Look no further for Mother’s Day gifts because Zalen Williams in Grainger County has everything you need to treat mom with the best this Mother’s Day – flowers and fresh produce for brunch – on this East Tennessee flower and produce farm.
The story, as Zalen Williams’ mom always told it, is that he was only about 11 months old when he disappeared one day from the specially made pallet where he was sleeping in the tomato patch on the family farm. “I woke up and I guess I crawled off,” Williams jokes. “She said she found me in the Johnson grass.”
That may have been the earliest sign he had a green thumb. Decades later, Williams is growing his own tomatoes – and much more – at Williams Farms in Rutledge and Rogersville Produce in Rogersville, which he co-owns with his wife, Sherry. But in the springtime, much of his attention is focused on supplying his loyal customers with hanging baskets and bedding plants for their moms, grandmothers and other important women in their lives. “That’s by far our busiest season for flowers, the week of Mother’s Day,” he says.
Blooming Business at an East Tennessee Flower and Produce Farm
Williams’ parents, Ethel and Glen, started the farm in the 1940s. Williams took over the business in 1980 as his dad’s health declined, and he opened Rogersville Produce as a place to sell the farm’s crops. Five years later, the market added flowers purchased from other growers.
“But I just couldn’t find the quality that I wanted,” Williams notes. So he started growing his own…