by his grandfather — patiently waiting for customers. He’s saving the money he earns for college and other expenses, he says.
“How much are tomatoes?” asks another customer.
“A dollar 99 cents a pound,” Cole says.
“Where’d you raise ’em at?”
“Up here.”
“Oh, OK. Are they good?”
“Mm-hmm,” Cole says.
Later, Linda Pomfrey stops by seeking the summer’s last zucchini.
“Is this too small?” Cole asks, picking one from the garden.
“Perfect!” Pomfrey says. “I want three like that.”
“I told Cole that he has brought the neighborhood together,” Pomfrey says. She has lived nearby for 32 years, she says, and yet “I’ve met at least three new friends — right, Cole? — out front. … It’s a gift. It really is.”
“It’s been fun for him,” Cole’s father says.
“Oh, I know it has,” Pomfret responds, “but it’s also been giving to us. … Good golly, if more people would understand what being a neighborhood is about!”
Cole King is taking a break from his stand until October, when he’ll be offering pumpkins, curly kale and collard greens. You’ll see the stand parked at 8102 Hermitage Road, just east of Staples Mill Road.
