A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Low 76F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph..
A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Low 76F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph.
A shelluva story! Dig into these tasty tidbits about Virginia's famous peanuts
BY REX AND KATHY SPRINGSTON
Peanuts have deep roots* in Virginia.
The once lowly legume – not even a real nut – has become a staple of our food culture. Despite a checkered past, the peanut transformed a sandy stretch of southeastern Virginia not far from Richmond into a global powerhouse.
Even Mr. Peanut himself ... well, one of them ... hails from our state.
Here, in a nutshell*, are kernels of the story so you'll know beans about peanuts in Virginia.
(* These puns, like peanuts themselves, are hard to resist.)
SUFFOLK-NANSEMOND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Revered, reviled: Experts say peanuts originated in west-central South America – and were so highly regarded that the ancient Incas of Peru buried jars of them with their dead. Eventually, large and luscious Virginia peanuts became famous worldwide ... but in the Colonies and early America, peanuts were considered fit only for slaves, poor people and pigs.
African ties: The easily stored nuts made ideal food for mariners, who spread them across the globe. In the 1500s, Portuguese explorers took peanuts from Brazil to their coastal African settlements, according to the book "Peanuts: The Illustrious History of the Goober Pea" by Andrew F. Smith. Africans – some of whom thought the food had mystical power – adopted the oil-rich nuts and took them across much of the continent.
Food of slavery: From Africa, slave ships brought peanuts to North America – and indeed, the nuts fed captives onboard. On this continent, enslaved people raised peanuts in their small gardens, often working by moonlight.
By many names: Its wide-ranging journeys brought the peanut many names. The synonym "goober" is said to be derived from the word nguba from Congo. Similarly, Guinea natives called nuts gubagubs. Explorers in the Caribbean heard it called maní (a Spanish word for "peanut" today). Scientifically, the peanut is the less mellifluous Arachis hypogaea.
In Virginia: Peanuts in Virginia were probably first grown in Surry County, according to Suffolk historian Sue Woodward. There, the sandy soil is more suitable than across the James River, where English settlers first established themselves.
War and peas: During the Civil War, soldiers from the North and South ate peanuts and spread the good word about them, helping popularize the nuts. In an old folk song, hungry Confederates sang about delicious "goober peas."
Peas? Nuts? Huh? Peanuts are not true nuts, by botanical standards. They actually are legumes – plants with seeds in pods (like butter beans, lentils and soybeans). They don't grow on trees (as nuts do) or on vines (as peas and beans do). Instead, the peanut's yellow flower sends out a stemlike "peg" that pushes underground, where the tip matures into a shell with kernels.
Sound and smell: The thought of eating things pulled from the ground, the mess of shelling and cleaning them, and the crunch of husks underfoot in theaters and train depots made the peanut slow to catch on with the upper crust. In 1870, Harper's Weekly said eating the "ungenteel" peanut created a "pungent odor to the breath."
Promotion in print: In the early 20th century, the Richmond Dispatch defended the peanut's honor, according to the book "Peanuts." The paper wrote: "A persistent effort long has been made to stamp the peanut with the mark of vulgarity, but this nefarious scheme has been a total failure. ... Now the peanut – especially the Virginia product – travels on its merits and comes in contact with the best people of our land."
No place like loam: Peanuts grow in loam – a fertile, sandy soil found in a belt from western Tidewater to the Petersburg area. Prime peanut country in Virginia is the "four S's and an I" – that's Suffolk and the counties of Southampton (the top producer), Sussex and Surry, plus Isle of Wight County. To a lesser extent, nuts are also grown in Greensville, Dinwiddie, Prince George and sometimes Brunswick counties.
From nut to nut: How do you get peanuts? By planting peanuts. Farmers plant "seed peanuts" in late April or early May, depending on the weather. The growing season is long (about five months), and the peanuts are harvested in October and November in an effort to beat the frost – a bigger gamble in Virginia than in the Deep South.
PLANTERS PEANUT CENTER
Making his mark: Benjamin Hicks, an African American farmer in Southampton, invented a gasoline-powered machine for stemming and cleaning peanuts in the late 1890s. He also fashioned a peanut planter and advanced the peanut harvester. Hicks is honored with a historical marker along state Route 616 just north of Courtland.
Top of the pile: The Virginia peanut – grown in Virginia, the Carolinas and Texas – is the largest peanut type in the nation. Because of its size, great taste and satisfying crunch, it is the cocktail peanut you are likely to eat at a fancy party or (in the shell) at a ballpark. "People know about Virginia peanuts," said Dell Cotton, executive secretary of the Virginia Peanut Growers Association, a Franklin-based trade group.
By land: Today, Virginia farmers tend only about 25,000 acres of peanuts, Cotton said – while the sandy loam in Georgia, the nation's leader, hosted about 700,000 farmed acres in 2018. Virginia's acreage, which topped 160,000 in the late 1940s, still approached 100,000 in the early 1990s. But a federal quota program that ensured respectable prices ended in 2002 – and many farmers got out of the business. Virginia's peanut acreage dropped to about 12,000 in 2009 before leveling off in the mid-20,000s.
Dollars are down: Virginia peanut farmers generated about $22 million in 2018 – much of that gross revenue directed to tractor payments, land rents, seeds and other expenses, Cotton said. That figure was down from about $86 million annually in the early 1990s.
The biggest market: Yet for most of the 20th century, Suffolk – about 85 miles southeast of Richmond – was called the Peanut Capital of the World and the World's Largest Peanut Market. Even a local radio station was named WLPM. Suffolk High School fans chanted: "I'm a peanut born and a peanut bred, and when I die, I'll be a peanut dead." The local peanut queen wore a gown of nutshells, which attracted admirers ... and mice.
SUFFOLK NEWS-HERALD
The real Mr. Peanut: An 11-year-old Italian who spoke no English was sent to America in 1889. Among other jobs, Amedeo Obici sold peanuts by horse and wagon in Scranton, Pa. Later, Obici and a partner founded the Planters Peanut Co. in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Obici moved manufacturing operations in 1913 to Suffolk, where the nuts were grown, and Planters became a huge presence there.
And the icon: Mr. Peanut – the dapper goober with top hat, monocle and cane – was born in Suffolk in 1916. The story is that Mr. Peanut was the brainchild of a 14-year-old boy who won a $5 Planters logo contest. But Smith's book "Peanuts" says similar nut-man figures had been published for years.
One spry nut: Mr. Peanut appeared in New York on a Times Square billboard in the 1930s and in TV ads beginning in the 1950s. Mr. P, who celebrated his 100th birthday in 2016, is still active, showing up in a February Super Bowl ad with that other Planters public-relations vehicle, the 26-foot-long Nutmobile.
Local legacy: Obici and wife Louise moved to Suffolk around 1920. After his wife's death in 1938, the businessman built Louise Obici Memorial Hospital in her name. The hospital continues today as Sentara Obici Hospital, where the two Obicis are entombed.
A shell of its past: Though peanuts remain important to Virginia's economy, Suffolk's primacy is a thing of the past. Local leaders are now quick to promote other industries (and WLPM went off the air years ago). In truth, titles like "peanut capital" are hard to quantify. "There has always been about 10 peanut capitals that have claimed that," said Cotton, of the growers association. Other "capitals" include Dothan, Ala., and Sylvester, Ga.
Still a presence: Planters, now part of the Kraft Heinz Co., is no longer Suffolk's largest employer. But it still runs a plant in the city that employs 320.
Sheller central: Not only were lots of nuts grown in the Suffolk area, but numerous major "shellers" operated there. A sheller is a factory that cleans raw peanuts – tossing out sticks, stones and the occasional shotgun shell – then shells the nuts and sells them to candy makers and other companies.
Down to one: In the mid-1960s, there were 13 or so big shellers in Suffolk. "Now, we are the only one left," said George Birdsong (above), 79, CEO of Birdsong Peanuts, which operates that last Suffolk plant. "It's just part of life," he said as he toured a downtown peanut exhibit. "Things change."
A big player: Birdsong Peanuts is going strong. With its plant in Suffolk and five more in the Deep South and Texas, it is the largest sheller in the U.S., Birdsong said. It processes about one-third of the country's 3 million or so tons of peanuts each year.
KATHY SPRINGSTON
Peanuts, the movie: Wakefield-area filmmaker Amy Drewry has finished a one-hour documentary on Virginia's peanut country, funded with nearly $200,000 in donations from sources including Virginia Humanities, an educational foundation affiliated with the University of Virginia.
A broader thought: The rise and fall of peanuts in Virginia is much like the stories of coal in Appalachia, tobacco in the South and steel in Pittsburgh, Drewry said. "We as a society never seem to be prepared for the fall of an industry. We ride the wave up and are always surprised at the crash, as though we think it will never happen. I'm hoping a national audience will recognize this and begin to have conversations around how to let an industry give way to another without so much pain.
REX SPRINGSTON
Three more: Beyond the Virginia peanut, there are three other types of peanut. Valencia nuts (similar but smaller than the Virginia style) are grown mainly in West Texas and New Mexico, and they often are sold in their shells or boiled. Spanish nuts (nearly round and pea-sized) are grown primarily in Oklahoma and Texas, and they are used mostly in candies and peanut butter. Runners (the most produced nuts) are grown mainly in the Deep South, and they are used primarily for peanut butter.
Yes, we can: Virginia boasts more than 20 businesses that put peanuts in cans and ship them across the country. They include the Virginia Diner and the Hubbard Peanut Co., which makes Hubs Peanuts. You can find more of these places and information about Virginia peanuts in general at aboutpeanuts.com.
DOTHAN EAGLE
GO A LITTLE NUTS ...
Here are some ways to dig up peanut fun. (Days and hours of operation can vary, so check before traveling.)
... AROUND RVA
A museum piece: You're not supposed to touch the paintings at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, but you might feel like grabbing a peanut right out of a rustic, realistic work (c. 1890) called "Free Sample, Take One" by American painter De Scott Evans (aka S.S. David). Evans fools viewers in another way, too: He made it appear that jagged glass might cut someone trying to get a peanut.
Batter up: Peanut Night with the Richmond Flying Squirrels is Aug. 20 at the Diamond. The Virginia Peanut Growers Association (for the 10th year) will give out T-shirts and other gate gifts, peanut samples and facts galore. Bring a jar of peanut butter for Feed More to enter prize drawings.
VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
GO NUTS ... IN PEANUT COUNTRY
Salty Southern Route: Check out savory stops for peanuts and pork on this driving tour through Sussex, Surry, Southampton and Isle of Wight counties, as well as Suffolk, Smithfield and Franklin. (saltysouthernroute.com)
What's that? U.S. 460 offers many peanut pull-overs. One is the Wakefield Peanut Co. just outside of town, where a big blue elevator loads nuts up high and shoots them down into trucks. Inside the shop, owners Jimmy and Sue Laine offer delicious samples of their brand, and you can watch or buy a DVD of how shelling is done. (11253 General Mahone Highway; 757-899-5481; wakefieldpeanutco.com)
Still shocking! Take an autumn country drive and see old-fashioned shocks, which are peanut plants piled by pitchfork around poles to dry. Machines replaced muscles long ago, and shocking faded away in the 1970s. But Southampton farmer Elisha Barnes, 63, still creates rows of these 6-foot mounds in the third or fourth week of September for "nostalgia and a sweeter peanut." You can snap photos while the legumes cure on the shocks for about six weeks. After that, you might catch Barnes using an antique stationary picker to remove pods from stems. Barnes is going out on a stem and doubling his peanut acreage to 5 this year. His small Popson Farm also sells melons, collards, sweet potatoes, corn and butterbeans. (28028 Little Texas Road in Branchville; 434-637-1917)
1962, TIMES-DISPATCH
Pose with Mr. Peanut: If you are Outer Banks-bound or just taking a day trip to Suffolk, stop by the Suffolk Visitor Center, the majestic old Nansemond County Courthouse building, to plot a tour. In the pavilion out back is an old cast-iron Mr. Peanut statue from the early Planters Peanuts factory wall. (524 N. Main St.; 757-514-4130; visitsuffolkva.com)
Train mania: Six rail companies used to run through Suffolk, which helped it become the seat of so much peanut commerce. The Suffolk Seaboard Railroad Station Museum is a great stop for train nuts, but the depot also has a new peanut room with lots of Mr. Peanut collectible items, farm and industry artifacts, old photos and an old peanut vendor cart. (326 N. Main St.; 757-514-4135; suffolktrainstation.com)
REX SPRINGTON
Aroma therapy: Take your sense of smell and appetite to Suffolk's Planters Peanut Center, a shop independent of the company. You can get scoops of fresh peanuts roasted, salted, unsalted, cooked in the shell, covered in chocolate, sugar-coated or mixed with other nuts. Most days, the 1936 roaster works its aromatic magic, and there are other old treasures. (308 W. Washington St.; 757-539-4411; suffolkpeanuts.com)
Festival time: On Oct. 5, the Suffolk Peanut Festival begins with a parade along the city's West Washington and North Main streets, and events continue Oct. 10-13 with fairlike fun at Suffolk Executive Airport. The nuttiest event is a peanut butter sculpture contest, using a special moldable product prepared by Producers Peanut Co. in town. (757-539-6751; suffolkpeanutfest.com)
Caravan to Courtland: Take rural state Route 35 to this town and explore the Southampton Heritage Village and Agriculture and Forestry Museum, where you'll see farming equipment for peanuts and other bounty of the land. The village has an old schoolhouse, chapel, gristmill and more. Heritage Day is Sept. 14. (26135 Heritage Lane; 757-653-9554; wcast.info/hv)
For a bite: Nearby on U.S. 58 in Courtland is the famous Peanut Patch shop, which sells Feridies Peanuts. (27478 Southampton Parkway; 757-653-2028; thepeanutpatchgiftshop.com)
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