VIRGINIA BEACH — A Virginia Beach family known for stocking some of the best local produce at their popular farm stand is growing the business.
Creekmore’s Place recently received a $48,498 grant for a new farm-to-table kitchen on the family’s property at 2709 Indian River Road.
The Creekmores are synonymous with the Virginia Beach Farmers Market, where they’ve been a vendor for 50 years. Family members of the late Linwood and Elsie Creekmore, who started the business, carry on their legacy. Seven days a week, a Creekmore family member can be found shelling butter beans and packaging peaches and grapes inside the open-air end unit.
The Creekmores’ daughter Sharon Creekmore Mosley and her husband, Dion, also operate the family’s 3-acre farm on Indian River Road. When she was a young girl, Mosley lived in a house with her parents on the property. It’s where her mother taught her how to cook collard greens and succotash.
After retiring from careers outside of farming, the Mosleys decided to revive the family’s farm land and plant new crops to sell in a market they opened on the property in 2021 in honor of her parents.
Sharon Creekmore Mosley describes the micro-farm as “our little piece of happiness.”
Market customers often asked her how to prepare the vegetables they sell, so she decided a kitchen was needed to offer some of her mother’s best recipes.
“(Customers) not only come and get fresh vegetables here, they’ll be able to pick up a tomato pie, a sweet potato pie, some collard greens,” she said.
Her husband, who handles most of the farm work, will make lemonade. With lemons, not lemon juice.
“Fresh squeezed,” he said.
They anticipate the kitchen will be up-and-running by November, before the Thanksgiving rush. The prepared foods will be available for sale only at the market on the farm.
The Mosleys applied for Virginia’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund Infrastructure Grant after hearing about it from a fellow farmer. It’s primarily for projects at new and existing food hubs, farmers’ markets and commercial kitchens used for processing Virginia-grown products.
The state grant of $24,249 was awarded on Aug. 18. It requires a local match, paid as a reimbursement. The city’s Development Authority approved the match on Tuesday. Several other Virginia Beach businesses have received the grant in past years including Cullipher Farm and Commune Bakery.
At Creekmore’s Place, the new kitchen is a small building behind the market. Mosley can hardly wait to fire up the stove.
“Being here on the farm where I grew up, where I cooked with my mom on the same property, and now I get to sell some of the stuff that she made and showed me how to make, it’s a wonderful opportunity,” she said.
Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com
