Drive U.S. Highway 98 through Daphne in any season and the front of Hazel’s Market announces itself before the building does: ferns stacked in green rows, blooming plants in a rolling rotation of color, and a steady stream of neighbors walking out with produce in hand. The family-run market at 26751 U.S. Highway 98 has been part of the eastern shore landscape for more than two decades, and its calendar is written in crops — ferns in late winter, sweet corn in early summer, satsumas in October, Fraser firs in late November.
A Family Business Built on Word of Mouth
Darrell Lundy, who owns and operates Hazel’s Market with his wife Sandra, their twin sons Ethan and Isaac, and daughters Emma and Clair, didn’t invent the business — he inherited its name and gave it a future. The market first opened under the hand of a local woman who lived across the street from the present location, running it for the folks who owned the building. The Lundy family had deep roots in the produce trade themselves; Darrell’s parents had owned a produce market in Lucedale, Mississippi, and worked for years at a wholesale produce market in Mobile.
When Darrell and Sandra — both of whom grew up in the Mobile area — heard by word of mouth that Hazel’s Market was available, they took the plunge. They leased the property, kept the name, and opened in 2001. Today the market closes only after the Christmas holidays, from January to mid-February, and reopens in mid-February for what Darrell calls the start of their new year. Ferns are the biggest seller at the gate, and spring blooms carry the front of the market through Mother’s Day before tropical plants take over as the weather warms.
Plants are sourced locally from Elberta up to Lucedale, Mississippi, while fruit trees come from Louisiana. Satsuma trees — a Gulf Coast tradition going back more than a century in Baldwin and Mobile counties — are the most popular, and demand has skyrocketed since the pandemic, when people spent more time planting in their yards. Hard winters take a toll; after one recent hard freeze, plenty of young trees didn’t make it.
The Season, Written in Produce
From mid-May, the first local sweet corn arrives and, as Darrell puts it, it all happens at one time — that’s what gets the summer going. Chilton County peaches and local blueberries follow, then squash and zucchini as the corn plays out in late July, and local watermelons after that. By August the peaches are winding down; it is too hot for local tomatoes, so the market shifts to tomatoes from Sand Mountain in Alabama, then Tennessee and North Carolina.
“If you don’t have tomatoes, you’re not in business,” Darrell says.
Around the first of September the fall shift begins: decorative gourds and flowering mums. In October, satsumas are the headliner — a Gulf Coast specialty that newcomers from up north often meet for the first time at a place like Hazel’s. Turnips and collards start in October too, and the greens get the full treatment: washed three times, cleaned, stripped, and destemmed by hand. Cut vegetables sell all year.
Mid-November brings the Fraser fir Christmas trees, from tabletop to twelve feet, which typically sell out in about three weeks, alongside garlands and wreaths that can all be frocked. Poinsettias arrive right after Thanksgiving, and the cycle rolls back around to ferns and spring color.
More Than Produce: A Taste of Baldwin County
The shelves around the produce tell their own story of local food. Hazel’s carries local peas and beans, shelled and ready for cooking; fresh-boiled peanuts waiting by the register; and baked goods that Sandra and the daughters produce themselves — banana bread and pumpkin bread are the biggest sellers, with mini pecan pies and strawberry and blueberry pies alongside. Shelled pecans are always in demand, especially around the holidays.
Specialty items lean deliberately local: Kittrell’s local honey, Shube Sauce, and Viper BBQ sauce made nearby; a deep bench of preserves, many juice-sweetened for shoppers watching their sugar; candied jalapenos that spike in popularity around the holidays; Bread and Butter pickles and Sweet Fire pickles; Joyce and Tailgate cheese straws; cakes from Dean’s Cakes in Andalusia; a full lineup of Amish-made pasta, butter, and pantry goods; and Conecuh sausage and bacon, the south Alabama standard. There are frozen staples too — Kelly’s Biscuits, homemade chicken and dumplings, locally grown shelled peas and butter beans — plus bales of fresh pine straw and, in season, bundles of pussy willow that last for months in a tall vase.
Darrell swears by Vardaman, Mississippi sweet potatoes — “They can’t be beaten” — and keeps an eye on the salad trade as well, stocking Local Appetite Growers spring mix when it is available, because people eat more salads in the summer.
Learning the Trade From the Ground Up
There was no business school behind Hazel’s — there was the wholesale market in Mobile, where Darrell’s parents worked for years, and the market they once owned in Lucedale, Mississippi. Growing up around loading docks and seasonal freight teaches lessons that are hard to fake: what ripe looks like on a given week, how a cold snap changes a delivery, and why you wash greens three times before they ever reach a customer. Those habits are visible throughout the store, from the hand-stripped collards to the way the corn display appears almost overnight in mid-May.
The family division of labor keeps it running. The twin sons, now in their mid-twenties, handle much of the heavy lifting around the market; the daughters help Sandra with the bakery side, turning out the banana and pumpkin breads that anchor the counter and the mini pies that disappear fastest around Thanksgiving. It is the kind of operation where everyone who rings you up probably also unloads the truck.
A Year at the Market, Week by Week
Ask Darrell what is in season and you get a calendar, not an answer. Mid-February: ferns, the market’s biggest seller, and the first blooming plants that carry the front beds through Mother’s Day. Late spring: tropical plants as the weather warms, and the first local sweet corn around mid-May. June and July: Chilton County peaches, local blueberries, squash, and zucchini. Late July: the tomato relay, as Sand Mountain fruit replaces local tomatoes too heat-stressed to hold, followed by Tennessee and North Carolina supplies. September: gourds and mums. October: satsumas, turnips, and collards. Mid-November: Fraser firs, garlands, and wreaths, selling out in roughly three weeks. Post-Thanksgiving: poinsettias, then the holiday rush of pecans, candy, and gift tins.
The satsuma trade captures how much the market has changed with the times. Gulf Coast citrus has been grown along the Alabama coast for more than a century, and Baldwin County growers have led its modern revival. At Hazel’s, whole satsuma trees are as popular as the fruit itself — demand, Darrell says, has skyrocketed as residents poured into new yards during the pandemic and started planting. Freezes trim that enthusiasm the hard way; after one recent hard winter, plenty of young trees across the county didn’t come back.
A Fixture Along U.S. 98
For Daphne — a city on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay that has grown into one of Baldwin County’s largest communities — Hazel’s Market sits at the crossroads of that growth and the county’s agricultural past. U.S. 98 still runs through farm country in stretches, and the market’s suppliers read like a map of it: growers from Elberta to Lucedale, fruit trees from Louisiana, honey and sauces made within a short drive of the counter.
That local supply chain is the point, Darrell says, whether the customer is a weekly regular buying collards or a newcomer discovering satsumas for the first time. The market’s one annual pause — mid-January to mid-February, after the Christmas trees are gone — is the only break in a rotation that otherwise never stops moving. When the ferns come back out, the new year begins again.
Why Shopping Local Still Matters
Markets like Hazel’s do more than sell groceries; they read like a seasonal calendar for the county. Baldwin County remains one of Alabama’s agricultural powerhouses, and Gulf Coast citrus in particular — led by the satsuma — has staged a genuine revival after early-20th-century freezes nearly wiped it out. When a family market stocks Elberta-grown plants, Chilton County peaches, and local honey in the same trip, it keeps a food chain alive that big-box produce aisles can’t replicate.
The seasonal rhythm also makes it a place regulars plan around. Spring belongs to ferns and blooming plants; early summer to corn; July to tomatoes; fall to gourds, mums, and satsumas; and the holidays to fir trees, wreaths, and pecan pies. shoppers who time it right can watch the county’s harvest roll by week by week.
Hazel’s Market is open daily on U.S. Highway 98 in Daphne, closing only for a post-Christmas rest from January to mid-February — the one stretch of the calendar when the ferns and the firs both get a break.