SOUTH PARIS — Paris Farmers Union announces that longtime employee and general manager Peter B. “Herky”  Card is retiring from the company.

Card has been with the company as a full-time employee since 1966 and worked for it before that on a part-time basis while attending Paris High School. In 1974, the year the company was purchased by Peter Chapman of Oxford, Card was filling the role of delivery driver, traveling from farm to farm, home to home delivering Blue Seal bag feed.

In 1978, Chapman built a new retail Paris Farmers Union store at Skillings Avenue and Route 26, and Card was chosen to manage it. The store grew and provided the company the opportunity to expand and open additional retail locations, so in the early 1980s, Card moved into the company office space above the retail store and did much of the purchasing for the company and assisted Chapman in the company’s expansion.

In addition to adding retail stores, the company utilized a significant amount of warehouse space at the A.C. Lawrence manufacturing facility on Pine Street in South Paris and later moved that warehouse facility to the Paris Manufacturing plant facility on Western Avenue in South Paris.

In the mid 1990s, Card was named general manager and Paris Farmers Union purchased the former Mecon Manufacturing facility on Madison Avenue in Oxford and moved the warehouse and office operations to that facility. During these years the company enjoyed significant growth and the need for an even larger facility was short in coming. In 2004 the company moved warehouse and office operations to the former Cornwall Manufacturing facility on Route 26 in Oxford, where it remains today and from which Card will retire as general manager on Aug. 14.

Paris Farmers Union has operated as a home, farm, garden and pet supply business since 1919.