Egg Plant (top left) and okra, bottom right, will be available until the first frost.  Purple onions are available throughout the season.

(First ran in The Edgefield Advertiser print edition, August 19, 2026)

Interviewing the roadside markets this past Friday was one step away from those who produced the vegetables – the farmers. The stands so beautifully present the produce to the customers. The growers weren’t there to explain, but the manager at Titan’s, Jocelyn Temples, knew her place of business well — Sara’s Stand, on Hwy. 25 s. in Trenton. She started working there as a STHS student and is now Manager as a college age student.

Sara’s manager pointed to honey as moving well from the shelves.  The stand shows bee farmer George Pearson’s harvest.  They brought in 40 bottles recently and they were half gone on Friday. 

There are flowers galore in Sara’s, a good showing of color in blooms.  However, they are not for sale! They are decorative. The nursery that they use is Cold Creek of Aiken.

An “off the charts” product is homemade peach and strawberry ice creams, which are soon leaving the menu with the coming fall.  That is when a number of varieties of Hershey will be offered — not homemade, however.

 In the fall they will add pumpkins also.  Jocelyn, projecting what else will be around, lists these: squash, zucchini, okra, vidalias, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and baking potatoes. They won’t have figs. Corn is winding down as are melons, according to Jocelyn.  Other produce that will continue are bell peppers, jalapenos, and scuppernongs, all “on the way.” Others are peas which are coming in, pink and black eyes, and white acres peas. 

Pam Cook at Cook’s Farm talked on Friday from their roadside stand, 1236 Hwy.25 S in Trenton, about some of  their suppliers and gave an interesting anecdote about their supplier of sweet potatoes, Gallop Farms.  She says when the customer arrives at his place of business, there is a sign, homemade and hand-painted, that says: “For service, blow horn. Wait 61/2 minutes” (the time it takes for him to get there). Mr. Gallop is in Earhardt. Following the sweet potatoes will be pumpkins and the heirloom variety is the first coming. The jack-o-lantern variety are specially bred and will also come later.

As we talked, one could tell Pam knows the schedules of produce very well (after many years in the business) as she tells that “Corn has come and gone, the sweet variety, that is.  They will be selling ‘deer corn,’ on the cob and cut off the cob. “Vidalias have been harvested and are fast going from the stands; red onions will continue to be coming in and available.  Okra will be cut and sold until the first frost as well as eggplant.” And to guess when that will be, one might say late October or early November.  

Pam digressed to bring up canning and preserving which used to be an event in most households. “It is a dying art,” she says.  “Young people think groceries are from the grocery store.  It is not in their vision to grow the food, to preserve the second quality produce as it used to be done, and enjoy the first quality with immediate consumption. They buy it by the can or frozen instead of preserving their own. There are fewer requests for the first or second quality produce as the art of canning has fallen by the wayside.”

As for watermelons found in big bins at Cook’s, there are farmers who typically plant a second crop.  The first is over, but there could be more.

Look for Ramey Fulmer of Ridge spring, another supplier. He provides okra, cukes and tomatoes. Okra has joined fall peas which are here now, as well as scuppernongs and muscadines, and they are plentiful.