CARLISLE -- A fish fry, not a fish farm, has been a key part of Kenneth Caviness' farming operations between Carlisle and Hazen for about the past 30 years.
When he and his farm workers are finished with their corn, soybeans and rice for the year, they take a farm shop of about 6,000 square feet and transform it into Big K's Catfish Barn, a Saturdays-only catfish buffet that attracts a few hundred hungry diners who come as far as 50 miles for supper.
Now 76, Caviness leaves most of the catfish work to his employees and their family members.
Caviness essentially held court at a round table on a recent Saturday. As soon as the doors opened at 4:30 p.m., about 40 people filed through, with their first stop at the cashier ($15, adults; cash or check only).
After rounding their plates with fried catfish steaks and fillets, french fries, hush puppies and slaw, many stopped by Caviness' table to say hello, before taking seats along enough cafeteria tables to seat 300. There is no dessert, unless one counts the made-to-order fried biscuits, with optional honey and white powdered sugar.
Tommy Holmes of Hazen, a retired farmer and a lifelong friend of Caviness, was among the pioneers at Caviness' early fish buffets. "I couldn't venture a guess," Holmes said, when asked to estimate how many Saturdays he has come to the catfish barn.
Caviness doesn't advertise, although the 21st century did bring forth Facebook, where Caviness' staff might post an occasional comment or, more often, a customer would make a remark on the feed.
Caviness once raised catfish on his spread of a few thousand acres, but that was a lot of work and he put an end to it, he said.
He started his buffets in the mid-1980s, mainly as gatherings for friends and family, but soon turned it into a business to bring a little money into a farm operation that slows considerably during winter. The fish during those first few years came from his own farm. Now he buys pond-raised fish from Arkansas and Mississippi, delivered on ice every Friday.
Big K's opened this season on Dec. 3, a rainy and cold Saturday, with 342 diners. "It really takes a lot to keep people away," said Dee Davis, a regional manager for Riceland Foods who a few years ago took over a lot of the chores done by Caviness. Some people have been known to charter a bus for a group trip, he said.
"This is a word-of-mouth operation," Davis said.
The record for the number of diners on a single Saturday -- 665 -- was set this year in January. There was a wait of up to 45 minutes that night, and Davis and his kitchen staff went through about 130 pounds of fish an hour, he said. A crowd of 300 or so is more normal. Its final night this buffet season is April 1.
Once crops are in, it takes about a week to clear the farm shop of the pallets of seed and fertilizer and other supplies. Most equipment that smells of diesel and oil are stored in other shops and sheds on the farm.
"It may not be 'restaurant clean' but it sure is 'farm-shop clean,"' Davis joked. (For the record, Big K's is licensed with the state Department of Health, and a document saying as much hangs on the wall of the farm-shop kitchen of about 300 square feet.)
Caviness said he has never thought of putting an end to the buffet, and has no such plans now.
He also has never thought about expanding the menu to include, say, the ribs of buffalo fish ("too bony") or crappie ("too hard to get").
"I've met a lot of people doing this and enjoyed every bit of it," Caviness said. "But if there was a bunch of money in this, like a lot of people think there is, a lot more people would be doing it."
While Big K's is visible from a certain spot on Interstate 40 near Hazen, a visitor can't get there from there. The best route is along U.S. 70, roughly halfway between Hazen and Carlisle. Across from Murry's, another popular catfish establishment, take Anderson Road to the north for about 3 miles. Big K's is on the right.
Business on 12/30/2016