Virginia Moore | Lynchburg Cemetery | Appalachian Trail
What crunchy product is a state
agricultural hallmark? A visit with
the families who give us …
Peanuts
www.Virginialiving.com
October 2009
$4.95
Photograph by Casey Templeton
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For the 200 farmers in southeastern Virginia’s peanut belt, this is a special time of the year:
harvest season. Low prices have shrunk production volumes, but nobody is giving up on an iconic
food crop that goes back nearly 170 years. After all, Virginia farms still grow some of the world’s
best (and biggest) peanuts, and state processors still put the salty, crunchy morsels on tables
across America. As one Surry farmer says, “I have peanuts in a field that belonged to my greatgreat-grandfather. This is a family tradition.” By Ben Swenson | Photography by Casey Templeton
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Opposite page: James Porter Jr. leveling peanuts in a truck bed
V i r Porter
g i n i has
a Lworked
i v i n in
g the peanut
at Indika Farms. Like his father,
business all his life. Here: Todd Cutchin’s peanut farm in Sedley.
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In the rising light of a cool spring dawn,
brothers Billy and Jesse Gwaltney are preparing for a long
day at Indika Farms. They’re glad to finally be moving;
heavy rains have held them up for more than a week. That
the work can finally begin doesn’t make their task any
less daunting, though. They will work until 9:00 p.m. and
plant as many as 100 acres. The Gwaltneys are sowing a
peanut crop, following in the footsteps of their father, William Gwaltney, Sr., who began growing them in the 1940s.
Billy and Jesse have already prepared the ground, plowing
long rows, or beds, 36 inches apart. Today, they will attach
a planter to their tractor. The planter seems a cumbersome
accessory; it is squat and wide, with springs, discs and
hydraulic lines stretching the length of it. For all its bulk,
however, the planter is a precision instrument, gliding effortlessly over eight beds at a time, depositing one peanut
seed every three inches—no more, no less. In a few days,
the plants will sprout, and the Gwaltneys will begin the
time-honored practice of tending a peanut crop.
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Indeed, the Gwaltneys,
and about 200 other farmers,
are continuing a more-than160-year-old tradition in
southeast Virginia, one that
has left an indelible mark on
the region’s landscape and
culture. It’s hard to miss: the
country stores, weathered
lettering and all, pawning
peanuts to passersby; the
level, gray fields stretching to
distant tree lines, full of neat
rows of bright peanut plants;
the aged brick processing
plants in downtown Suffolk
and the modern facilities
that have replaced them.
Literally and figuratively,
the peanut has deep roots in
the fields and towns in this
part of the state—chiefly
the counties of Dinwiddie,
Greensville, Prince George,
Sussex, Surry, Isle of Wight
and Southampton and the
city of Suffolk. “I have peanuts growing this year in a
field that belonged to my
great-great-grandfather,”
says Kevin Monahan, who
farms near the town of
Dendron in Surry County.
“There’s a family tradition
here, and peanuts are something that I enjoy growing
and harvesting. It requires
a lot of time and labor, but
there’s nothing like the smell
of green peanuts in the field
at harvest time.”
But tradition only partly
explains the endurance of
this annual crop, even as the peanut
industry has been battered in recent years by oversupply and lower
prices. Quality drives demand for
any product, agricultural or otherwise, and few dispute the fact that
Virginia, while only the ninth-largest
American producer of peanuts by
number of acres planted, makes some
of the best peanuts in the world. Of
the four types of peanuts grown in
the United States—Valencia, Runner, Spanish and Virginia—the last is
most highly prized for its extraordinarily large kernels.
Even though the Virginia-type
peanut is grown in other states, it
is the only kind planted in the commonwealth. The largest size, or
grade, of Virginia peanut is called
“super extra large,” and it most often
ends up as finger foods and gourmet
products. “Virginia peanuts are well
known,” says Dell Cotton, Virginia’s
top peanut promoter. Cotton serves
Above: Joe Blythe, 71, has been
growing peanuts for 40 years.
as executive secretary for the Virginia
Peanut Growers’ Association, a farmers’ trade group, and program director for the Virginia Peanut Board, a
state agency that administers funds
to promote the industry. “There’s not
a comparable size in other types of
peanuts, so farmers of Virginia-type
peanuts get more money for them.
For instance, the Runners grown in
much of the Southeast are mostly the
same medium size.”
Despite the food’s popularity,
peanut production in Virginia has
steadily dropped over the past several years, owing largely to a decline
in available farmland, an oversupply
of peanuts and a 2002 federal farm
bill that did away with a guaranteed
price per ton for peanuts. Whereas
Virginia farmers once grew in the
neighborhood of 100,000 acres of
peanuts annually, the commonwealth
now lags far behind other states—
among them, the Carolinas and
Texas. In 1988, for example, Virginia’s
peanut farmers planted 91,000 acres
and got more than $600 per ton,
thanks to legislation that guaranteed
a high price per ton. In 2008, Virginians produced a fraction of that, just
23,000 acres, receiving a price of
around $450 per ton. Monahan explains that falling prices are a major
reason that many farmers stopped
growing peanuts in favor of other
crops such as soybeans and cotton.
“Peanuts require a lot of specialized
machinery that is only good for that
one crop,” he says. “A lot of this
machinery is getting old, and farmers are having a hard time investing
in the repairs and new equipment if
they don’t know that they’re going
to make a return on that investment.
You can only farm for so many years
at a loss.”
Even with the tough market conditions, the Gwaltneys, along with other peanut farmers in this state, say
they are in this business for the long
haul, if only because they have too
much money and passion invested in
it to quit. “The day I stop growing
peanuts is the day I quit farming,”
says Billy Gwaltney, 53, an amiable
country farmer who speaks with the
drawl common south of the James
River. As with all farmers, a good
peanut crop will help the Gwaltneys
handily—and the brothers are optimistic that this year’s harvest will
turn out well as long as the weather
remains in their favor.
Indika Farms (pronounced inDIKE-uh) is a family business. As
children, the Gwaltney brothers
would get off the school bus in front
of the farm’s office and help see to
the day’s chores. Their mother, Dot,
still comes down to help out at the
height of the harvest season. Indika
Farms has expanded over the years,
though Billy Gwaltney notes that the
1,500 acres he and his brother work
constitute only a medium-sized farm.
This year, the Gwaltneys will not
only grow their own peanuts—about
300 acres of them—but they will
also buy peanuts from seven farmers
around Windsor in Isle of Wight
County, where Indika Farms is located. Indika Farms is somewhat
unique because it is a commissioned buyer for Birdsong Peanuts,
a Suffolk-based peanut distributor.
Area farmers sell their peanuts to
the Gwaltneys, who are permitted to write checks for Birdsong.
The Gwaltneys have a processing
operation on-site, and they clean
and shell the peanuts they grow, as
well as the ones they buy from other
farmers, before the crop is trucked
to Birdsong. The Gwaltneys are unlike many other farmers, too, in that
much of their harvest becomes socalled “seed peanuts”—that is, peanuts of a certain grade and quality
that will be the seeds used to plant
next year’s crop.
Because of how the plants grow,
Virginia’s peanut belt is limited to
land with specific soil conditions.
The peanuts are planted in early
May, and about a month later the
shin-high, oval-leafed plant blooms.
The plant’s delicate, yellow flowers
send stems, or “pegs,” into the soil
below. From each of the 40 or so
pegs, a peanut grows underground.
Peanut crops demand sandy soil
because the ground must be loose
enough to allow the pegs to push
down a few inches into the dirt.
West of Dinwiddie, east of Suffolk
and north of the James River, the
ground isn’t suitable. Virginia’s peanut belt, then, has clearly defined
boundaries.
Peanut plants are more
sensitive than one might think.
They are susceptible to disease and
fungus, and the dewy mornings and
humid summer days so common in
southern Virginia are the perfect
petri dish for organisms that can
ruin a crop. “Every time I take that
out, it costs me $3,000,” laments
Jesse Gwaltney, 48, pointing toward
his sprayer—a tractor with a large
tank and arms that spread out horizontally to coat the rows of peanuts
with fungicides necessary to ensure
the crop’s survival.
Come September, after a few
months of meticulous care, the peanuts are harvested. Peanut farmers
use a “digger” to do the job. It turns
the entire plant—leaves, pegs and
peanuts—upside down. Rather than
immediately whisking away the peanuts for processing, however, farmers do a curious thing: They leave
them in the field to dry. The peanuts
themselves consist mostly of water,
and allowing them to dry in the field
for a week reduces their moisture
content and gets them ready to be
shelled and processed.
“We pray for hot, dry days with
no frost,” says Billy Gwaltney. “Frost
can ruin them.” Virginia’s weather is
actually a mixed blessing. While the
weather fosters peanut-destroying
fungi and bacteria, it is also what
makes Virginia peanuts stand out
from those—even of the same type—
that are cultivated in more southerly
locations. “We let them dry naturally for seven days, and our climate is
one of the reasons that our peanuts
are some of the best in the world,”
says Gwaltney. “These peanuts are
cured. Down south, they do a good
job, too, but they have hotter weather, which dries the peanuts out
quickly and changes the complex of
the oil. Our 60-, 70-, 80-degree days
cure them a lot slower and keep that
good flavor in there.”
All four varieties of peanut plants
make peanuts of different grades,
each of which has a specific use.
Clockwise from top left: Jimmy
Creasey, a veteran season worker at
Severn Peanut Co.; Clint Williams
levels peanuts; a tractor at Todd
Cutchin’s farm; farmer Joe Blythe;
unpicked peanut plants.
Smaller peanuts are pressed for oil,
while medium-sized peanuts (those
that the Gwaltneys use for seed)
are typically sold to processors that
make candy and peanut butter.
Large peanuts are generally used for
products in which the peanut remains whole—flavored or chocolatecovered peanuts, for instance. The
largest Virginia-type peanuts—constituting only a small fraction of any
farmer’s harvest—are designated
super extra large, and these are the
gems of the state industry. They become the salted cocktail peanuts and
other specialty products, such as inthe-shell, that are a favorite among
consumers.
The Gwaltneys’ tidy office—
the epicenter of Indika Farms—is
dwarfed by mammoth silver holding
tanks that store the peanuts the farmers have grown and bought. These
tanks, like everything else at Indika
Farms, are an important part of getting the peanuts from the ground to
the table. Once the peanuts have been
collected from the field and had their
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stems removed by a picker, they are
inspected by regulators and moved to
the tanks, where they await their turn
in the adjacent “sheller.” For all but
in-the-shell peanuts, the hulls must
be removed and the peanuts separated according to size. The sheller at
Indika Farms occupies fully half of a
warehouse-sized building. It is a highly mechanized series of instruments
that remove the kernels from their
shells in rotating drums. The peanuts
pass over a series of screens, computerized air jets and gravity separators
and emerge whole, clean and ready to
be trucked away. At every step of the
way, the Gwaltneys, like other peanut
farmers around the country, rely on
technologies that have made peanut
farming more efficient and profitable.
Their tractor has a global positioning
system and can literally drive itself.
“My dad wouldn’t believe how far
peanut farming has come,” says Billy
Gwaltney.
Peanut farming has come a long
way since they were first grown commercially in the 1840s near the town
of Wakefield, in Sussex County. In
those days, peanuts were considered
a curiosity, even good animal feed.
Not until the turn of the century,
boosted by new technologies as well
as the research of renowned biologist George Washington Carver, who
found about 300 uses for peanuts,
were they grown on a large scale.
As peanuts became a popular staple
food in the century that followed,
demand for them flourished. It has
remained strong ever since. Dell
Cotton explains that the public’s appetite for peanuts usually increases
about 2 or 3 percent each year. Unlike other products, peanuts rarely
encounter spikes or declines in popularity, remaining instead a commodity with predictably strong appeal
among consumers.
In the town of Waverly, a few
miles west of Wakefield on Route
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Left: a plant with some 40 pegs
(stems), each holding a peanut.
Below: Dot Gwaltney and her son
Billy at Indika Farms.
for instance—and 30 or so employees
to process about 1 million pounds of
peanuts a year.
The peanuts begin their journey
through Hubs’ production line in
eight-pound baskets, in which they
are given a blanching, or hot water
bath, of several minutes. Each of
the baskets moves in line through
a trough containing the hot water.
After the blanching, the continuous
cooker ferries the baskets through
a second trough, this one containing hot oil, in which the peanuts
are roasted. The peanuts are dried
quickly, salted, measured by weight
and put into packages of all sizes.
Throughout the process, Hubs’ employees perform quality control to
make sure that only peanuts of superior quality are sold.
The company’s cooking process—
In a Nutshell:
Number of Virginia
peanut farmers:
About
460, the main artery through peanut country, a nondescript building
at the Miles B. Carpenter Museum
complex pays tribute to the heritage
of the peanut. “First Peanut Museum
in U.S.A.” boasts the sign on the
white clapboard structure, which
houses artifacts, pictures and folk
art from the Virginia peanut’s storied
past—decades-old peanut shellers
and graders, for instance, all handoperated. Shirley Yancey, president
of the museum’s board of directors, seems to have an encyclopedic
knowledge of the peanut’s history
in this state. Born during the Great
Depression, Yancey is a lifelong resident of Waverly. She remembers well
her father’s fall harvest of peanuts in
the 1930s and ’40s, prior to the advent of equipment that allowed one
or two farmers to grow hundreds of
acres. Yancey says the crop helped
see her family through hard times.
Before machines replaced human
labor, turned peanut plants were
“shocked,” or stacked on six-foothigh stakes to dry. “My mother and I
would go out where the peanuts had
been shocked … where some peanuts
would be left on the ground,” she
says. “We would pick a hundred
pounds of peanuts and put them
in a burlap bag and sell them. We
got 10 dollars for that bag. I bought
200
my clothes for school and had some
money left over.”
Growing peanuts is
only the first part of the business, of
course. The second part is processing them for consumers. Hubbard
Peanut Company, tucked away in the
tiny Southampton County village of
Sedley, population 1,100, is not the
biggest processor in the state, but it
is one of the oldest and was the first
to process the highest grade—super
extra large—on a wide scale. In Sedley, residents keep neat houses with
well-groomed lawns, and life seems
to drift by at a leisurely pace. A dish
on the counter of the town’s post
office offers patrons—what else?—
peanuts.
“Hubs” was founded here in 1954,
in a small Cape Cod home owned
by H. J. Hubbard and his wife, Dot.
They began cooking and selling the
peanuts grown so abundantly in the
surrounding countryside. Hubs has
grown a lot since those days. In the
1960s, the firm built the first of many
additions, creating an industrial processing facility next to the original
home, which now serves as the company office. The plant uses modern
equipment—a continuous cooker, a
cooling tunnel and a salting machine,
Price per ton for peanuts:
$600
1988
$450
2008
Farmland in acres in Virginia
devoted to peanuts:
91,000 23,000
1988
2008
Counties and cities in Virginia
where peanuts are grown:
Dinwiddie
Greensville
Prince George
Sussex
Surry
Isle of Wight
Southampton
and
the city of Suffolk
M a p B y L u n a Al f o r d
blanching them in water and roasting them in oil—has remained unchanged since Dot Hubbard began
cooking them five decades ago.
Hubs’ sleek, spotless production
facility has streamlined the process,
allowing the company to process a
volume of peanuts beyond H.J.’s and
Dot’s wildest imaginings.
Lynne Rabil, one of four Hubbard
children and now Hubs’ president,
maintains an office in a room of the
original home. She knows her workspace well—it was the bedroom she
and her twin sisters shared as young
girls. Among her responsibilities is
acquiring the super extra large Virginia-type peanuts that the company
uses to make Hubs’ products. One
of Rabil’s local suppliers is Birdsong
Peanuts. And one of Birdsong’s
many peanut providers is Indika
Farms, where the Gwaltneys grow
and buy peanuts around Windsor.
This, of course, means that some
of the very same peanuts that Rabil
processes at Hubs came out of the
ground only a few miles down the
road at Indika Farms.
From Sedley, Hubs peanuts are
sold around Virginia and the country,
directly to individuals, organizations and stores. Hubs prefers to
deal as closely with consumers as
possible, only rarely selling their
peanuts through a distributor. Hubs’
employees, some of whom have been
with the company for decades, pride
themselves on their company’s history, the connection to the land that
surrounds them and the quality of
the product they put on tables. “Being a family business that started
here and has stayed here is important
to us,” says Rabil. “My mother prepared peanuts the way that farmers’
wives had for generations. Now we
take the best of the field, the best of
the crop, and prepare them the same
old way it had always been done.”
Of course, Hubs has some competi-
Eat ’em, Buy ’em
For Pete’s Sake, Courtland
757.653.9031 Sells peanut pie, fried
catfish and barbecued pork.
Virginia Diner, Wakefield
1.888.823.4637 or VaDiner.com
Offers many varieties of seasoned
peanuts and peanut pie.
Retail stores: Plantation Peanuts (PlantationPeanuts.com) and
Wakefield Peanut Co. (WakefieldPeanutCo.com), both on Rte.
460 in Wakefield.
Above: the quality control and
packaging operation at Hubbard
Peanut Company
tion. There are more than a dozen
processors in Virginia, the largest
being Suffolk-based Planters Nuts
(with their iconic Mr. Peanut logo).
Other companies have established a
strong reputation in the state, too.
Virginia Diner Restaurant, for instance, is a fixture along Route 460 in
Wakefield, and the gourmet peanut
products the firm sells under its own
brand name are familiar in many
parts of the state; some children sell
Virginia Diner peanuts for school
fund-raisers. Bacon’s Castle Brand
Peanuts and Red Fox Peanut Company are two other, smaller companies
in the industry.
Virginia’s peanut growers and
processors face many challenges,
but Dell Cotton believes that none
is insurmountable. Indeed, Cotton
has witnessed firsthand the industry’s peaks and troughs over the last
two decades—including last year’s
salmonella scare. He contends that
Virginia’s peanut growers, and the
industry as a whole, have plenty of
reasons for optimism. Peanuts are a
cheap source of nutrition, he notes,
and thus remain popular during eco-
nomic downturns. And they do not
require cooking once in the consumers’ hands. What’s more, he thinks
that Mother Nature might help end
the oversupply problem. “It’s been
awfully wet,” he says, “and the number of acres planted will be low this
year. That should work all the surplus out of the system.”
Above all, Cotton knows that peanuts are in the blood of farmers in
southeast Virginia—people like Billy
and Jesse Gwaltney. While there
will always be bad seasons and
challenging market conditions, not
to mention the relentless encroachment of exurban sprawl, these issues
can’t devalue the labor that goes
into putting Virginia peanuts on
family tables, or change the trusted
traditions that define Virginia’s peanut belt. And as long as consumers
reach for a tin of cocktail peanuts,
and as long as the Hotel Roanoke
and other establishments continue
to serve peanut soup, Virginia’s peanut growers and processors will be
happy to serve the demand. For that
reason, the yearly cycle of planting,
growing and harvesting peanuts
goes on. “We may put a few other
crops in the ground,” says Billy
Gwaltney, “but first and foremost,
we’re peanut farmers.” •
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