Who We Are

The Farm

We do our very best, and put lots of time, effort, love, sweat, and yes, even tears, into growing our absolute possible best on our 300 acre farm. The results of our efforts are a harvest of great tasting peaches and other fruits and vegetables that cannot be matched in grocery stores! The pleasure in growing is when we see our efforts make others truly happy with out sweet Texas peaches.

Peach season begins around the end of April and can last all the way through September. During those months you can find the fruits of our labor at the Cooper Farms Country Store in Fairfield. We also send trucks to Conroe, Huntsville, and Waco to provide roadside purchase of our peaches and good, wholesome produce to those communities and the towns surrounding them. When we have enough peaches, we supply Central Market, Brookshire Brothers, H-E-B, Rice Epicurean, HG produce, and Farmers Market in Ft. Worth as well as several other places. We provide a direct store delivery, which insures those fresh picked peaches were hanging in the tree the day before.

The Cooper Farms Country Store is where we have our biggest impact on relationships with people. We take pleasure in interacting with thousands of people and families from all over Texas and the United States! Yes, our biggest attraction is, of course, the fresh peaches from Cooper Farms, but the peach Ice cream, milk shakes, and old-timey ice cream floats are a close second!  In the bakery, the aroma from 100’s of pies and cobblers, the most popular being the gooey, delicious peach cobbler and the hand-braided peach pie, wafts through the store on any given day. They are excellent and even better with some of our homemade vanilla ice cream on top. The pecan pies are to-die-for and will cure any sweet tooth!  Alongside these delicious treats the bakery creates peach bread, banana bread, cherry pie, cherry cobbler, chocolate pecan pies, hand pies, and many other seasonal goodies!

Cooper Farms Country Store is nostalgia. There is a wide selection of over 350 sodas in glass bottles to enjoy just like the old days. Add to that the nostalgia candies everyone can remember fondly from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and all the way through today. The nostalgia carries over to craft sodas on tap and the wall of taffy!

The History

Cooper Farms was originally started by Tim and Kathy Cooper with just 5 acres of land in 1983. Tim had worked for Fairfield Farms growing up and at 23 years old decided he wanted to start his own farm.  Tim and Kathy both worked full time jobs and farmed on the side. They kept putting money earned back into the farm to buy more land, make improvements and plant more trees. In the late 90’s Tim and Kathy both quit their jobs and began farming full time. They sold their peaches and other produce out of roadside trucks up and down the I-45 corridor and in farmers markets. In the early 2000’s they began selling peaches to grocery stores Central Market and HEB. In 2010 we bought the property where our store is now and turned it into what customers see today. It was our goal to be able to sell more of our crop straight to our peach customers out of Fairfield and our store allows us to do that.

The People

Brady and Elizabeth Johnson own and manage the country store, the distribution, and the farm. As high school sweethearts Brady became interested in farming and the farmer’s daughter while working in the orchards for Elizabeth’s parents, Tim and Kathy Cooper. Brady and Elizabeth both attended Texas A&M University and graduated with a degree in Horticulture with an emphasis on Fruit Production. Through their time in College Station they continued to work the farm and the store, coming home every weekend and even during the week. Brady and Elizabeth now have two young children, Jacob and Jaselyn.

It has been a blessing to be able to work our land and produce fresh, homegrown fruits and vegetables for people traveling through our Fairfield community for the past thirty plus years. We hope to continue growing on our land for many years to come.

We are followers of Jesus Christ. Our successes and blessings come from Him and through Him alone. For that reason, we strive to dedicate our efforts to him. Rising early every day before the sun comes up, we sweat and work the land in appreciation of the farm life he has given us.

We are a family and a community and a neighbor. We aspire to show exactly who we are and what our values are as individuals and as a family business. That means when anyone walks through the doors of Cooper Farms they should be encouraged and lifted up, knowing God loves and cares for them, and we do too. We hope to accomplish this by offering a cozy, family-friendly stop where travelers can slow down long enough to enjoy an ice cream or milkshake on our front porch while listening to Christian music. Where families can experience a unique and memorable stopover during their travels and feel as if they are apart of the Cooper Farms Family.

We are farmers, growing about 70 different varieties of peaches along with nectarines, plums, blackberries, figs, donut peaches, and vegetables on approximately 300 acres of land, situated in Fairfield, Texas, which is centrally located between Dallas and Houston on I-45.

Clay Holifield has been a part of Cooper Farms since 2012 and has done everything from picking peaches, to road-side selling, to grocery store deliveries, and now assist in the management of the store along with the accounting and bookkeeping. Clay graduated from Sam Houston State University with a degree in accounting. He is engaged to a wonderful young lady who stands beside him and shares him with us through the long days and weeks of the summer. We are blessed and grateful to have such a committed, excellent and hard working guy beside us.

The Team

Our Team at Cooper Farms Country Store and Roadside Trucks- we are blessed to have an amazing group of individuals who each bring their own strengths and ideas to the team. We have several full-time positions at Cooper Farms Country Store that are filled with talented people who really bring a unique atmosphere to the workplace. We also hire many High School and College age kids in the community and give a lot of them their first job experience. This is important to us as we are able to impact young people’s lives and watch how their character, experience and self confidence grows over the few years we get to spend with them before they leave for college or their career. This is one of the most satisfying parts for us! It’s not always easy being a mentor and manager and a friend to these kids but it is absolutely worth it.

The farm crew consist of around 5 full time guys and around 20 during harvest. These guys are the ones behind the scenes getting the job done. It is long hot days through the Texas summer working every day to harvest the best peaches at their peak of ripeness. Peaches do not know it’s a holiday or a day off. They get ready when they get ready and our crew does a fantastic job of staying on top of the massive project of harvesting 300 acres! We are blessed to have guys who truly love their job and enjoy what they do!

The Struggles

For anyone who has ever farmed you know that farming is a very trying profession. It is a constant battle of it being too wet, too dry, high winds, hail storms, late freezes, early frost, bug invasions, volatility of the market and so on. The list is almost never ending. Add on top of this the customers expectation of having to have the perfect unblemished peach and it truly feels at times that you are trying to accomplish the impossible. Another struggle is on the personal side and that’s the strain of farming and running a business puts on your family. During harvest Brady works 100+ hours a week, which leaves little time for a family. This is part of farming and we accept that responsibility. We do what we do because we love it. It’s not always easy or fun but when we put a smile on customers’ faces when they bite into a sweet Cooper Farms peach it makes it all worth it.

Thank you to everyone who chooses Cooper Peaches every year and supports local growers in their community.

Brady and Elizabeth Johnson
Owners