Jeremy and Julie Calvert haven’t ever been to the local Sweet Tater Festival. Though they’re a vital part of Cullman County’s productive agricultural cycle, the husband-and-wife farming team is just too busy to leave the fields unattended.

“We do get to go to the Strawberry Festival because we sell our strawberries there — but when most of the big events come around, we’re the ones who are back at home: We’re outside working!” laughs Jeremy, a Cold Springs-area native who’s been farming just about as long as he’s been out of school.

Drive down Alabama Highway 69 just a short ways west of Dodge City, and you’ll spot the family’s J. Calvert Farms retail store — a big red building with a welcoming front porch — right alongside the road. One visit is all it takes to know the Calverts put their all into perfecting their wide variety of locally-grown goods, even as the family hones their agricultural craft to improve on the vine-ripened successes that’ve come before. “No produce is ever ‘perfect,’” says Jeremy, “but we try.”

Whether it’s early summer or autumn harvest time, the store’s shelves are carefully set with row upon row of close-to-perfect strawberries, peaches, tomatoes and pumpkins (the farm’s four biggest crops) — along with a seasonal array that includes everything from cucumbers to peppers to peanuts, squash, okra, peas, corn, watermelons, blackberries, and probably a few more goodies we’ve missed — all grown right on the family’s split farm and orchard operation in the county’s southwest corner near Brushy Pond.

The Calverts are the quintessential local farm family. Their current business started out with just the two of them, and slowly grew, as the years passed, into an endeavor that’s just big enough to require a seasonal staff that tops out at around 20 workers, while affording Jeremy and Julie to focus on the specialized things they’re good at (tractoring and taking care of field farming for Jeremy; managing the retail business for Julie). In 2013, they were named the Cullman Farm-City Farm Family of the year.

That division of labor is a relatively recent luxury; one earned through the kind of all-hands-on-deck effort that comes from years of building a family business from scratch. Part of what makes J. Calvert Farms present such a well-cared-for product to customers — not to mention a store experience that cries out to be photographed and tagged to Instagram — is the fact that Jeremy and Julie have worn every hat there is to wear, at one time or another, in the operation they’ve bootstrapped since the early 2000s.

“We married in ’99, and technically, all I’ve ever done is farm,” he says. “I like watching things grow. We started out in wholesale potatoes, and then in 2002 or so, we got more into retail, growing a wider array of vegetables and selling them. At the same time, we were growing commercial broilers, but a storm took us out of the broiler business, and we’ve focused on produce since then.”

Taking the family farm directly to community customers isn’t easy. In fact, says Jeremy, it’s probably tougher than running an industrial-scale agricultural outfit — whether the product is beef, chickens, or produce. Still, it hasn’t stopped the Calverts from branching out farther as their business expands, as Jeremy’s about to find out the fun way (or maybe the hard way) when the store hosts its first-ever Fall Fest event, complete with pumpkins, hay rides, and loads of kids’ activities.

“‘The girls’ asked me if they could do a fall fest, and I said ‘yes’ — and now I’m afraid of just how big a thing it is I’ve gotten myself into!” he jokes. “At first I thought they were just going to do a little face painting, get a food truck, and maybe sell pumpkins. But from the response they’ve gotten on Facebook, we’re starting to get worried about parking. We don’t know how many people are gonna come, but we’ll work through it … because we definitely want them to come.”

That event is set for Saturday, Oct. 22 (from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.), but there’s plenty of work around the farm to keep the family busy before turning the corner on the Halloween and Thanksgiving season.

“We’ve always tried to have the best product we possibly could,” says Jeremy. “With this store, I have control of the way my business is operated — and in the years to come, when it’s time to retire, to hopefully have something to show for it. Somebody here lays their hand on everything we grow and sell: Almost without exception, we sell a strawberry the very next day it’s picked, and rarely ever more than the day after that.

“It’s a lot of work, but the Lord’s been good to us — that’s all I know to say. He’s been really, really good to us.”

J. Calvert Farms operates its family retail store at the intersection of Alabama Highway 69 and County Road 260, just a short drive west from the hustle and bustle of Highway 69’s busy Dodge City crossing with Interstate 65 at Exit 299. The store is a participant in the nonprofit Sweet Grown Alabama foundation connecting customers with home-grown Alabama produce (online at sweetgrownalabama.org), and carries a curated selection of locally-raised and cottage-made jams, cheeses, meats, honey, tea, and other packaged products that round out its array of farm-raised fruits and vegetables.

For more on J. Calvert Farms, visit the store on Facebook (facebook.com/j.calvertfarms) and check out its online storefront at jcalvertfarms.com.