What We Love: Country

U-Pick Farms

Ripe strawberries, raspberries and blackberries ripen in short sequence, yielding to blueberries by summer. Even if you don’t have a speck of land or an ounce of horticultural savvy, you can pick crisp snap beans, sweet corn and luscious tomatoes any day of the week in season. It’s a fine excursion to Knott’s Island to pick peaches, apples and seedless grapes, worthy of a picnic lunch overlooking Back Bay. Pumpkin patches set the right mood for Halloween (take a kid or two along). Tempered by the sea, we have the benefit of a ten-month growing season. Trips to U-Pick farms in Pungo and elsewhere are like visiting an industrious cousin’s collective—a return to the land and a chance to reap without having to do the work of agriculture. We are lucky to have this Eden to come back to each spring, just outside our collective back door. Get there before the houses take over. ~J.M.H.

Biscuits

For 14 years, Linda Drake has been rolling in the dough at Southland Restaurant in Moyock, N.C. During the holidays, Drake makes more than 20 dozen sweet potato and buttermilk biscuits daily—light, airy, delicious. Up at Smithfield Inn, Mozell Brown has been baking her famous ham biscuits for more than 40 years, and making us smile for at least as many. ~P.E.H.

Hayman Sweet Potatoes

This golden fleshed, mellow-skinned, exceptionally sweet potato is like fall personified. We are fortunate that one of the few microclimates in which it will grow is Virginia’s Eastern Shore. One effort to revive this mostly low-income farming community has centered on a partnership between the Nature Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve and Virginia Tech aimed at improving the production, harvesting and marketing of this humble spud. ~B.D.

Norfolk County Feed and Seed Store

Opened in 1947, Norfolk County Feed and Seed Store served a farming area that was annexed six months later by the city of Portsmouth. A third generation of Tommy Heath’s family business now helps customers select unusual bedding plants, hard-to-find organic products, and buy-em-once gardening tools. Located at 1110 Airline Blvd. Call 397-2373. ~A.W.

New Ravenna Mosaics

Named after the mosaic mecca of Ravenna, Italy, but based in rural Exmore, Virginia, New Ravenna Mosaics is widely considered to be the finest custom mosaic art and tile design company in the United States. Founded in 1991, the brainchild of artist and Eastern Shore native Sara Baldwin, this “homegrown” company employs 130 people, many of whom have been trained as artisans, producing museum quality mosaic installations for the likes of Tom Hanks and Madonna. ~B.D.

Farm Stands

Pick your favorite: Stoney’s, Henley’s, Cindy’s and countless others from Chincoteague to Franklin. From spring’s strawberries and sugar snaps to the pumpkins and collards of fall, these wonderful roadside temptations bring us field-fresh produce and plants nine months a year. ~J.M.H.

Nancy Thomas

Nancy Thomas continues to surprise and delight us. Even with so many Hollywood collectors paying big bucks for her originals, the Yorktown artist remains accessible and here. See her work in her Yorktown Gallery, located at 145 Ballard St., or at her gallery in Merchants Square, Williamsburg. ~A.W.

Flanagan’s Turkeys

It’s not easy to get on the list (someone needs to die, I hear), but the Flanagan clan are the last to raise and sell the once-common Princess Anne turkeys. It’s a cherished ritual to drive to Pungo before Thanksgiving and Christmas for one of these birds. ~J.M.H.

Pumpkin Fling

Great gourds! We love the annual Pumpkin Fling at the Henley Farm in Pungo, held the day after Halloween. Leftover pumpkins are catapulted, thrown, smashed and trashed, with proceeds benefiting the historic Ferry Plantation House. Young and old fling the fall fruit in challenges of strength and strategy. ~P.E.H.

Colonial Parkway

For 23 miles, the Colonial Parkway meanders through the Colonial National Historic Park from the Jamestown Settlement to Williamsburg and ends in Yorktown. Flanked by groves of tall trees, expanses of marshy land, and spectacular views of the York River, the Colonial Parkway is truly a gem, a road that blends the region’s natural beauty with our cultural heritage. When the park and the parkway were authorized by Congress in 1930, designers set out to create the feeling of an old country road. Soaring brick archways were designed to support overpasses. Vehicle access was limited, so there would be few on-and-off ramps. The road was designed with broad, sweeping curves, and set in a meticulously landscaped right-of-way devoid of commercial development. A fitting tribute to the nation’s colonial past and a slower pace of life, it was completed in 1957. A restoration program from 1985 to 1995 included structural work and the addition of safety features such as steel-backed timber guardrails along much of the road. The parkway is a living thing. It shimmers bright and green in the spring. It is regal in the fall with the rich red, yellow and orange leaves. It offers something different to every traveler who drives along its winding ribbon of pavement. ~P.E.H.

Festivals

Hampton Roads is a party town. We love the local festivals—country fair atmospheres with true regional tastes: Pungo Strawberry Festival, Suffolk Peanut Fest, Knott’s Island Peach Festival, Isle of Wight County Fair, Gloucester Daffodil Festival, Chesapeake Jubilee and more. ~P.E.H.

Dairy Farms

Milk in glass bottles and home delivery are a refreshing anachronism in Southside Hampton Roads. Yoder Dairies in Virginia Beach and Bergey’s Dairy Farm in Chesapeake are the only two Virginia bottlers that bring milk to your door. Both sell delicious old-fashioned milk with no growth hormones or antibiotics. ~A.W.

Peanut Soup

Creamy. Dreamy. Rich. Sometimes a bowl of peanut soup, our favorites being at the King’s Arm Tavern in Williamsburg or at the Smithfield Inn, just isn’t enough. Order a second and loosen your belt a notch. ~P.E.H.

Route 5

One of the nation’s most historic highways, Route 5 is a two-lane road bordered by fields and forests. The 50-mile drive from Williamsburg to Richmond connects Virginia’s colonial capital to its successor. Although the road roughly parallels the northern banks of the James River, that mighty waterway is seldom in view. Tasteful signs announce the names of the storied plantations that line the river: Sherwood Forest, Belle Air, Evelynton, Westover, Berkeley and Shirley. These were homes to our Founding Fathers, Virginia governors, and a couple of U.S. Presidents. The tobacco trade built the Georgian mansions where some of the greatest political minds of the American colonies argued their rights as free men. Ironically, their fortunes were based in part on the labor of enslaved Africans. Sherwood Forest, built in 1730, was the home of John Tyler, the 10th U.S. President; it’s been in the Tyler family since 1842. Westover is considered the finest Georgian-style home in America; it was built by the extraordinarily accomplished and energetic William Byrd II (1674-1744), whose library of 4,000 volumes was the largest in the colonies. Berkeley was home to the Harrison family that produced a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the 9th and 23rd presidents; President Lincoln visited the Army of the Potomac’s encampment at Berkeley in 1862. During that same period, Gen. Daniel Butterfield composed the haunting beautiful “Taps.” The oldest plantation, Shirley, has been in the same family for 11 generations; the Hill-Carter family has owned and operated the farm for 345 years. All of the plantations on Route 5 are privately owned, but the owners share a sense of stewardship for the historical treasures they call home. Accordingly, most of the plantations are opened to the public for a modest fee. For more information, visit www.jamesriverplantations.org. ~A.W.

Bennett’s Creek Farm Market

Located at 3881 Bridge Rd. in Suffolk, Bennett’s Creek Farm Market is renowned for its carryout. There’s always a line at lunchtime for the daily specials, ham biscuits and homemade soups. The little country grocery store is open Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. every other day. Call 484-7922 to find out what’s cooking. ~A.W.