About the Farmer

“Take the good with the bad.”

That’s the motto Claude Karns carries with him, on his farm and in his life.

“It wasn’t a real good year for my strawberries,” he said.  “Too wet for them.”  Then he held out his thumb and forefinger, spreading them about six inches apart.  “But I’ve already got green beans this long, and they’ll probably be ready in two weeks, earlier than most,” he said.  “Take the good with the bad.”

Along with those prodigious beans, Claude forecasts many good harvests this year; he has already brought lettuce, onions, potatoes, strawberries, and peas to the Clinch River Farmers Market, and plans to come back each week with an assortment of beans, squash, tomatoes, beets, melons, cabbage, and more potatoes. 

“I’ve got a pink tip bean I have to save seeds for,” he said.  “And sulfur beans—that’s one of the best green beans there is, just a good old-timey bean.”

With two large gardens to tend, one at his home near Castlewood High School and the other in Burtons Ford, Claude, 66, says he works more hours than he did before his recent retirement from a twenty-year career at a Bristol factory. 

“You’d be surprised,” he said.  “You get out there pickin’ beans, and you find how long it takes to pick a bushel.”

He doesn’t mind.  “I’d rather be in the garden than in the rat race,” he said. 

This is the kind of hard work Claude welcomes, and he has a lot of hard work to compare it to.  A native of Ohio, he served as a young man in the United States Air Force, spending time stationed in Texas, Illinois, and Georgia, before settling in southwest Virginia.  “I was coming through here and seen the mountains and said, ‘This is where I want to be,’” he said.

After a few years as a hired farmhand, he began working at the factory, but has always kept a garden of his own.  He is also an avid fisherman and raises a few steers and chickens on a friend’s land.  By eating what is fresh and making use of a Russell County community cannery, he is able to eat almost entirely his own home-grown food, with a grocery list limited to things like coffee, sugar, and oil.

To the benefit of shoppers at the Clinch River market in St. Paul, Claude also grows plenty extra.  “When I really get into bringing stuff, I’ll come here with a whole truckload of pretty much everything people are looking for.”

His farm doesn’t have a name, but it does have a reputation.  “People come here looking for my red truck,” he said with a smile.

Even though farming is only recently a full-time endeavor for Claude, he brings a lifetime of familiarity with the ritual—and also, the relentlessness—of maintaining a vegetable garden. 

“I’ve done this sort of thing ever since I was a little young’un,” he said.   “And my great-grandpa was my hero.  He’s the one that always had a garden, always raised everything he ate. You know, he never had much money, but he always had something good to eat.”

It’s a simple aspiration Claude brings into his retirement, along with always making time for a fishing trip.  “Whenever it rains,” he said, “you can’t go out and work in the mud anyway, so you go fishing.”

Take the good with the bad.

The Clinch River Farmers Market, located in the St. Paul town square, is open on Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Wednesdays from 2 to 5 p.m.  For more information, visit www.townofstpaul.org.