Elisha Barnes' 'Shocking' Success Story
By John Markon, Virginia NRCS Public Affairs
DECEMBER 23, 2024 - One reason “conservation” is such a useful word is that so many things can be conserved – everything from time and energy to plums and peaches.
But how about a method?
Visitors to Elisha Barnes’ Pop-Son Farm in Southampton County often remark on the unusual appearance of his peanut fields, which are staked every year in the fall with five-foot poles. Freshly unearthed nuts are left on the vine and wrapped around the poles to cure and dry in the open air for about six weeks, giving Barnes’ land the appearance of being dotted with small, slender haystacks.
“It’s called ‘shocking’ the peanuts,” Barnes said. “Go back 100 years, and everyone who grew peanuts dried them that way. Now, I’m the only one who does it.”
The word “shock” has nothing to do with giving the peanuts a dramatic and horrifying surprise. It’s used because shocking is a centuries-old air-drying technique for corn, wheat and other crops that involves tying several stalks together into a “shock” and letting the shocks stand outdoors until they’ve sufficiently dried.
For most peanut growers, shocking was replaced in the 1960s by flash drying, which has the advantages of being much quicker and less labor-intensive.
“Flash drying robs the peanuts of some of their taste and sweetness,” Barnes said. “Plus, peanuts dried on the pole have a 98.5 to 99 percent germination rate. The rate for flash-dried nuts is only 80 percent. Sometimes, the hard road is the one you need to take.”
The hard road eventually led Barnes to a new business model for his farm, which has allowed him to repurchase some land once owned by his family and to expand his annual peanut production from his original four acres to eight, 10, and then to 12.
Barnes’ peanuts ultimately came to the attention of the Hubbard Peanut Company in Sedley, where a partnership was launched in 2020 that’s grown to the point where Hubbard pays in advance to buy 99 percent of Barnes’ crop. Once processed by Hubbard, these gourmet goobers are packaged in 20-ounce “Single Origin Redskin” tins and sold for $30.45 per can at hubsnuts.com. In 2023, Barnes produced 8,000 pounds of peanuts on 10 acres, enough to fill 6,400 20-ounce tins.
Hubbard’s stock sells out almost immediately. Some of the celebrity customers for Barnes’ peanuts have included basketball star Michael Jordan, tech tycoon Steve Wozniack, and Great Britain’s royal family.
Barnes’ dealings with Hubbard were a great fit with his idea of putting most of his other produce – primarily corn, vegetables and melons -- on a similar subscription plan. Currently, almost everything he raises is reserved in advance by one of his customers-turned-partners, which include the New Life Church, the Southeast Virginia Food Bank and Kroger grocery stores.
“I have three parcels that total about 100 acres,” he said. “That makes me a small farmer, and for small farmers this model can be a good way forward. I can start every year without debt, which is something most small farmers can’t say.”
Barnes is the “Pop” in Pop-Son Farm. The “Son” is his son Andre, who lives next door to him.
“Andre might tell people he’s a farmer, but he raises livestock instead of crops, so I call him a rancher,” Barnes said. “Being a farmer is more of a calling, kind of like being a pastor.”
Barnes would know. He’s been an active Christian minister for 34 years and is currently the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Severn, located across the state line in Northampton County, N.C.
As for Andre Barnes, his 21-year-old daughter Layla appears to be emerging as her 69-year-old grandfather’s eventual peanut-shocking successor. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do coming out of high school,” she said, “and I just took to farming. The way we do it is hard work, but I’m not scared of that.”
Circumstances have improved for the family since Elisha was Layla’s age. Elisha Barnes, a son of a sharecropper, worked 31 years for the International Paper Company as his "day job," occasionally doing his farming at night with the help of some portable lighting he built and attached to a tractor. He has a degree in diesel mechanics and still repairs and maintains most of his farm equipment.
He’s also conservation-minded and has completed three contracts with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, signing the first in 2008. NRCS has since assisted him in the purchase of a high tunnel, brush control and establishing a rotation schedule for his fields that includes cover crops.
“There’s no one, single, valid approach to conservation or farming,” said Dr. Edwin Martinez Martinez, NRCS’ Virginia state conservationist. “That is why NRCS works with producers of all types; small or large, farmers and ranchers, urban producers, forestland owners, tribes... everyone."
Barnes and his throwback methods were featured in a 2019 documentary produced by Virginia Public Television titled “The Virginia Peanut Story.” His subsequent success has given him even more exposure. This fall, he and Layla were featured speakers at Virginia Cooperative Extension’s annual Farm-to-Table Conference.
“My daughter calls me a dinosaur who won’t die,” Barnes told his audience. “I can’t tell you how many people have told me I was crazy. But if you could feel my passion for farming, you’d know why I do things the way I do and why I won’t change.”
Additional stories about Elisha Barnes can be found here>>
