Smithfield has become something new and decidedly different during the past several decades. As both the town and county have embraced residential development, the town has increasingly become the lovely, aging core of a new Hampton Roads suburbia — something of a symbol of what once was and will never be again.

It wasn’t all that long ago, however, that Smithfield was the hub of a vibrant agricultural community. The agriculture remains, but it is vastly different from its small-farm antecedents of the 1950s and ’60s. 

At the heart of the changes is technology. During any October in the 1950s, if you drove along county roads, you would be surrounded by peanut fields where row upon row of peanut shocks were drying in the fall air. And by November, if you made that same trip, you would see clouds of dust rising from stationary peanut pickers. The shocks would be disappearing as they were hauled to belt-driven pickers. 

And in Smithfield, pickup trucks would be hauling loose or bagged peanuts down Main and Church streets to peanut-buying stations on either end of town. 

A bit later, the mobile peanut combine was introduced. The shocks disappeared, replaced by drying trailers, which became ubiquitous for several decades. They too were pulled through town to the same buying stations, so the tie between town and county remained, though changing.

Peanut fields are back, following a long hiatus brought on by a change in the way government subsidizes agriculture, but technology has continued to change the ways of farming. Peanuts are now harvested by massive self-propelled combines and dumped into tractor trailers that serve as drying trailers, giant replacements of their smaller predecessors.

Hog production has changed even more dramatically. In fact, it’s essentially disappeared.

During the 1950s, it was not unusual to see pickup trucks or high-sided farm flatbeds come through town on the way to Luter’s or Gwaltney’s early on a weekday morning. Most family farms raised small herds of hogs as a primary source of cash, and they were hauled to whichever plant a farmer was accustomed to selling to, or whichever was offering a premium that day to fill its slaughter needs.

Again, technology changed everything. From feedlot to hog house, the production of hogs became far more sophisticated and specialized during the 1960s and 70s, and in the early 1990s Smithfield Foods declared it would begin raising its own hogs in factory farms. That pretty well ended on-farm production.

Today, not even Smithfield Foods’ hog trucks come through town, because the company has shuttered its local slaughter operation, opting to turn the former Gwaltney plant wholly into a sophisticated processed meat operation.

During — and because of — all of these changes, farm operations were growing ever larger, and the number of families engaged in farming was becoming ever fewer. And with that change, a visible agricultural presence in Smithfield has largely disappeared.

Seventy years ago, farm families made a weekly trek into town to buy groceries at Leon Chapman’s Independent Market or the Colonial Store. 

Main Street hummed with business year-round. You could do your banking, get a haircut or a shoe repair somewhere on the street, and have lunch while you were here. But the activity became frenzied during November and December. Farm families visited Geo. W. Delk’s or Betts to pay off the tabs they had run up during the year, and to buy new clothes — and start a new tab — for the coming year. As Christmas approached, they would visit the Western Auto Store and Betts’ second floor toy display to help Santa Claus fulfill their children’s dreams. 

The farm connection was never more visible than each fall when new cars were unveiled by Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler, all of which had dealerships here. If it had been a good year, you were more likely to see farmers driving new pickup trucks, and their wives driving new sedans or station wagons.

Much of that activity died during the past few decades. Fortunately, Main Street has discovered a new reason to exist — the tourist trade. General merchandise and hardware stores have been replaced by shops catering to visitors, and thank goodness for the change, since it is far better than boarded-up storefronts.

But the images of an earlier era live on in the memories of those of us old enough to recall the hustle and bustle of the farm town that once existed here.

 

John Edwards is publisher emeritus of The Smithfield Times. His email address is j.branchedwards@gmail.com.