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(L to R) Terrani Moore, Isaiah Moore, and Eddie Moore. (Clark Curtis/For WDN)

Eddie Moore gets the tomatoes ready. (Clark Curtis/For WDN)

Moore Family stand at the Farmers Market. (Clark Curtis/For WDN)

Terrani Moore helps customer find the perfect cantaloupe. (Clark Curtis/For WDN)

Fresh cantaloupe and watermelons. (Clark Curtis/For WDN)

Fresh Okra. (Clark Curtis/For WDN)

On most Saturdays from late April to Christmas, you will see three generations of the Moore family tending to their produce and vegetable stand at the Farmers Market at 6th and Market Streets. On this late summer Saturday morning, with a hint of fall in the air, it was Terrani Moore, her son Isaiah, and her father Eddie. “Our farm over in Blounts Creek goes back at least four generations before my father,” said Terrani. “I’m 43 now and I started going to farmers markets with my grandparents when I was around five years old where they would sell the vegetables and produce they had grown. Back then we would go to the stockyard in Ayden and the Farmers Market in New Bern. By the mid 80’s the family started branching out. My dad opened a stand at the Farmers Market right along the waterfront in Washington where we stayed for many years until they started revitalizing downtown. We then moved to an open field market on Whispering Pines across from the old State Employees Credit Union, then to the corner of Bridge and 3rd Streets, and finally here about seven years ago.”

For Terrani, the people are part of the joy of coming to the market, week after week, year after year. “One of the neat things is some of the same customers we had when I first went to the market with my grandparents are still our customers,” said Terrani. “And it’s not just them but their children and other relatives of theirs. They remain faithful and keep coming back every year. It is like we are family to them, which means a lot.”

And of course, there are also new faces each week which also have a special place in her heart. “We are always meeting people from other states and countries or those who are living on their boats along the waterfront,” said Terrani. “I think of them all as snowbirds that come to the south during the winter months. I love hearing their stories and meeting their pets and loved ones. They always ask about us and our farm. And like many others, they return each year, which we so much look forward to. I just love meeting them all.”

Growing up, farming was the only way of life that Terrani knew. Both her mother’s and dad’s sides of the family were all farmers. That meant many days of early mornings and late afternoons tending to the laborious tobacco crop and harvesting row upon row of cucumbers and other vegetables that would be sold at the market. “All I know is that summers were spent farming,” said Terrani. “We didn’t have summer camp or didn’t go and do other things, we worked on the farm. The girls did as much as the boys. It was a real family effort every day. I just inherited farming, it is in my blood.”

To this day, Terrani credits those life lessons as a child growing up on a rural farm in Blounts  Creek with preparing her to be able to work anywhere and do anything that she wants. “When you are young, you don’t realize all of the values it is instilling in you and the foundation for your life that is being laid,” said Terrani. “It took me growing up, moving away and going to college, and having a career, to finally realize the lineage that farming has had on my life. If you can hang with farming you can do just about anything.”

The Moores still have family that operates stands at the Farmers Market in New Bern and the Leroy James Market in Greenville. Her father Eddie also goes to the Ayden stockyard every Wednesday. They also sell vegetables and produce at the market in Blounts Creek. 

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