LITTLE ROCK — Times really have changed for farmers like Elaine Scudder. Nobody orders a bushel of anything anymore. People want their produce shelled, packaged and ready for use. And hardly anyone “puts up” vegetables.
Who these days even knows what a bushel is, anyway?
Scudder knows. In her 36 years as a produce farmer, she remembers a time when her customers would ask for a bushel of peas (about 25 pounds) or a bushel of snap beans (30 pounds).
“A long time ago, people bought to store up,” she says. “But people don’t do that anymore. A lot of people don’t can anymore. Now they don’t want to shell anything. We’ve got to shell the peas. We’ve got to pack them. I am starting to think I need to throw a piece of ham hock beside the peas.”
Scudder and her sister Jane Reynolds own Jane and Elaine Plants and Produce - one of the original vendors at the River Market Farmers Market at the River Market pavilions in Little Rock. Her family, the Kyzers, have been selling produce at vegetable stands for years.
Scudder grew up the seventh of the 13 children of Rose Nell and Johnny Kyzer. Their father was a farmer, and all of the children were expected to help out.
“When we were growing up, we would eat pretty much what was on the table, but there were 13 of us kids,” she says. “We grew up very, very poor, and we were taught to work. We all helped our dad. Our mother never worked. She just had babies every two years.”
Today, Scudder and six of her siblings as well as a number of other relatives live on the same 80-acre tract in Lonoke County. A sister lives across the street. Another sister lives behind her. A brother lives down the street. All of the relatives are within walking distance of one another.
Scudder’s nephew lives next door. But in Scudder’s world, “next door” is a relative term. A large garden with rows of vegetables separates the houses.
She emerges from that garden carrying a bushel basket (yes, bushel again) of freshly picked beans. Despite theheat and the work, her hair and makeup are perfect. She doesn’t even seem to be perspiring.
It’s a Monday and she and her sister Jane are getting ready for the next morning’s farmers market. They have a lot of work to do before the market opens. There are vegetables to pick and, of course, beans to be shelled and bagged. She has already driven to Bald Knob to pick up blueberries from another farmer. She mostly sells her own produce, but when her berries or tomatoes are not ready, she buys them from other farmers to resell at her stand.
DRIVING TO LITTLE ROCK
When everything is ready, these two sisters, who are both in their 60s and could almost pass for twins, will load the produce and plants into a large van and drive to Little Rock to unload and set up. Sometimes, they have help from grandchildren or transients looking for work. Sometimes, not.
The farmers market is open Tuesdays and Saturdays. On a typical market morning, the sisters get up at 2:15 a.m. so they can arrive at the River Market by 3:30 a.m.
“It is just a lot of labor, and it is exhausting for everybody,” Scudder says. “You are dead tired from going full blast all day long, and we are not even that busy right now.In July, you can hardly walk through that market.”
Jane and Elaine Plants and Produce is in the northwest corner of the farmers market. The sisters set up their produce on tables organized like a rectangle with a space in the middle where they stand. Their potted and hanging plants take up a nearby corner of the market.
They wear aprons that say “I’m Elaine” and “I’m Jane.” Despite the early hour they woke up, both have done their hair and makeup. They look like they could be going to church rather than working in the heat all day long. Elaine, the talkative sister, is the spokesman. Jane is the quiet one. And they answer the same questions over and over.
“How much for the tomatoes?” “How much for two?” “Does this plant need full sun?”
The sisters have longtime, loyal customers. A hug with a quart of berries isn’t unusual.
“They are great people. They have been so great to me,” says Alice Williams, adding that the sisters frequently deliver plants to her Hillcrest home.
Carolyn Ridley of Bryant is another regular customer.
“Fresh stuff always tastes better and they are just so hospitable,” Ridley says. “That’s why you want to spend your money there.”
Jimmy Moses, the driving force behind the development of the River Market, says Jane and Elaine Plants and Produce is the “backbone” of the farmers market.
“To me, Elaine is the essence of the River Market and what we envisioned back in the mid-’90s when we were planning it,” Moses says. “She is a real farmer, her whole family is, who believes in the idea of growing fresh produce and selling it.”
Scudder was there in July 1996 when the farmers market first opened. By then, she and her sister already had a lot of experience.
Says Moses: “I remember some of the farmers, Jane and Elaine being two, who go all the way back to when they had to stand on asphalt with no shade in the sweltering summer. Back when we were trying to convince people a farmers market in downtown Little Rock was aa good idea.”
SALLYING FORTH
Today, the farmers market is a bustling, mostly covered, outdoor facility. Forty vendor stands line the east and west pavilions. Other vendors arelocated on the periphery.
It’s a big change from the days when Scudder was a teenager and her family operated a produce stand at the corner of Second and Main streets in downtown Little Rock. There was no shelter from the blistering sun or falling rain.
“We were just out on the parking lot. Sometimes, we looked like [it was] gypsy land. We were right out in the sun,” she says. “We would just sit, waiting, hoping a customer would come.”
Scudder was born Sally Elaine. She was named after an Aunt Sally who was deaf. Her mother didn’t know when she chose the name that her daughter was also deaf in one ear.
“In the first grade after reading all of those Dick and Jane and Sally books, I didn’t want to be Sally anymore. I think that is where mother got some of her names,” Scudder says, referring to her sister Jane.
The large Kyzer family grew up in a small house with no indoor plumbing in the McAlmont community of North Little Rock. A single outhouse was used by the entire family.
“When mother would wash clothes, we got to take a bath in the big tubs outside,” she remembers. “It was a real big deal to get to be in the bluing water.” (Bluing is a chemical added to laundry to make clothes whiter.)
The family was “no frills” and all of the children were expected to work. But her parents always made sure each child received a Christmas stocking every year.
“We would hang my mother’s nylon stockings up on a nail,” she remembers. “Mother and daddy would fill them with all kinds of stuff and they would put a pack of sparklers on top.”
And the 13 children shared one bicycle. “There was a lot of hiding it,” she says with a laugh.
The Kyzer children - especially the ones who live today on the same 80 acres - are used to sharing. If Scudder needs a cup of sugar, all she has to do is go next door.
She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school. Another sibling also got a high-school degree. A few others later obtained GEDs (General Educational Development diplomas).
“Our dad taught us everything we know,” Scudder says. “We worked for him for years at the market, helping him.”
The Kyzer family bought an 80-acre orchard after Scudder married her husband, Ernest, in 1965. Ernie, as his wife calls him, was used to large families - his parents had 11 children. After they married, Ernie received orders from the U.S. Air Force to go to Japan. The couple stayed there two years.
While they were in Japan, some of her brothers and sisters and her father pooled their resources to buy the 80 acres in Lonoke County. Those siblings got first pick of the existing houses and land. When the Scudders returned from Japan, they moved into an existing house across the street from the rest of the clan.
As she says, they “didn’t make the lineup.”
The Scudders also didn’t opt for a large family. They have two daughters, Jennifer, 42, and Amy, 37. Like her mother, Scudder is Rh-negative, which can cause immune system problems in fetuses if the father is Rh-positive. Both of her daughters were born prematurely.
TWISTED PLANTS
Many factors, such as the weather and insects,help determine if a farmer has a successful year. Scudder and her sister Jane work for months on hundreds of hanging baskets and potted plants that they grow in greenhouses on the family’s property. They started growing the plants from seed and cuttings in January in preparation for the farmers market, which opened for the 2010 season April 27.
On April 30, a tornado touched down on the property, ripping the largest greenhouse to shreds. It also demolished one of her brothers’ homes. That night, Scudder and 30 of her relatives got into a “fraidy hole,” a storm shelter behind Jane’s home. When they emerged, they found that the tornado had tossed hundreds of their plants into other people’s yards. Oddly, it didn’t damage three smaller greenhouses that were only covered with plastic.
The sisters have been able to make do with what they salvaged. They have a number of plants for sale at their stall at the farmers market. And their smaller greenhouses are lush with beautiful plants, including the usual, such as Wandering Jew, and the more unusual, like the fishhook plant and something she calls an African root plant.
“It took us forever to try and get our stuff up,” she says. “It was a gully washer and it was like a little pond in each row of our gardens.”
The work never ends. There are always vegetables to pick, produce to load and unload, crows to fight off, unanticipated weather problems to deal with. So do Scudder and her sister ever get a Saturday off?
“Not unless we are dead,” she says, smiling.
SELF PORTRAIT Elaine Scudder
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH Sept. 22, 1945, Little Rock.
THE FIRST PLACE I SOLD PRODUCE WAS At Second and Main streets. We were all teenagers at the time.
MY FAVORITE FRUIT IS Peaches
I LOVE TO GROW Petunias.
I HATE TO GROW Gerber daisies because they melt on me.
I WON’T EAT Liver. I will eat everything else.
MY FAVORITE MEAL IS Baked fish. I just ate at this place down in Hazen called Murry’s Restaurant. They made the best baked fish with a special herb they won’t reveal. It was just wonderful.
MY BEST-SELLERS ARE Shelled peas and beans and all of our fruits, like all our homegrown blueberries, blackberries and strawberries.
ON A TYPICAL WORKDAY I GET UP About 2:15 [a.m.]. When it is really busy, we try to be here by 3:30 in the morning. It is a long day.
A PHRASE TO SUM ME UP Get ’er done.
High Profile, Pages 41 on 06/27/2010