-[Woman VO] Nestled in the remote corner of southwest Virginia, this region captivates with its rugged landscapes, natural wonders, cultural attractions and outdoor adventures.

Experiences you'll only find in the heart of Appalachia.

Adventure guides available at heart of appalachia.com.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[Host VO] On this episode of Life in Virginia's Appalachia, we step into the world of agriculture where tradition meets innovation in the heart of the mountains.

From classic farms that have stood the test of time to sprawling tobacco fields and a flourishing mother-daughter run family farm.

We explore the hands that cultivate the land and the deep rooted impact these farms have on Virginia's communities.

Join us, as we uncover the passion, resilience and stories behind the fields that feed and inspire us all.

-Historically, in the Virginia Appalachian region, most people were self-sufficient farmers, where they raised pretty much everything that they needed to survive.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[Dixie] I'm Dixie Watts Dalton.

I'm a family farm in Lunenburg County, Virginia, and I teach in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech.

We've chosen to be here today in Lunenburg County at my home farm where I have lived since I was one year old.

I now live off the farm, but my parents are still here.

My dad, aged 84, still raises tobacco that we're sitting in right here, and it's just been a part of our family forever.

And yes, it's been an economic part of it, but it's also been something that has taught that sense of community and that sense of family.

My parents were very forward thinking, and when I was young, pre-teen, they gave me my own allotment.

"So this is yours, Dixie.

You work it, we'll help you, you help us in ours.

At the end of the growing season, when we put this to market, this has your name on it."

So as a little kid, I would get a check with my name on it that showed me that value of hard work, the results of those labors and those funds for years went into the college account so that I could graduate college without debt because my parents had that foresight to help me see that connection between the work and what you receive from that work.

So I'm so grateful to them for doing that for me, to instill that sense, and that is so much a part of what you see across agricultural communities and across Appalachian agriculture, you just see that self-sufficiency, the independence, the hard work, the grit, the determination and the payoff.

And I just love it.

-[Scott] We all want clothes to wear and we all want shelter to live under.

So those are the basic needs that people have.

But with that said, too, and that's kind of what I focused on, I always felt that no matter an individual's income level, they are always going to eat and they always want to be entertained, and that they will spend money on those two things for sure.

So we tried to provide that value to people.

But two, you know, as people saw, it don't take much for this supply chain to get disrupted.

♪ ♪ ♪ My name is Scott Sink.

My relation to agriculture, is grew up on a 5th generation dairy farm, and also had grandparents on the other side of the family that had a multi-generational tobacco and beef farm.

So grew up around it.

To be honest, never thought about I would be going into that field.

Once I graduated college, decided to stay in this area and started farming on a little half acre, and have built up to what we have today.

It was just one of those things that you grew up around it, and that's what you did for a job.

But, you know, like so many of our students today, I never was steered toward agriculture.

-You would see most families having some forms of livestock, chicken for both meat and eggs, dairy cow for milk and to make butter.

They might have had some cattle for their own consumption.

And then the typical things that you would consume, wheat for flour, corn, beans, potatoes, carrots and onions.

Those were some of the traditional products early on when we had mostly self-sustaining farming.

Then, as people grew and moved away from agriculture as their way of life, we had more industrialization.

The farm crops for those farmers who stayed in ag tended to switch over to things that were more commercially viable.

♪ ♪ ♪ -And there's another half a dozen or so farms throughout this county and adjoining counties that we lease.

All of them kind of have a different purpose, whether it's for hay.

One of them has a greenhouse on it that we utilize for growing plants for this farm.

As everyone talked about what they were hoping to do when they retired, or what their side hustle was, you know, in terms of doing things, and I don't know why, but I just said, "Well, why don't I try to do that now?

And if that don't work out, then we can go do something else."

I have a staff of around 20 right now that I work with.

I have a couple partners that we work with on some of our enterprises as well.

Because besides the farm, we also have a store about 20 minutes from here in Blacksburg called Hethwood Market that focuses on catering and deli and value added agricultural products and other type things like jams and jellies.

♪ ♪ ♪ The hurdles that any of us in agriculture go through is land availability and the financing you need when you need it.

You know, that's part of the issue too.

Sometimes you get financing, but sometimes isn't always, the stars don't align with that.

And then your normal stuff, you know, working with Mother Nature, which is part of the fun, but also part of the challenge with this.

And, you know, just having perseverance in what you do.

You know, any of us that do this.

You know, we do it because we love to do it, and it's something that's, you know, inherently in us, so to speak.

-When you look at the topography and also the climate of the Appalachian region of Virginia, it has led to the selection of the various crops and practices because of the rocky and less nutrient rich soils and a thinner soil, certain things wouldn't grow well there.

And because of the hilly nature, farmers had to move into some terracing of those hilly areas in order to make flat spots so that they could raise those crops.

Because of that topography, because of the weather, because of the shorter growing season, they had to select things that would work well in that natural environment.

-Hi, welcome to Stormbrew Farm.

I'm Daisy Sturgill.

-I'm Jennifer Martin.

-And we are co-owners of Stormbrew Farm, and also mother and daughter.

I've always had big gardens.

I learned from my grandparents.

We did gardens and canning, and one of my grandfathers raised cattle and grew tobacco, and it's just a lifestyle.

You can grow good food.

-This is the best place to live.

-Don't tell anybody.

-My grandpa told me that.

He was in the war, World War Two, and he would-- he wouldn't talk about it.

He just said, "Wore it in glamorous."

This is the best place to live.

And he's right.

It's beautiful here.

And you can grow your own food.

-You can just drop seeds on the ground and they grow.

-Yeah, you gotta be careful not to spill your seed, or you'll have stuff where you don't want it.

-Yeah.

-It's awesome.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[Daisy] Well, it started as a flower farm, but we also started in 2020.

So started to flower farm, and then it was COVID, and it seemed like maybe flowers aren't what people need right now.

So then we got into doing veggie starts just for COVID year.

We haven't really picked that back up.

But then we got into doing vegetables because food seemed important, and then we had too many vegetables, so we started doing wholesale to kitchens.

So we wholesale vegetables, and really specialty herbs and specialty vegetables, things you can't get from Cisco or US Foods to kitchens all over Abingdon and Bristol.

-[Jennifer] We are from Smith County.

It's the next county up, and we've been here for three years now.

But yeah, I grew up Appalachian, playing in the woods.

I didn't wear shoes, you know, popping tar bubbles on the road with your bare feet, playing in the rivers is just normal.

And I'm glad to still get to do that all these years later.

-[Daisy] I love being out in the fields, just communing with the birds and the butterflies and the insects.

I love looking at the insects, watching what they do.

-[Jennifer] Yesterday, we found a whole pack - of baby praying mantises -[Daisy] Oh, yeah.

- while we were pulling weeds.

-[Daisy] Just about an inch long -[Jennifer] Things like that-- -[Daisy] and just springing up out of the ground everywhere.

So just the little joys that you get to experience just from being outside and being in it so much.

That's the reason I do it.

-[Jennifer] I love-- I'm happy every day to get up and go to work.

I love being outside.

I love watching things grow.

I just love the abundance of it.

It's amazing.

It's amazing to be able to just have all this food and share it with people.

- It's all good things.

-[Daisy] Yeah.

-[Jennifer] Putting good in to the world.

♪ ♪ ♪ That's an unexpected thing that's happened, because we're able to give people work, which I never would have thought we would, but it's work they love, like they're happy to come here and do this, and it's hard work, and it makes me so happy to know that we can help people have an income.

-Yeah.

-A little, just a little bit.

-We're only a side hustle to the people that come here.

We're no one's full time gig, but, yeah.

-[Jennifer] But maybe one day.

-[Daisy] Maybe one day.

-[Dixie] When you think about the cultural and the social aspects of agriculture, to me, that's really the most amazing part.

I mean, that's near and dear to my heart, because it's all about family and community and coming together to help each other in times of need and to celebrate in times of success.

And it is so much a family feel, a community feel.

It's not just doing a job, it's really, truly a livelihood.

And you see that throughout that Appalachian region and that close knit community, and that desire to help others and to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

I mean, the hard work and the determination and part of it stems from that early isolation and the fact that you didn't have that ability to go out and have markets elsewhere and access things elsewhere, so you had to do it yourself.

And they got really good at it, and it's been passed down through the generations, so that makes it wonderful.

♪ ♪ ♪ -This right here, you know, might not look like much, but it's kind of a big dill.

[snickering] [laughs] ♪ ♪ ♪ -These are a lot of it.

-[Daisy] There we go.

Yeah.

-There we go.

-[Daisy] That's the right thing.

-My car is infused with the smell of garlic and-- -[Daisy & Jennifer] Garlic and gardenia.

[chuckles] ♪ ♪ ♪ -[Dixie] When we look at the Appalachian farm region, you think about how they've had to adapt, we've seen a decline in burly tobacco production, which was a real cash crop in the area.

There wasn't any one silver bullet that could replace that, because it was a really high value crop per acre.

When we had the government price support programs in place, if you produced a given quality, you knew you were going to get a given price.

So there was a stability built into that system.

Most things that have replaced tobacco, such as vegetable production, some value added agriculture through, for example, dairy farmers adding value to create milk and cheese and ice cream, or farmers who are doing direct to market, beef products or other animal products, those have a little bit more variability.

There's no set, given price or option there, so you've got the market situation that comes into play.

Vegetables, as an example, were taken on by a lot of folks inside the southwest Virginia area and up through Appalachia.

It's all about the market window.

It's all about supply and demand.

When you've got a lot of production, prices fall.

When there's not as much production, but the demand is still there, then prices rise.

So if your perishable product happens to come ready to go to market at a time when everybody else's does, then you're going to see a drop in price, and you're not going to have the type of profitability you would at another period, but you can't store a perishable product and wait for prices to rise.

So that instability and prices in that open market system just added an extra challenge, especially for those who were accustomed to something that had a more set known price and income potential.

-[Jennifer] All kind of in a chokehold because of regulation.

-Yeah.

There's a lot of people with a lot of awesome ideas, especially, I mean, all over, but especially in this area, There's a concentration of us trying to do some really neat, really neat agritourism things to get people to this area and experience the joy that we get to experience everything.

-[Jennifer] We have good time every day, and it's open to other people to come and see what it is.

-[Daisy] Yeah.

But I think that the regulations have just been-- they're hard for everybody.

-[Jennifer] And, you know, money, money's always tight.

-[Daisy] We just go a little bit as we can.

-It's really wonderful that we have a United States Department of Agriculture that oversees a lot of the support programs for our rural communities and for our agricultural enterprises.

So you have everything from grants and loans and specific programs designed for specific types of commodities.

We have our US Farm Bill.

It was initiated back in the 1930s as a result of depression error concerns.

At the time, we still had a lot of people farming to feed the rest of the world, and there was a concern that this volatility in prices and income was going to drive people off the land, because it wasn't sustainable if you had multiple years of loss.

So the Farm Bill started as kind of a support system to ensure some price and income stability, to make sure we could keep farmers farming and feeding and clothing and fueling all the rest of us.

We're now down to less than 2 percent of the population that farms and does that for the rest of us.

So we want to make sure that that 2 percent is profitable and sustainable and can stay on the land.

So the Farm Bill has been an important part of that.

But the thing most people don't realize is, in recent years, it's truly a farm and food program, because that's where all of our benefits come through, our snap programs, our food stamps, our EBT, that's where that funding source is, and the actual majority of our Farm Bill now is to ensure that all populations have access to food.

But if those populations have access and have the ability to buy, that keeps our farmers with an audience for which they are producing.

So it really is a win-win for everyone.

Another really key farm program aspect was as a part of that initial 1930s Farm Bill, the Tobacco Price Support Program.

With that stability for our tobacco production system, it limited where it could be grown to where it was originally grown, and it gave that price and income support.

When that ended in 2004, tobacco became a totally open market situation.

A lot of the burly tobacco left the South Side and Southwest and Appalachian regions, and moved over to South side, where we are standing right now, but our soils and climate weren't set up well for it, so it didn't work well here, but folks there have moved away from it.

It's not as prevalent as it was, although it is still a part for some farmers in that region, but their government programs played a huge role.

-I'm Albert Watts, living in Burke, County of Virginia.

I've been growing tobacco all of my life.

I can trace the tobacco garden with my family was released back to my great granddaddy.

My father gave me my little crop in the back when I was 12 years old, and I had my own crop every counts.

My three kids had a little crop, and they were growing up and used it to help pay for their college education.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[Dixie] One of the neat things is we have three different types of tobacco that we grow in Virginia.

So the flu cured, you break the leaves off and cure it in a gas fired barn.

But we do dark tobacco, so we cut each stalk.

Some people call it a spud, some people call it a spear.

But you take the entire plant, put it on the spud or the spear, whatever your preferred term is.

Spud it onto the stick.

Typically, you would let it flop for an hour or so, so that the leaves are less brittle when you put it on the stick.

But you'll put about five plants per stick.

And this is the same harvest method that barley producers would use in the Appalachian region.

Their tobacco is just a different variety, and they'll air cure it, whereas for this, we hang it in the barn, and dad actually builds fires, thus the term dark fired, and it'll get smoked and heated.

And I think that's a plenty for this stick, because these are big, and this will be more than enough to lift into the barn when the time comes.

And then you'll put multiple piles of wood in the barn, light it, and just let that smoke emanate through to dry it, turn it the rich, dark brown shade and get it ready for market.

-That's exactly like the people of Jamestown did it when the colonies were growing it.

-[Dixie] Yep.

So with all our-- - That's how much it changed.

So with all mechanization in the world, some things don't change, and we grow this, and we cure this, and we take care of this, just like your great granddaddy did and one's before him.

-[Albert] You got it.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Listen for me in a violin ♪ ♪ Listen for me when life is turning ♪ ♪ Listen for me when the world is burning ♪ ♪ Babe, would you listen for me?

♪ ♪ Listen for me in a crowded street ♪ ♪ Listen for me in a winning streak ♪ ♪ Listen for me when you're at your peak ♪ ♪ Babe, would you listen for me?

♪ ♪ Listen for me in a child's power ♪ ♪ Listen for me in a golden hour ♪ ♪ Listen for me when you're on your own ♪ ♪ Listen for me when you're far from home ♪ ♪ Listen for me when you can't go home ♪ ♪ Babe, would you listen for me ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ -This particular farm, I bought it in 1962, my wife and I, 143 acres, and we paid 25,000 dollars for it in 1960 so it's increased in value some.

So we're grateful for that and grateful that we have enough neighbors to get out and steer this and work and enjoy life and enjoy being a farmer.

♪ ♪ ♪ What we're doing here right now, [indistinct] and I really like, and of course, I like taking it to market and getting a check.

-[Scott] Relating farming to a lot like a sports season, because, you know, you have your ups and downs.

But then the season's over, and, you know, depending on how the year went, you may feel good or bad, but then next time, next season rolls around, you're ready to go again.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[Woman VO] Nestled in the remote corner of southwest Virginia.

This region captivates with its rugged landscapes, natural wonders, cultural attractions and outdoor adventures.

Experiences you'll only find in the heart of Appalachia.

Adventure guides available at heartofappalachia.com.