Small farm may be the last of Beach cotton club

The Sawyer farm’s unusual crop often elicits double-takes from passersby on Princess Anne Road near the Municipal Center. It may be the last cotton farm in Virginia Beach. (L. Todd Spencer | The Virginian-Pilot)

VIRGINIA BEACH

The sea of white sprouting along a two-lane stretch of Princess Anne Road gives travelers pause this time of year. It is, after all, the last known cotton field in Virginia Beach.

The 7-acre farm - just up from the city's Municipal Center and down from a developing strip mall - pales in comparison to the plantations of the 1700s.

Yet, the crop's historical significance tugs at passing motorists' memories of elementary school lessons on slavery and Eli Whitney's cotton gin, beckoning them to stop for a moment.

"Isn't it just amazing?" gushed Ann Neidow, who along with her husband, Art, stopped to pick a bag full of cotton bolls on Wednesday. "There's something really bittersweet about walking in a cotton field."

David and Addie Vander-Mel are used to the spectators. The couple lives next to the farm, where cotton has been planted only for the past four springs. By early winter, when the bolls burst open, curious visitors, including teachers, begin frequenting the field.

After driving past the property for years, Ann Neidow was determined to pick cotton for handmade Christmas wreaths this season. She nearly missed the opportunity. On Wednesday, as she and her husband strolled the rows with scissors in hand, a cotton picker roared behind them.

"This is hard work," she said, her arms wrapped around a batch of bolls.

Most who stop just want to snap a picture or two. A few even knock on the VanderMels' door to ask questions. One young woman still sticks clearly in David VanderMel's mind.

"She pointed at the field and said, 'What's this?' " he recalled. "And I told her what it was and then she says, 'What's it used for?' "

That a cotton field could become such a novelty may be a sign of misplaced priorities or just changing times, Addie VanderMel said.

The crop faded from Virginia Beach about 10 years ago, mainly because the cotton market bottomed out, said Cal Schiemann, a Virginia Tech extension agent in Virginia Beach. "It just became unprofitable, so farmers got out of it," he said.

Virginia produced about 58,000 acres of cotton this year, down from a little more than 104,000 in 2006.

At about 60 cents per pound, the Princess Anne cotton will yield several thousand dollars. But the crop was never planted as a money-producer. It's simply used to keep the land cultivated - to keep it within the family.

The property goes back more than 100 years - when every neighbor farmed and when Addie VanderMel says her great grandfather, Titus Sawyer, once owned hundreds of acres that stretched from where the Municipal Center sits today to points north and west.

For years, corn, soybeans and wheat grew from the fertile soil. By the late 1930s to early 1940s, her father and mother, Everett and Mary Sawyer, were tending the fields and beginning to raise five children.

Her brother, William Sawyer, and her nephews took over years ago, long after most of the land was sold to builder R.G. Moore, who dreamed of developing it into a mini-city. Virginia Beach eventually purchased the failed development and turned much of it into a golf course.

Sawyer family relatives, including William Sawyer and the VanderMels, still live on about 20 acres. Much of the family's farming is now done across the North Carolina line near Elizabeth City. Cotton, corn, soybeans and wheat are grown on about 1,800 acres there.

Though Virginia Beach still has about 28,000 acres of farmland, such open space has given way to housing and development over the years.

At Princess Anne Road, progress whizzes by the Sawyer farm at 45 m ph. The strip soon will be widened to four lanes, taking more than an acre of the cotton field, Addie VanderMel said.

Just another sign of the times. "It's really sad," she said.

Susan E. White, (757) 222-5114, susan.white@pilotonline.com