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Working outdoors in produce can be dangerous to your health.

Just ask Barbara Dillon Brown, owner (with her husband, Johnny) of King’s Highway Produce Market on the curve connecting Bridge Street and King’s Highway in Eden.

Working sometimes 126 hours a week, often in 100-degree heat, sent her to the hospital this summer with heat exhaustion and dehydration.

After she got out, she spent the rest of the week resting at home and worrying about cantaloupes arriving for her customers.

During a regular week, Barbara is out before dawn in her large produce truck, traveling to farmers markets to pick up produce in locations as far away as Asheville, Winston-Salem, and Stuart, Va., and returning to King’s Highway that day to deliver the produce.

Four family members handle the customers and the 30 or more local growers who bring in produce straight from the vine.

“It is hard work and requires a lot of hustle on my part,” Barbara says. “Our family has been selling produce for over five generations, back to our great-great grandfathers. You can say it is in our blood.”

When she was 11 years old, Barbara rode with her father, Floyd Dillon, to sell their own produce out of a truck.

“We put the produce on back of the pickup with antique hanging scales attached to an old bed rail. ... We would sell everything in just a few hours,” Barbara said.

Often they set up their truck and produce as part of roadside flea markets.

In 1976, Floyd Dillon opened Dillon’s Produce on Hamilton Street in front of his home.

Along the way to adulthood, Barbara decided to try avenues other than produce. She held several other jobs before going to work at Food Lion stores in Madison and Summerfield. She held positions as produce manager and second to the manager.

Barbara found that working for others was not as satisfying as working for herself or with family. She longed for life on a farm.

When her father closed his market on Hamilton Street, she began to think of going back to produce and into business for herself, but including family members.

Floyd Dillon suggested that an abandoned service station on King’s Highway might be just the place for a very visible produce market.

Barbara won $2,700 at Bingo and used it to open her own place. The oil company “practically gave the station” to us, she says.

She opened King’s Highway Produce Market on a rainy April 1, 1999, with an old end table and scales and a register borrowed from her father.

By the end of the week, customers were coming in greater numbers and soon a building was added.

King’s Highway Produce Market is open year-round, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sundays.

The old end table has been replaced with table after table of tomatoes, beans, potatoes, apples, lemons, squash, peppers and on and on.

Flowers for bedding and flower baskets for hanging bring in the spring, and fall festival items, pumpkins, gourds, take up the counters.

The once abandoned filling station houses an ice cream shop. There is an air-conditioned building behind the produce tables where Barbara and her family keep delicate produce out of the heat.

Inside this space, old-fashioned candies and canned goods are also sold.

Other grocery items, such as butter, eggs and bread are in refrigerators, as are cold drinks and other items.

Barbara feels lucky to have made selling produce a foundation of her life.

She awakes each day anxious to get out to help her customers.

Eden native Rachel Wright is a retired Morehead High School teacher and RCC instructor.