Text and photos by Michael Gery

• Introduction
• Farming Challenges
• A Produce Store Is Born
• Download the full article as a

Farming challenges

How do the Robersons decide when to change directions at their farm? Kenneth Sr. says that in the early going, they just changed when they felt like it. “At that time we didn’t have much,” he told me. “So we didn’t have much to lose.” The farm began as a “four-horse farm,” he explained, meaning that they worked about 80 acres, 20 per mule.

Kenneth Jr. says he never thought twice about being a farmer. “It’s what I’ve always done.” As a relatively small farm, there always was plenty that had to be done. “This job is here 24 hours. And it has its own kind of benefits.”

The Robersons left the chicken business when the corporations began setting the rules and calling the shots. “After that, you were no longer independent,” Ken says. Tobacco farming followed its own wavy course, subjecting farmers to strict contracts with the big tobacco companies, as the federal government set quotas on what you could grow while supporting the price you could get. Although the quota and price support system has been eliminated, the Robersons decided to continue growing tobacco on about 100 acres. But in 1999, Kenneth Sr. closed the Hardees Tobacco Warehouse that he had owned and run since 1946. When tobacco farmers had to contract with corporations instead of growing independently, there was no need for the auctions that had been such a large part of farm life.

Another major upheaval that affected not only the Robersons but all of Robersonville was the new four-lane divided state Highway 64 that bypassed the town when it opened a few years ago. The highway was planned to come right through some of the Roberson farmland. Ken and Vickie Roberson just shake their heads sadly when they remember those days. The woods where their kids would run and play—the same woods that grew the “family tree” all the boys carved their name in—would be gone. (They managed to save that tree, though.) The route was slated to go through some families’ houses. A rare Republican at the time (he lost an election for state Commissioner of Agriculture to Jim Graham in 1976 by a landslide), Kenneth Sr. sat on the state Board of Transportation during the Holshouser and Martin administrations. He worked as best he could to move the highway’s route so that no family would fare any worse or better than another. Even so, many of the businesses that once relied on the old Highway 64 traffic have closed. Bennette Roberson’s children’s clothing store is still open downtown and so is The Fillin’ Station restaurant. Another venture they steered into not long ago—a roadside produce stand and pick-your-own strawberries field along the old Highway 64—is seeing far less traffic these days. The action is out along the new Highway 64. The Handi Mart gas station and convenience store that used to be just east of town moved into a new building at the exit cloverleaf onto Highway 903. So did the Chinese restaurant, the Family Favorites restaurant and the ABC Store that had been in town. Now there’s also a Food Lion, a McDonald’s, a pizza place, a video store and a Dollar Store.