FARMVILLE – Cars routinely pass along this section of Third Street headed east and west.

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

Whoosh, they go.

Travelers might even take notice of the brick building on the corner. Surrounded by an asphalt parking lot on two sides and streets on the others, the rather stately former doctor's office that is now the Regional Visitor Center looks a bit out of place.

It is here where anyone can pick up brochures, learn about local shopping opportunities, find out about High Bridge Trail State Park, and get directions to the Moton Museum.

Today, the Center offers something of a different sort-outside along its concrete walkways.

An illustration in tobacco.

County Supervisor Howard Simpson grew up on the family farm in Rice and knows about tobacco. Today, making his way along lines of some 12 carefully placed plants outside of the building, he reminisces the labor-intensive work. With the aid of Social Services Director Roma Morris (who also shared memories of working the family farm in Buckingham where they raised dark fired tobacco) and a little assistance from the shirt-and-tied County Administrator Wade Bartlett, they revive a community's rich past through demonstration.

It is, of course, harvest day. The leafy green and yellowing plants, skying above Simpson, are a living demonstration project of sorts. The hearty varieties of Bright and Burley, were once a staple of Prince Edward County's economy and of rural Virginia life.

Simpson visually conjures a picture of a mule pulled slide with wood strips and cloth bags on the side.

“You would take that strip and lay it down on the side until you fill the side up-maybe the slide was as long as from me over to that wall-and you had the mule hooked to the front of it,” Simpson details. “And then you would pull on up and tell the mule to come up. The mule would come on up where you was at, you stop and put your tobacco on over in it.”

When it was full, they'd take the lines off of the hame (a part of the harness) on the mule and take him to the barn. Then another slide would come in the row to take its place. It was work.

Oftentimes, family work.

Simpson bends down and snaps the low hanging leaves from the tobacco stalks and he and Morris proceed to “string” the tobacco (a process where the leaves are tied and hung over a thin wooden rail) on a single stick stretched across weathered boards.

Bartlett, who also pitches in, finds the leaves are sticky.

“Because it's a heritage of Prince Edward County and because…there's not much of it growing around here any more and people have no idea what it looks like,” County Tourism and Visitor Center Coordinator Magi Van Eps explains on the reasoning behind the plants being there. “They have no idea what it took-the work that it took to go into it.”

Simpson, she offers, has really been her biggest instructor on the process from the beginning-conceding that she had no idea it was such a labor-intensive industry.

The plants came from a local tobacco farmer and an Extension agent. Their mere presence has generated interest. People have asked what they're growing and, when Van Eps tells them, she says, they are fascinated.

“Then they…come out, they take pictures of themselves with it,” Van Eps says. “Some people will come in-and these are…the really fun parts-some people come in and say, 'You're growing tobacco out there. Oh my…I grew up on a tobacco farm.' And then they proceed to tell me their story and…I'm just absolutely fascinated because I never experienced this growing up. I grew up in Culpepper; it's not a tobacco county.”

From discussions of planting to what was a good price per pound, the banter of oral history goes on.

And what is to become of the string of tobacco?

It will go on display inside of the visitor center-continuing to teach those who would learn long after the frost.