ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — Along State Road 207 sits the County Line Produce Stand. As its name denotes, it's right on the St. Johns-Putnam County line.
"In the last couple of weeks we’ve been extremely busy," Kelly Bland said Monday morning.
She and her husband own the produce stand. They just made the heart-wrenching decision to temporarily close it in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
"It's for the safety of our employees, customers and ourselves," she told First Coast News. "We really thought long and hard the last couple of days and decided last night we better shut it down for a couple weeks."
It is open for a couple of days this week.
"We’re trying to sell what we can as far as things that will no keep in the cooler," Bland said. "Things we really need to sell soon, we’re going to try to do today and tomorrow."
This is one of several produce stands and farmers markets in northeast Florida that have shut down because of COVID-19.
Those closings are a punch in the gut for farmers who rely on these kinds of markets.
Brian Jones is a farmer in St. Johns County, and he is also with the Florida Farm Bureau. "The farmers market at the St. Augustine Amphitheater is a huge market for our farmers," he said. "We have small farmers and big farmers who use it, and it's shut down. All we want to do is get food to your table."
In doing that, farmers are able to still earn a living off the crops they've already planted.
The owners of the County Line Produce Stand are farmers themselves. They have acres and acres of corn. And if their corn is ready before the produce stand re-opens, they’re going to have to get creative with how they sell this crop.
Bland said, "We might have a drive-up situation where people call it in or drive up, and we run out, see what they need, run in, get their items, and bring it back out."
For now, Bland and her staff explained to their customers they hope to re-open soon. After all,this closure is nearly unprecedented for this produce stand.
"For 54 years, this is the first time we’ve ever had to do anything like this, other than in 1983," Bland said. "That's when we had a freeze and we had to close for two or three months because it killed everything on the farm. So We've never had to close for any other reason. This is our source of income. It’s a tough decision all the way around."