For more than three decades, Old Tyme Feed & Garden Supply in Fairhope has been the kind of store where a quick trip for potting soil can turn into a half-hour visit. Owners Cecil and Linda Christenberry opened the business in October 1987 as a feed and seed store serving a largely rural corner of Baldwin County. As the Eastern Shore grew from farmland into one of Alabama’s most sought-after places to live, the store changed with it, shifting from livestock feed and agricultural supplies to home and garden goods while holding on to old-fashioned values and friendly service.
In a spring 2023 interview, Cecil reflected on the store’s beginnings, his years in local politics, a macaw named Bama and the plan he was then working on to pass the business to a longtime employee.
Saturday Sharpening and a Welcome for Neighbors
Cecil has a reputation for saying yes when people ask for a hand, and a recent example drew crowds to the store’s parking lot. Jay Buckson, who runs a side business called Chandus Sharpening, showed up one day and asked if he could set up his portable sharpening operation outside. Cecil agreed and announced it on Facebook, inviting customers to bring knives and tools on Saturdays to have them sharpened on the spot.
“The first weekend was pretty good,” Cecil says. “Then word got out, and it’s been crazy ever since. We had to put a schedule out so people would know when Jay would be here. His real job is HVAC repair, and sometimes he has to work weekends, so we needed to let people know.”
It is not the only time Cecil has made room for someone else’s venture. When a couple who created a line of farming-themed T-shirts asked to display them in the store, he said, “Sure.” The shirts sold out quickly, and they have been selling and restocking ever since.
The store has a way of bringing people together. During one visit, Linda brought a couple into Cecil’s office who had been friends from their childhood days in Chickasaw, just north of Mobile, and whom they had not seen in years. That kind of reunion, customers say, is just the way things go at Old Tyme.
From Chickasaw to Auburn to the Co-Op Circuit
Cecil grew up in Chickasaw, the small Mobile County city that developed around shipbuilding in the early 20th century. He earned a degree in agricultural science from Auburn University, majoring in animal dairy science, and went to work for Gold Kist, a large agricultural cooperative based in Georgia.
As an animal specialist for Gold Kist, he was assigned to Pell City, Alabama, where he called on beef and dairy farmers to sell feed, seed and animal supplies. He then spent six months in Brown Station near Greensboro, Alabama, followed by three years in Dothan. “That was a dead-end job, and it was going away,” he says.
Cecil and Linda eventually made their way to Fairhope, where he worked at the Alabama Farmers Cooperative store. With two young daughters and tired of moving, the couple began looking for a way to stay in Fairhope and raise their family there.
A Handshake, a Sketch and a Lease-Purchase
The best opportunity, they decided, was to open their own store. The problem was that they had no startup capital. Help came through their Methodist church, where Larry Chason introduced Cecil to Grey Cane, owner of the Kemko Building Company.
At their meeting, Cecil drew out the plans for a store on the spot. Cane bought a piece of property from Ingersoll Dairy, built the building and offered Cecil a 10-year lease-purchase arrangement for the fixed amount he had invested in the property.
Cecil left his job at the co-op in March 1987, determined to leave on good terms. “It was a family thing,” he says. “We had two young girls and another on the way, and I didn’t want to ruffle any feathers.” Old Tyme Feed & Seed opened seven months later, in October 1987. “The community embraced us immediately.”
To compete with the farmers’ co-ops that dominated the feed business, Cecil made a promise to customers. “When I first opened, I pledged to be open 30 minutes before and close an hour after my competition, and I did every day except Sunday for years.”
A Store That Grew With Fairhope
When Old Tyme opened, much of the land around Fairhope was still farms and pasture. Baldwin County’s agricultural roots run deep, with generations of families raising cattle, row crops and dairy herds across the county. Over the decades that followed, the Eastern Shore became one of the fastest-growing areas in Alabama, and subdivisions replaced many of the fields that once supplied the store’s customers.
The business adapted. It carries the name Old Tyme Feed & Garden Supply to reflect how the community’s demographics have changed over the 35-plus years the store has been open. Cecil used to sell a lot of agricultural products; today the focus is home and garden supplies for a population that is, as he puts it, “growing like a weed.”
“The people of Fairhope have supported us all the way,” Cecil says. “If we were still just a feed store, we would have starved. The whole demographics has changed, and we’ve been discovered.”
That shift fits the way people garden on the Eastern Shore today. Coastal Alabama’s mild winters, long growing season and ample rainfall allow many home gardeners to plant both spring and fall vegetable gardens, keep flowering shrubs such as azaleas and camellias blooming across the seasons and tend lawns for much of the year. A neighborhood garden store with experienced staff who can answer questions about soil, pests and planting times fills a real need for newcomers learning to garden in the Gulf Coast’s heat and humidity.
Cecil and Linda have lived in Fairhope for 40 years.
Two Terms on the City Council
Thirteen years after opening the store, Cecil decided it was time to give back, so he ran for a seat on the Fairhope City Council and won. He served two terms, until 2008, and learned a lesson in the process. “I learned real quick, even in a loving, small community, that retail sales and politics don’t mix well,” he says.
He remembers his exit well. “After my last meeting, I took off my tie, thanked everyone, and said, ‘I’m done with politics. I’m going to the store and try to make everyone love me.'”
That vow did not entirely hold. When Bob Callahan announced he would not seek a third term representing Fairhope on the Baldwin County Board of Education, Cecil worried about who would take his place. “He did a great job, but who was going to represent Fairhope schools for Baldwin County?” After arguing with himself for a while, Cecil told Linda he was thinking about running. Her response: “I was wondering how long it would take you to realize you should run.”
Bama, the Store’s Feathered Mascot
No visit to Old Tyme is complete without meeting Bama, a blue-and-gold macaw who has been the store’s mascot for about two decades. About 20 years before the 2023 interview, Cecil got a call from John Thrash, who lived in Mobile’s Oakleigh Garden District and was in the large bird business. Thrash had a blue-and-gold macaw about 10 years old and wanted Cecil to help sell him for $2,500, with the two splitting the proceeds.
Cecil agreed to take the bird with one condition: “I’ll take him, but if something happens, I’m not responsible for $2,500.” Instead of selling Bama, Cecil fell in love with him and ended up keeping him for just $300. Macaws are among the longest-lived parrots, and Cecil notes they can live to be 80 years old, so Bama could be greeting customers for a long time to come.
Planning the Next Chapter
In 2023, another transition was on the horizon. Cecil was working on a plan to sell the store to longtime employee Chris Haney, who first worked at Old Tyme from age 15 until he was 21 and returned seven years before the interview. “He does everything,” Cecil says. The two were working out the details of transferring ownership, with Cecil planning to stay around to help. He was clear on one point, though: “Bama goes with the store!”
What Shoppers Should Know
- What they carry: Old Tyme has moved from feed, seed and animal products to a focus on home and garden supplies, though its roots in the feed business remain part of its identity.
- Saturday sharpening: Chandus Sharpening has set up in the parking lot on scheduled Saturdays. Because the schedule depends on the owner’s other job, check the store’s Facebook page for current dates.
- Local goods: The store has made space for local makers, including a popular line of farming-themed T-shirts.
- Say hello to Bama: The store’s macaw mascot is a longtime customer favorite.
More than 35 years after a sketch drawn at a meeting became a building, Old Tyme remains a place where the service is personal, the owners know their customers by name and a friendly conversation is part of every purchase.