Meet Craig & Kikki of Tucker Farms

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Meet the people who grow your food! Craig and Kikki Tucker have been farming for over a decade and we get all kinds of produce from them for our meal kits: lettuce, bok choy, arugula, tomatoes... the list goes on! Craig started out in construction, while Kikki started out as a litigator–put those two together and fast forward a few years, and you've got Tucker Farms!

Tell us about Tucker Farms! Where are you located? What kinds of produce do you grow?

We are located in Rome Georgia, about an hour North of Atlanta. We grow lots of lettuces and greens as well as a healthy variety of seasonal crops like tomatoes, squash, onions, sweet potatoes, brassicas, radishes and carrots.

How did you get into farming? Did you always know this is what you wanted to do?

We both grew up with grandparents who had large gardens, but we didn't envision farming for a career until we were older. Craig started out in construction and Kikki litigated for 8 years before joining Craig full-time at the farm.

What’s your favorite crop to grow?

Hard question! Though they give us the most anxiety, we are pretty obsessed with tomatoes!

How do you choose which crops to grow?

We've been doing this long enough that we mostly rely on sales history, crop notes (e.g., which crops grew well and had good yields), and customer feedback to shape our crop plans each year.

What’s the hardest part of operating a farm?

Juggling all the variables! We have a great team right now, but weather and labor are probably our biggest challenges.

What does eating locally mean to you?

We are really lucky to be part of a thriving farm community and local food scene in Georgia! We love buying food directly from our farmer friends at markets, but we also really appreciate eating food prepared by local chefs and artisans who support Southeastern growers.

If you had to give a rough estimate, how many pounds of produce do you think you grew for G&G last year?

Glancing at last year's sales notes, it looks like well over 5000 pounds! Wow! Thank you!

Do you have any go-to recipes for using your produce?

Honestly, we are TERRIBLE at recipes. We love simple roasted vegetables (currently carrots and brassicas are on regular rotation) as well as lots of salads! We really like to use nut and seed butters as the base for our salad dressings - combined with some salt, acid, herbs/garlic/shallots, and a bit of natural sweetner, the flavor possibilities are endless! We also tend to load our salads up with ALL THE TOPPINGS: we love lettuce plus arugula or kale topped with nuts, legumes, sometimes grains, raw veggie ribbons, pickled veggies, fermented veggies, roasted roots, fresh and dried fruit. We are all about variety and flavor! (G&G note: these sound like the BEST kind of salads!!)