THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 8, 1996 TAG: 9610080036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 83 lines
ON THE SHRINKING of the moon in December, William O'Berry will be killing hogs to freeze and cure for winter.
Right now, he's shocking peanuts.
And he's shocking a lot of motorists on U.S. Route 460 near Windsor with his old-fashioned farming ways. Folks do double takes when they pass what looks like a cross between a miniature brown pyramid and a tepee growing next to the railroad tracks.
``Some folks from Iowa stopped by a couple of years ago,'' O'Berry said, chuckling. ``Drove right into the field. They wanted to know what in the world I was doing. When I told 'em, they said they thought peanuts grew on bushes.''
Peanuts actually grow on roots beneath green vines that look somewhat like clusters of clover. The vines are plucked from the earth in the autumn, when the nuts mature.
And, these days, elaborate machines crawl through the fields separating the nuts from the vines and neatly spitting the nuts into a vat. From there, the bounty of the harvest is moved to barns to be artificially dried with heated waves of air.
In olden days, farmers normally dug the vines by hand and hung them on a single stake, layer after layer, creating the individual shocks. That's the way O'Berry still likes to do it.
The peanut field on 460 is just west of Windsor. In all, O'Berry said, he's shocked about three acres this year.
``I do things the old-fashioned way,'' he said.
``We do things the hard way,'' his wife, Virginia, said.
However you phrase it, it makes a pretty sight, one that artists take photographs of, parents take their children out to see.
O'Berry, at 76, might not have done it this year until his telephone started ringing.
``I had people calling me wanting to know when the shocks were going up,'' he said. ``I told one lady I didn't think I was going to do it this year and she said, `Oh, please do!' ''
The shocked peanuts dry naturally, O'Berry said. They're sweeter, make better seed peanuts. And there's quite a local market for the 2,500 pounds of seeds he's likely to get from the three shocked acres.
Shocking peanuts isn't the only thing the O'Berrys do the old-fashioned way. It's the only way he knows how to farm, he said.
When he was 14, O'Berry's father died in a logging accident. Two older brothers had died earlier, one in another accident, the other from diphtheria. Another brother died at birth. In a family of what was originally 13 children, that left O'Berry, nine girls and a mule.
``I was the only boy left at home,'' he recalled. ``I cultivated about 25 acres. Worked at the shipyard about 15 months during the war and farmed, too.''
Eventually, O'Berry went back to full-time farming. And he never changed his ways. Today, he farms about 35 acres, milks two Jersey cows a day - by hand - raises vegetables and chickens, does a little fishing.
The O'Berrys make their own butter, kill hogs each winter, make sausage, cure hams in a smokehouse, cook most of it with pure lard and eat it all.
``And they say that kind of stuff should kill you,'' said Virginia O'Berry, 70. ``We ain't died yet, and we ain't got no cholesterol, either!''
``The last time I went to the doctor, he said, `William, I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it,' '' her husband added.
O'Berry plows his fields with a 1980 Ferguson tractor. And when the peanuts are ready to pick, there's a 1947 Benthall picker waiting in the barn. He feeds the vines into the machine with a pitchfork.
Last winter, when the O'Berrys were killing hogs, a young farmer who lives nearby came in and videotaped two solid days of work - the men working outside, women working in the kitchen. He wanted the film to be a documentary, O'Berry said, so that others can see what life on the farm once was like.
As far as the O'Berrys are concerned, it will still be that way for a while.
``I've done it this way all my life,'' William O'Berry said. ``Don't see no point in changing now.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by John H. Sheally II
William O'Berry, 76, hand shocks peanuts in his field off Route 460
just west of Windsor. So far this year, he's shocked about three
acres.
[William O'Berry with his wife Virginia]
KEYWORDS: PEANUT FARMING by CNB