Bristol’s annual Rural King Farmers Market brought together about 26 vendors selling everything from live poultry and sourdough bread to handmade crafts, plants and restored teddy bears. The four-hour event also created space for family-run businesses, first-time entrepreneurs and a new Scott County homesteading group to connect with local shoppers.
Chickens waited in cages near tables stacked with sourdough bread, jars of preserves, and handmade candles. Across the parking lot, a laser engraver transformed pictures of our two terriers into slate coasters while my wife, Kathy, and I continued through the rows of vendors.
We had not planned to visit a farmers market that morning. We had stopped for gas at Sam’s Club in Bristol when we noticed the tents in the neighboring Rural King parking lot.
What looked at first like a small parking-lot sale turned out to be the Rural King Farmers Market, held from 8 a.m. to noon July 25. I counted approximately 26 vendors, including a few I did not have an opportunity to interview.
The Bristol store organizes the market annually as part of a companywide program that encourages Rural King locations to host similar events. Vendors could register in advance at the store’s customer service desk, and Rural King did not charge a booth fee.
To our knowledge, the store did not track attendance, but shoppers continued moving among the booths throughout our visit. Rural King Bristol plans to hold the market again in 2027.
Unlike a conventional produce-centered farmers market, the event brought together small farms, home bakeries, plant growers, craftspeople, and other home-based businesses. Some were already familiar from the regional market circuit. Others were businesses Kathy and I had not encountered before.
Chickens, Eggs and Unusual Farm Products
Fresh eggs are common at Appalachian farmers markets. Live chickens are not.
Three booths offered poultry for sale, although I was able to identify only two of the sellers. Hall’s Family Farm brought fresh eggs as well as chickens that customers could purchase and take home. Millie Mills Brown also operated one of the poultry booths.
Transporting live birds presents more challenges than bringing bread, preserves, or other farm goods to market. Their presence helped give the Rural King event a more agricultural character than many markets where live animals are rarely seen.
Bristol-based Crooked Row Farm brought the whole family and one of the event’s most diversified farm displays. Its table included free-range eggs, honey, apple butter, blackberry jam and peach butter, along with handmade scrunchies and skillet holders.
One product required a second look: freeze-dried eggs.
Freeze-drying removes moisture from the eggs and leaves a shelf-stable powder that can be mixed with water for cooking or baking. It is an unfamiliar product to many shoppers but one that offers a longer storage life than fresh eggs.
The family also invited me to visit Crooked Row Farm, opening the possibility of a closer look at its operation in a future story.
Plants From Carnations to Cacti
Kathy is an avid gardener, so the plant booths were among our first stops. She selected several established carnations from Orrin’s Gardening before we continued down the row.
Cliff and Patty Martin of Abingdon operate what Cliff described as a hobby greenhouse under the name Granddad’s Plant Fort. Their display was filled with cacti and succulents grown in the greenhouse.
Seeing a table covered with healthy cacti in a Virginia parking lot was an unexpected contrast to the flowers and vegetable plants more commonly associated with local markets.
The Nested Garden, a familiar vendor on the regional market circuit, also brought mature flowering plants to the Rural King Farmers Market, many already in full bloom.
The plant booths demonstrated one of the event’s strengths. Although the market lasted only four hours, it allowed growers with relatively specialized products to meet shoppers who might not encounter them at a larger weekly market.
Personalized Work Made While You Shop
At Custom Creations by Jessica, a laptop sat beside a working laser engraver. Customers could order personalized items, continue shopping, and collect the finished pieces before leaving.
I ordered four slate coasters featuring AI-generated pictures of Daisy and Scruffy.
The images showed Scruffy posing as a motorcycle racer and in a glamour photograph. Another placed Daisy and Scruffy in front of an old shack, dressed as country characters with a banjo. The fourth showed both dogs in tattered clothing and battered hats, posed as though they were begging beside the road.
By the time Kathy and I completed our first trip around the market, the engravings were finished. The process preserved small details from the original images, including Scruffy’s racing gear and the dogs’ worn clothing and hats.
Nearby, Kaitlyn Liebgott offered another kind of personalized shopping experience through Blind Date With a Book.
Each book was wrapped in paper so its title and cover remained hidden. Instead of selecting a familiar author or judging a book by its artwork, shoppers chose among them using five keywords printed on an attached tag. The words provided clues about the subject, genre, or mood of the story.
Each bundle was priced at $15.
Liebgott said she had seen similar book packages sold online at higher prices and decided to adapt the idea for local readers.
Young Makers and Traditional Crafts at Rural King
One of the Rural King Farmers Market’s younger business owners was Cierra, the proprietor of Cierra’s Sweet Scents.
Her display included candles and wax melts formed with silicone molds, along with pieces made from translucent gel wax. She greeted customers and explained the products while her family helped support the business.
Her mother and both grandmothers help guide the venture, although the business does not appear to divide their responsibilities into formal roles.
A few booths away, Glade Spring leatherworker Randy Moretz demonstrated his craft while displaying handmade belts, bracelets, and small leather animal figures.
BJK Creations Crocheting and Sewing began with Bonnie Harvey’s longtime interest in sewing, crocheting, and making practical items by hand. Her daughter, Amanda Cook, and Amanda’s husband, Thomas Cook, have since joined the Lebanon, Virginia, business.
Amanda’s involvement began when Bonnie registered for an event and needed help preparing enough merchandise. What started as a short-term effort to help her mother became a new creative interest.
“What started out as simply helping my mom quickly turned into something I absolutely fell in love with,” Amanda later wrote. “In just a short amount of time, I discovered how much I enjoy sewing and creating handmade items.”
At the Rural King Farmers Market, the family displayed quilted handbags, fabric bowl Koozies, and other sewn and crocheted goods. Their broader product line includes hot pads, jar openers, dishcloths, key fobs, lip balm holders, and other small fabric items. They also accept custom orders for particular colors, patterns, and designs.
The business represents another kind of small enterprise found at the market: a skill passed from one generation to another, then developed into a family venture.
Another booth was marked Build-A-Bear, although it was not presented as being affiliated with the national Build-A-Bear Workshop chain. The vendor rescues old teddy bears from thrift shops and antique stores, then cleans, repairs, and restores them for new owners.
Other sellers displayed custom tumblers, hats, and apparel. Taken together, the booths showed how broadly the term “farmers market” was being applied. Agriculture remained part of the event, but so did restoration work, textile crafts, leatherwork, and products made with relatively new tools such as compact laser engravers.
Home Bakeries Take Their Place at Rural King
Home bakeries and cottage-food businesses accounted for a noticeable portion of the approximately 26 vendors.
Their presence came less than a month after a change in Virginia law expanded the ways qualifying foods made in private homes may be sold. Effective July 1, certain products covered by the state’s home-kitchen exemption may be sold at physical locations or ordered through the internet or by telephone, with delivery allowed within Virginia under specified conditions. Labeling, product and food-safety restrictions continue to apply.
The Rural King market did not depend on online selling, but the change gives some of the same small producers additional ways to reach customers beyond a four-hour event.
Three vendors offered sourdough products.
Baked With Love brought jumbo cinnamon rolls, oatmeal cream pies, brown-butter chocolate chip cookies and other baked goods. A sign in front of the display read, “Granny Said Yes,” alongside the business’s handmade aprons.
The Lil Pop Shop paired flavored drinks with cake pops under the slogan “Boujie Cake Pops & Dirty Sodas.” Its selections included S’mores Biscoff and Funfetti cake pops, along with sodas bearing names such as “Life’s a Peach” and “Shark Attack.”
The Filthy Fizz, a separate and unaffiliated vendor, offered its own specialty sodas elsewhere in the market.
Keaton Homestead combined sourdough bread and produce with handmade jewelry and quart-size candles poured into Mason jars. The candles included a cactus-and-sandalwood fragrance as well as cinnamon.
The variety at the booth reflected the diversified nature of many home-based businesses. A single family may produce food, grow vegetables, and make nonfood products rather than depending on one line of merchandise.
Finch Farms Micro Bakery, which identified itself on its market sign as a veteran-owned business, offered artisan sourdough bread and cookies.
Jesse Cox of King Cat Bakery brought an assortment of bread, cupcakes, and cookies.
The number of sourdough sellers was noticeable, but three vendors at one event are not enough to establish a regional trend. What the market did show was that small home bakeries have become an established part of the local vendor community.
Food and Coffee Between the Booths
Visitors who wanted something to eat while shopping could stop at The Tasty Wagon for hot dogs and other handheld foods.
Kensington Coffee served drinks from its mobile setup, which carried the business slogan “A Cup Above” and identified its crew as “KC and the Brew Crew.”
Those vendors gave shoppers a reason to stay at the event rather than walk through the booths and immediately leave. They also added another layer to a market that operated somewhere between a farm sale, a craft fair, and a small community festival.
A New Group for Scott County Homesteaders
The market also provided a place to introduce a new community organization.
Danny and Angela Kurtz of Kurtz Farm in Hiltons sold preserves, extracts, and baked goods while sharing information about Homesteaders of Scott County, VA.
The group’s first meeting is scheduled from 7 to 8 p.m. July 30 at Orange Blossom Creamery, 115 W. Jackson St., Suite 201, in Gate City. The informal meeting is open to anyone interested in learning more about homesteading.
Larry and David Musick are scheduled to speak. They are members of the family behind Musick Family Farm and have connections to the agricultural communities of Scott, Russell and Washington counties.
Angela described the first gathering as an introduction to the “how and why” of homesteading.
“There’s going to be a lot of teaching and growing,” she said.
The organizers hope the group will allow experienced farmers and homesteaders to share practical knowledge with people who are just getting started. Future meetings are expected to be held at the Scott County office of Virginia Cooperative Extension, although no additional dates have been announced.
Information is available through the Homesteaders of Scott County VA Facebook page, by calling 419-908-3185 or by emailing kurtzfarmstand@gmail.com.
More Than an Accidental Stop
By the time Kathy and I returned to Jessica’s booth, the pictures of Daisy and Scruffy had been transferred onto slate and were ready to take home.
Elsewhere in the parking lot, shoppers carried plants, bread, preserves, and handmade goods toward their vehicles. Leatherwork was being demonstrated under one tent while live chickens waited beneath another.
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