How a Commercial Peanut Farmer Uses 100-Year-Old Methods | Eater
"Run by Elisha Barnes in Southampton County, Virginia, this small commercial farm is the only operation in the U.S. still growing and harvesting peanuts using century-old, labor-intensive methods. Barnes—who says people call him crazy—manually pulls remaining peanuts with a pitchfork, stacks the plants (or “shocks” them) on poles for about six weeks, then removes the stakes with his tracker to prepare the vines for a picker. He uses and continually modifies a picker built in 1920 to work with a 1960s tractor. Proud of his roots as the son of a sharecropper, Barnes finds it rewarding to farm the land his family once worked. The peanuts are sold as Hubs Single Origin Peanuts after being de-shelled and packaged for shipment across the country; his process was documented toward the end of the farm’s yield on an episode of “Dan Does.”" - Avery Dalal
