Elisha Barnes and his Award-Winning Peanuts 02-09-2026

Rachann talks with Elisha Barnes, winner of the 2024 Hubbard Peanut Company Made in the South Award for Sustainability for his single-origin red-skin peanuts, about his work on a modest 12‑acre farm in the heart of Virginia. This podcast digs deep—literally—into the soil that shapes peanuts, and the choices farmers face between chemical shortcuts and time‑tested natural methods. This episode explores how true quality comes not from mass production, but from understanding the land, respecting the crop, and valuing flavor over volume. Join us as we uncover the tradition, science, and surprising challenges behind growing peanuts the right way, proving that “quality over quantity” isn’t just a motto—it’s a way of farming.

Farmer Profile: Elisha Barnes - Peanut Grower

Single Origin Redskin Peanuts from Virginia – Hubs Peanuts

Transcript

Audio file

RCP Podcast Peanuts Total Release Date 2-9-26.mp3

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

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Enjoy your program.

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Welcome to Raising Connections, connecting your community to others through Critters, Companions, Commerce, and Agriculture.

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I'm Ray Shan Mayer.

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Let's raise some connections.

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Here we go.

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Today, as always, we have a fun and interesting guest, Elisha Barnes, a fourth-generation peanut farmer.

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Welcome.

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Hello.

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We have been cold and snowy.

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Where are you, and are you cold and snowy?

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Well, we've been cold.

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Been snowy, but it is starting to dry off a little bit now, so it's all good.

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As a farmer, are you always looking at the sky, wondering what's going to happen, and measuring moisture in the soil?

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It's a combination of things.

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My father and my grandfather, they could read

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weather patterns through cloud formations and things like that much better than I can.

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But some of the processes that they thought was watching the birds and the animals and when they begin to feed extremely hard and collect in large numbers and letting us know there's some bad weather on its way.

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It's a learning process.

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Absolutely.

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Mother Nature has processes in place.

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We just have to learn to tune in to them.

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That's right.

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A lot of our listeners want to know who

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are you and where did you get where you are today?

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How did you become a peanut farmer?

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I'm the fourth generation peanut farmer.

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My father, his father, and his father was all peanut farmers.

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We go back to the time when it was not so pleasant because it was really all hard labor.

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But the one thing about hard labor, if you're doing something that you love,

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You're really not working.

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You're enjoying life.

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Even when I was a young boy, my father would have me, I'd be walking behind him.

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And if he stopped short, I would bump into it.

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I was that one child out of the family that had that passion, that love for, and what I fondly refer to it now is playing in the dirt.

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Oh, I like that.

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I get to play in the dirt.

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I get to stay in contact with what my heart is, what my drive and my initial

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One of the premier things in the first part of the year was something that we used to do that is not typically done anymore.

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They actually frown on it.

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It's a process called breaking land where you would take a plow and turn the land over and it would release a fresh smell of soil.

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Oh, I know that smell well.

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Yes.

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And some people can't smell it, but it is the smells, it is the look, it's the texture of the soil, it's the light buds coming on the trees.

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All of that, it plays into, I guess you would call it a love affair that you have with raising crop, with being a farmer.

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We were small farmers and

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In my childhood, we were sharecroppers, but we loved what we did because we had in place my mother and my father who made sure we have never experienced in our life a day of hunger or a day of not knowing because we work the land.

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And I am a firm believer in those of us who kill the soil, that if you treat your soil right, if you do the work, if you put in the effort, if you walk your

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land and keep your eye on things your land will being in return give you an increase.

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Yes.

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You're taken care of by what takes care of you.

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Absolutely.

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It does.

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Absolutely.

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When you talked about tilling the soil and that smell, that's a traditional technique and you very well put into words that it's frowned upon because there's modern techniques.

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Can you give us an idea of what that transition is and what it looks like?

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The way that is done

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Even now, they frown upon actually turning the soil over because of erosion concern.

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But to get the highest quality soil for growing crops without the use of chemicals, turning the soil was an absolute must because the soil that was used, the first two or three inches of soil that was used in last year, when that is rolled to the bottom,

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and that soil that has set idle is brought up to the top.

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It releases new nutrients.

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Plus you cut down on the weed and grass pressure so that your crop can get a head start on growing.

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You're still going to have to do some weeding and some grass pulling and all of that, but it gives your crop a jump start because those seeds that lay dormant on about a three, four inch soil on top of it, it takes a while before they can then

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germinate, temperature, the moisture, and overcome the seed pods that they're in to be able to come up.

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And in the meantime, your crop then has already sprung up and begun to grow.

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Today's method of doing things is not to turn the soil, but as a matter of fact, today's method wants minimum disturbance to the soil.

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We have equipment today that can go across a grassy field and plant right in that little thin furrow where the seed is going to go.

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But the downside to that is to be able to get it to grow, you have to chemically treat the soil to kill the grasses and the weeds.

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Heavy chemical treatment because your grass and your weeds are already established.

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And then you have to kill those as well as present enough chemical to prevent disease from

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crowding and growing and knocking your crop back.

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It is a totally different way of farming.

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When I was a young boy, I remember the first time that we were exposed to any foreign chemical in the field.

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It was foreign to us because everything that we did, we used natural products like sulfur to kill the bugs and all of that.

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We used natural lime, but now this

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Today, scientists and technology has figured out how to put your plants in hyperdrive, if you will, to speed up their growth, increase their production.

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But to do that, you have to get rid of all of the things that would hinder or compete with your crops.

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That's the infusion of chemical technology today.

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When you say chemical, you're referring to something that is laboratory or man-made as opposed to a sulfur

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or a lime or disking the ground to turn that soil over.

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Right.

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There are two things that we deal with intensively in modern farming, and that's pesticide use and herbicide use.

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Pesticide to eat down the bugs and the worms and the, oh my goodness, a whole host of things that eat on the plant itself.

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And then you have the herbicide, which controls the growth of plant matter.

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But it's been a growth process because once they realize the danger of one chemical, then another one is developed to take its place, and then another one.

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And it is an ongoing process.

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It sure is.

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Just as an aside, we always put out acres of potatoes at our place growing up.

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We become, in our operation, a part of a chain, the food chain of life.

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It's all interconnected.

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If we take care of the land, the land will take care of you.

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In the beginning, as long as the earth, through the creation of all of these plants, it did not need the addition of chemical application because there were things

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just in nature that took care of it and it kept everything in balance.

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I have a question for you that as you were describing tilling the soil and the historical methods, the traditional methods, and the modern methods of farming, I had a picture that developed in my head.

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Peanuts have leafy tops and they are legumes, so they grow in the ground.

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Peanuts are in the ground and the leafy top is above.

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Am I thinking correctly?

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You are correct.

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In order to harvest the peanuts, which are a seed that grows below ground, much like potatoes, I've never grown peanuts.

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So in my experience with potatoes, as the potatoes grow, it makes a mound in the soil, so it looks like the soil swells.

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Is that the same case with a peanut, that the soil swells as the peanuts come to maturity, or are they more like a carrot where they go down further into the ground?

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Well, they don't really go down further, but they are produced totally in the ground.

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don't seek them unless there's a disturbance above the pegs that connects the peanut to the vine.

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The peanut, as it's growing, you look at the field, we know that the peanuts are ready due to the timing, you know, and that part of technology is great because it has done enough studies so that the amount of time that that peanut is in the ground with the amount of heat units or the amount of heat that peanut receives for a period of time determines the speed

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to which it ripens so that you know the window of time necessary to dig them out of the ground.

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Makes sense?

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Because peanuts typically start ******* that's the process, the beginning process, to flower and peg in early July.

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And it puts down a connection from the limbs that grows into the ground just below the surface of the ground.

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And that peanut is formed completely in the ground.

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That's why the soil health is so important.

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Because with that being said, there's also that need to make sure that you don't compound your problem by repeatedly planting the same thing in the same place all the time.

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Because there are different things that will build up, different diseases and different pests that will build up in the soil.

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and they're known as soil-borne pathogens or soil-borne diseases, that there's a threshold level that gets to when it gets beyond what's really tolerable, those soil-borne diseases and all can destroy a crop before you ever get a chance to get it out of the ground.

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That makes sense.

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Well, what they're using to mitigate that now is the introduction of

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chemical.

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But in the older farming methods, we did it by rotation, rotate the crops from field to field.

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One of the things that was prominent was back in our ancestors days of learning how to maximize peanuts was teaching those that were producing peanuts that we had to

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rotate the crop.

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Don't plant peanuts in the same place all of the time because that allows you to be able to raise the crop with a minimum attack from your different soil-borne diseases.

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Case in point, the way that I do.

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I maintain a minimum of a three-year rotation.

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I only plant peanuts in the same place every third year.

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Those 2 years of idleness from peanuts, I can plant other crops there that do not have the same issues.

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disease pressures, but the peanut, if I planted every third year, I found out that I do not have to use the chemical application that's necessary when farmers are planting peanuts on one or two year rotation because it allows for the pathogens and the diseases to die off just by natural process.

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The peanuts that I raised last year, I put those peanuts in the field and I did not have to put a tractor in the field to spray

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through the entirety of the season.

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Now, I spent a lot of time pulling weeds, but I did not have to spray for diseases, no leaf spot, no sclerotinia, no black root rot, no white mold, none of that.

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But today's farming is dependent upon almost a 10-day interval of spraying.

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It produces an enormous, but then there again, you're

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relegated to spraying chemicals.

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I like that old-fashioned way.

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You spent a lot of time talking about erosion.

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Where those peanuts are removed from the ground, I would assume that there would be a hole and dirt would be liberated through there.

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The soil's already turned up where those peanuts were removed.

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Does that affect the erosion potential or come into play with a particular harvest and growth methods for peanuts at all?

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It does.

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And

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We minimize that by planting what we call cover crops.

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Generally, it's wheat or rye, which then grows during the winter and that locks the soil so that wind and water does not erode your soil.

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That's why you see green fields in the wintertime.

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Tell me about the shock method.

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This is something that makes you very unique.

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That is the way that all peanuts, as a

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of the century and even a little before then, that was the way that the peanuts were cured.

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Once they are dug out of the ground.

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When I was young, we had to go out there with pitchfork and literally shake the dirt out of the dug up peanut vine and then come back and put a six or seven foot hole every 10, 15, 20 feet, depending on the strength of your vines, pack those poles so that they would stand up to it.

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And then you had to come back and check by hand, put all of those peanuts on that pole to allow them to sun dry and dry naturally on those pole.

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It makes a much sweeter peanut than fast heat dry because that slow process allows the slow accumulation of the molecules and things of the peanut to assemble in their most natural form.

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which creates a much sweeter, a much more aromatic peanut than heat frying.

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Heat frying, you dig them, they lay them on the ground just long enough for them to be able to be harvested through the new modern.

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harvesting machine, and then they're carried somewhere and artificial heat is introduced to them.

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And in that next morning, or probably that next day of 10 to 12 hours, that whole batch of peanuts has been dried out just that quick.

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Well, the way that I do it, I dig my peanuts, put out my poles, then I come back while the vines are still green, and I put them on the poles.

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And there's a process even to that.

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Oh, I can talk about this for months.

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And they stay on those poles for six weeks doing that curing process.

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And the way that I explain to people why it is so important for me to do it this way, I ask people if they like razor.

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And most people say, yes, they like raisin.

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Well, you don't get a raisin by taking some grapes, put it in the oven, and turn the oven up to 350 to get razor.

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It is a slow process to get that moisture out.

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to get that raisin to bring the sugars, the natural sugars, together.

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Well, the same thing with that peanut.

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That peanut, when it's slowly cured, it produces a peanut, a flavor that is uncomparable.

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You can always taste love in a product when it's been made with love.

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When we come back, let's pick this up with grating.

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Welcome back to Raising Connections.

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Today we're talking about peanuts and all of the ways that you can grow them, traditional, modern, historic, and the taste difference, the quality difference.

00:16:22 Speaker 1

Welcome back, Alicia.

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I'm glad to be back.

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Thank you.

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You've talked about the traditional methods of growing peanuts and that curing process.

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Tell us about the grating and the taste and how does all of that work?

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The grating is done for the size, the weight, quality of the peanut.

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There are several different types, and you were speaking about the Spanish peanut.

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They are smaller.

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The Virginia peanut is a larger peanut.

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It's a runner type peanut.

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It is a larger peanut.

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Most of the peanuts that you eat at your ball games and all

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that kind of industry where you're going to eat.

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They are Virginia-type, runner-type peanuts because they are larger peanuts.

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And the quality of that peanut, there is a different flavor from the small Spanish peanuts or others that are smaller.

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One of the things that the industry does today are a large part of the peanuts that are produced to go into the market in peanut butters and pastes and things of that nature as opposed to the natural consumption

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roasting, dry roasting, salting, blister, fried, and all of those kinds of things.

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It is a different way of presenting the peanut for consumption.

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So the different varieties of peanuts, do they cure differently for different pieces?

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So if I'm looking for a peanut butter peanut, could I take it in and dry it in a more modern method?

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And then as I go through the peanut butter process, it changes flavor versus an eating peanut, sort of like an orchard if you're making apple butter versus eating the straight apple.

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Right.

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That curing process affects the taste of the peanut

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on the other end.

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It increases the flavor, the quality of the peanut by that nice slow curing.

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And that's why I say it's connected, because the minimal use, if you have to, of chemical, and then that slow curing process makes the peanut butter.

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And I have peanut butter that is wonderful.

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I have people that want to buy the raw peanuts from me so that they can make their own homemade peanut butter.

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And is that where the 2024 award for the

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the Hubbard Peanut Company came in.

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Not just that, but the whole process, because it has produced a peanut that takes us back to its original intent to produce the best.

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There are those that ask me, why do I go through such labor to do this?

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And I'm not trying to compete in volume.

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What I am presenting is a quality.

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As far as the peanut industry, I have a comparison that I use.

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Peanut industry being the elephant spot on the back of the elephant, there's a rider.

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On the back of the rider, there's a flea.

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And on the back of the flea, there's an amoeba.

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I'm the amoeba.

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I can't direct the peanut industry anywhere that goes.

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I cannot make it go fast or slow or whatever.

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But in the amoeba's world, I'm doing just fine because I'm creating what is needed for me and what I do.

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Being such a small part of that world, just like any good microbe, you can have a giant impact.

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I'm glad to be where I am.

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I really am.

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Tell me about grading because there's shelling and there's grading and there's buyers.

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That's the grading process.

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When the buyer appealed to a peanut company, they want a certain size standard so that when they are running their equipment and making their peanuts, you're going to get about the same size

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peanut, same quality peanut throughout the process so that you got a quality assurance.

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You're not going to get a peanut that's a half inch long, and then the next one being three quarter inch long, and then the next one being one quarter inch long.

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So they grade them.

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And those that doesn't meet that grade are then used for other processes, like the peanut butters and the taste.

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So it's still the value to determine the grade that they want.

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That makes sense.

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So everybody's getting what they want and that grading

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process.

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Is that where the partnership with Hubbs or Hubbard's Food Bank and the churches and the various industries come in?

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So are there firsts and seconds and calls, or are those industries intertied in a different way?

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Well, my part is the way that I produce my peanuts when mine is on the pole for six weeks.

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So I cannot compete with the two to three-week window of time that peanuts are harvested because mine are curing.

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So when I

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mine, at first I was feeding mine to be here and my hogs because by the time I got mine ready for sale, the market had closed so that I couldn't sell mine.

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And I began to go to the local peanut companies around here and I was offering my peanut to them, but it was not well received because there again, I'm the amiibo.

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I cannot produce enough to affect the whole market.

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So when I got to hubs, which was the last peanut stock in the area, I ran across

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Cross Marshall, and he had been looking for the opportunity he had seen because I've done a few things on television and documentaries, and he wanted to see what we could do with my peanut, and the rest is history.

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We developed the Finger Origin Red Skin Peanut, and that just cook off because of the flavor.

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But they are a specialty, very limited quantity, because I raise about 12 acres a year, so I can't compete with the hundreds of acres because

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Because I literally do not have the labor force to be able to go out there and do that.

00:21:49 Speaker 2

But once we got brought up, done with her, it really has taken off.

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It has expanded to the point that now this little amoeba has seen us all over the world.

00:22:00 Speaker 1

What a great success.

00:22:02 Speaker 1

What about the food banks and the area?

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You have hubs, you're producing, they're marketing.

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It's become a niche, high quality product because of the care and love.

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People are tasting that love that you put into that product, but you've not lost the eye for the local food banks and the local churches and the local community that you're part of as a small farmer.

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One of the reasons for that is because not only am I a farmer, but I'm a pastor.

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I've been pastoring for 35 years.

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And one of the things that I do, I raise new-pointed peanuts.

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I raise corn, watermelon, sweet potatoes, at times butter beans.

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And my father taught me a lesson when I was young.

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He said, Son, if you have enough, if you can raise enough, to have some to give away to those that are in need or those that have a desire for it, will always have enough for yourself.

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That's where the food bank came in, because in years past, I would raise produce and I would go and give it to the food bank.

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And I've never lost because you're helping others.

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You're doing that thing that continues to spread your compassion, your love for those that sometimes find themselves in need.

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all on hard times.

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The food bank, once they came up with this idea and they approached me about being the farmer to work with them, it worked out good.

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It's a perfect match because I raised the product, the food bank came to me with this wonderful idea, and then we got partners that came in with us.

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Then we have a modest industries that have come on board with us and they're trying to help continue this wonderful cooperation.

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It teaches the lesson.

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that all of us are part of this thing.

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I have young people want to come and be a part of this so that they can have that feeling of how it is to produce and then to give so that others can see your passion and taste your labor and your work ethic.

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It's like the person in the kitchen making the dinner, putting in that extra ingredient, that little bit of love.

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That little bit of love.

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My goal is not to take anything that I don't earn.

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My goal is to go out there and be given an opportunity to do my part on a level playing field.

00:24:17 Speaker 1

March is a special time for peanut growers.

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Why?

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Well, because it has been designated as peanut month, so we are recognized, and I guess you would say we kind of get a pat on the back for March, and we've been...

00:24:31 Speaker 2

Marshall, myself, and Wesley Drake just went to the Virginia Senate this last week.

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There was a bill, SB 300, a bill that was put on the Senate floor to make the peanut the official snack food of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

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I was one of the speakers for it.

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Marshall was one, and Wesley was one of the speakers.

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And we were successful.

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All of the Senate committee people who were there on that day voted yes, voted to

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to advance that bill.

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So we'll open that the rest of the full body will get together and do that.

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I'm honored to think that Governor Spanberger, when it gets to her desk, that she will sign it.

00:25:12 Speaker 2

She came out and visited my farm this last past year.

00:25:16 Speaker 2

She came out running for governor and visited a peanut farm.

00:25:19 Speaker 2

So Virginia, one of the ways that we became so famous, on the back of the peanuts.

00:25:24 Speaker 2

Towns and businesses grew up on the back of the peanut.

00:25:27 Speaker 2

Let me get off that hack because I could talk about this all day.

00:25:30 Speaker 2

When I

00:25:31 Speaker 2

raised 99% of everything that we ate.

00:25:35 Speaker 2

We raised it on the farm.

00:25:36 Speaker 1

Yes.

00:25:37 Speaker 2

We had chicken, we had geese, we had ducks, we had hogs, we had a cow that produced milk, and Papa would breed that young hereford cow once a year, and we had beef.

00:25:48 Speaker 2

Then there was a produce that we raised.

00:25:51 Speaker 2

99% of what we ate, we raised it.

00:25:53 Speaker 1

And when you opened that jar of tomatoes in the middle of the winter that you put up in August when it was so dang hot, you didn't want to even think about canning, and you put it in the

00:26:01 Speaker 1

chili and it has that particular taste, you can taste the garden in it.

00:26:05 Speaker 1

I just think a lot of people haven't taken sunshine and they haven't taken a salt shaker out to the tomato patch and they weren't barefoot.

00:26:10 Speaker 1

So I think that's what's wrong with a lot of people.

00:26:12 Speaker 1

They just need a barefoot garden patch with a salt shaker.

00:26:15 Speaker 1

But that's my own personal thought.

00:26:16 Speaker 2

Go ahead and get it off on your shirt and take a bite.

00:26:19 Speaker 1

Yeah, because nobody eats a whole tomato.

00:26:21 Speaker 1

Anyway, I could go off on this topic for a long time.

00:26:24 Speaker 1

If you could leave our listeners with one way to enjoy peanuts in March, what would that one way be?

00:26:31 Speaker 2

Well, you know, I'm counting.

00:26:32 Speaker 2

I would have to say just plain dry roasted if you like it that way.

00:26:37 Speaker 2

And if not, then single origin risk in peanuts.

00:26:41 Speaker 2

Got to put a plug in for that.

00:26:42 Speaker 1

All right.

00:26:42 Speaker 1

I think I'm going to be slipping mine in a Coke, but okay.

00:26:46 Speaker 2

However you enjoy that peanut, enjoy that peanut.

00:26:49 Speaker 2

It makes a wonderful sit back and relax snack.

00:26:52 Speaker 2

It does you good.

00:26:53 Speaker 2

It helps with all

00:26:54 Speaker 2

all kinds of things.

00:26:55 Speaker 1

I appreciate you being part of us today, and I appreciate all of our listeners sitting back, taking time.

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And as long as you don't have a peanut allergy, enjoy some peanuts, get that peanut butter, find the Redskin Hubs peanut butter, and have a shocking day.

00:27:10 Speaker 1

I hope the connections we've raised today stay with you as you engage your community through Critters, Companions, Commerce, and Agriculture.

00:27:17 Speaker 1

Join me again next week.

00:27:19 Speaker 1

We'll make some more connections.

00:27:20 Speaker 1

This program is a production of Raising Connections Media Company, hosted and produced by Roshan Mayer and edited and mixed by Robin Temple.