All about my trip to Richmond, VA for the National Peanut Board peanut farm tour of Hope & Harmony Farms
Disclosure: my trip to Richmond was sponsored by the National Peanut Board. However, I was not required to write this post nor was I compensated to write this post. All opinions are completely my own.
To say I like peanuts would be a huge understatement.
Peanuts are applicable in almost every situation no matter the occasion: alone as a snack, made into peanut butter, used to enhance savory dishes, and found in sweet treats.
Peanut butter is my lifeblood some days. Seriously, when I don't feel like cooking... peanut butter to the rescue. And on normal days, I eat spoonfuls of peanut butter all throughout the day.
Basically, I was so excited to go on The National Peanut Board's Peanut Farm Tour! It was a quick trip but so fun!
Monday morning I left for Richmond, and 14 other peanut lovers and I had dinner that night at Max's on Broad (whoa yum!) for Richmond's Restaurant Week.
Then we woke up Tuesday morning to board our bus to Drewryville, Virginia for Hope & Harmony Farms.
Hope & Harmony Farms
At Hope & Harmony, we took a tour of peanut fields. It was recently harvest season, so we were able to see the peanuts drying above ground.
Hey, did you know peanuts are grown underground? Fun fact 🙂
After we toured the fields, we were treated to an amazing lunch full of peanutty dishes. I was in heaven!
Then we took small tours into the Hope & Harmony Farms production facility, and that concluded our adventures.
Since I love fun facts, I've got some more peanut fun facts in numbers for y'all...
Peanut Fun Facts
Four
There are four types of peanuts:
Runner ~ most peanuts grown in the US are Runners. They are grown mainly in the south east, are small & have a consistent size, mostly used for peanut butter
Spanish ~ primarily used in confections, has the nuttiest flavored, is the smallest peanut
Virginia (pictured below) ~ mainly for gourmet snacking, is the largest peanut, not as good for peanut butter because they are not always a consistent size
Valencia ~ sweeter peanuts, mostly grown in Texas
4.7
Peanuts use less than five gallons per ounce (4.7 gallons per ounce to be exact) which is a really low number compared to many other crops.
Seven
Peanuts have seven grams of protein per ounce (think about ยผ cup or 2 tablespoons of peanut butter). This is more than any other nut.
540
A 12 oz jar of peanut butter has 540 peanuts!
Compare that to a jar of chocolate hazelnuts spread which has about 50 hazelnuts in a jar.
Zero
No part of the peanut is wasted. The whole peanut is used, and there are over 300 uses for peanuts (thanks George Washington Carver)!
A few things the shell is used for are for biodiesel, as animal feed, and in landscaping.
4500
Thanks to technological advances, the average yield for a peanut crop is 4500 pounds per acre.
10 years ago it was 3500. That's a huge increase considering that most farms have about 180 acres of peanut crops!
Our Peanutty Lunch
Thanks so much to the National Peanut Board and to Jeffery & Stephanie Pope of Hope & Harmony Farms! Such an amazing trip 🙂
Meme
Shashi at RunninSrilankan says
Loved reading this post, Meme - what a fantastic trip this was!