At 1:43 p.m. on a Friday, a rooster crows. Like, really loudly, made all the louder because he’s right there, about 10 feet away.
The tawny-plumed bird stands on an upside-down bucket and lets out a blast of classic barnyard onomatopoeia aimed at no one in particular, just a howl into the near distance to let everyone know he’s there.
The chickens don’t seem to pay attention. They keep strutting and clucking on their merry way to who knows where. There are 50 of them around here, and they have the run of the place, wandering around the yard in search of the next snack.
A goose pops up from behind a shed and joins the cacophony with a honk of its own. Now there are two geese. They don’t look pleased to see a human visitor.
But we’re not here for the birds, although they are a pleasant enough distraction on this warm and sunny day.
No, we’re here for the pig.
Specifically, Penny the pig. Penny’s porcine popularity rose earlier this year, when county officials recognized her owner’s contribution to the region with a very official, “Whereas”-filled proclamation itemizing the historic legacy of Penny’s homestead. Twelve-year-old Penny was name-checked in the formal document, described as “Penny the teacup pig.”
Well, that’s a pretty big teacup! Penny is in her pen, a slightly muddy yard surrounded by a weathered wooden and wire fence, and even though she’s not a gigantic pig, she’s still pretty big, resplendent in black-and-white spots on her bristle coat.
She seems oblivious to visitors until her owner slices open a small cantaloupe and feeds her out of hand. Then she’s all attention, standing on hind legs, leaning on the fence to chomp a slice of fruit.
Her owner is in the faded blue overalls and work boots you expect to see on a farmer, with tufts of silver blond hair falling over his ears from under a well-worn ball cap. As he cuts the melon, he handles the pocketknife deftly.
All of this barnyard activity creates a bit of cognitive dissonance. It would be one thing if the rooster, chickens, geese, and pig — there are also three goats — were in the rural wilds of, say, far western Loudoun County, but that’s far from the case.
Indeed, to get to this dusty, rustic setting, we simply pulled off of a busy four-lane highway and into a gravel parking lot. The scenery goes from bustling to bucolic, just like that, right outside Alexandria in the section of Fairfax County called Franconia, seven minutes — 2.5 miles — away from the mega merchants of Springfield Town Center.
This is Nalls Produce, in business since 1961, when Beulah Street, which it sits on, was barely wearing its first coat of pavement. It’s survived through the Springfield Town Center (originally the Springfield Mall) in the 1970s, the census-toppling Kingstowne residential development in the ’80s, and the Amazon Fresh supermarket up the highway last year. But as rapid urbanization is only accelerating in the region, the question facing Nalls Produce is: Can it survive another 60 years under the leadership of a new generation? Or will this little patch of farm finally give way to more development?
The farm’s roots are deep. Cary Nalls, who still manages the farm, started in the family business as an industrious 5-year-old who lived on or near the same land the 6-acre produce complex still stands on. Legend has it he sold homegrown vegetables door-to-door from a wagon that he pulled along Beulah Street. If this were a movie, there would be a whooshing fast-forward from then to today, with Nalls, now a grandfather, watching over wagons of fresh-grown goods on the same property.
Except now he has 150 red Radio Flyer wagons, and they’re pulled by paying customers. “Some days, every one of them is being used,” he says.
Members of the Nalls family have been in this section of Franconia for generations. Grandmother Carol was born in a house “over there, when Abraham Lincoln was president,” Cary Nalls says, pointing to the back of the lot. Theirs was the first house on Beulah Street to have electricity and indoor plumbing, he says. Later, we come upon a small and ancient house in the yard next to the retail area — it was built by his grandfather.
Cary Nalls’ boyhood wagon grew into a store, and as the years went by, infrastructure was added to accommodate new inventory: fresh produce, flowers, and shrubs; farm-to-table groceries; and seasonal needs such as pumpkins for Halloween and trees for Christmas. His childhood roadside stand is now an unpretentious collection of outbuildings and irrigated shelving on a well-worn gravel lot.
Nalls says the surrounding community appreciates the store’s busy outreach efforts. Regular events include gardening and crafts for kids, a subscription “crop share” program, school visits, and donating surplus food to local families in need.
It’s not easy being a fixture in the community. Nalls says he gets two days off during his busy season, from March 1 to Halloween. Some workdays start at 2:30 a.m. for the drive to Pennsylvania to pick up merchandise. Spend an afternoon with him, and you see he stays in motion, from discussing topsoil with customers to helping workers relocate saplings.
But people recognize the effort. The Fairfax County proclamation in February was requested by Jeff McKay, chairman of the county board, who used to represent Lee District, where Nalls is located.
“For someone who grew up in the Franconia-Woodlawn area and remembers when Beulah [Street] was a two-lane road … we always thought Nalls was something that existed in every neighborhood and were all over the county,” said McKay at the proclamation presentation. “We had no idea the treasure that we had in our part of the county.”
“I just appreciate that you’ve been able to keep that asset in our community,” said current Lee District representative Rodney Lusk at the same ceremony. “There’s been so much development all around you, and you guys [are] the last bastion of solace there; I want to commend you for being able to make sure Nalls continues operations.”
Indeed, those buildings and townhomes seem to get closer and closer, just like the road in front of Nalls Produce. Beulah Street doubled in size from two lanes to four lanes 20 years ago, taking some of Nalls’ storefront with it. “Business was off by about a half for 18 months” while the road was widened, Nalls says. “We had to lay people off.”
That’s something Nalls says he is loath to do. He points to various employees working in the lot — depending on the time of year, there are up to 50 of them — and remarks about their heritage, what they were doing when he hired them, and how their lives have improved. He’s proud to have played a role.
And yet, Nalls’ open land does not go unnoticed. Nalls says folks in flashy cars drop in often to make an offer — not for the business, but for the land. They’d like to build houses here.
“I’ll never get to big money,” he says, leaning on a round concrete table his grandfather made from a wagon wheel. “I’ve been poor all my life. Heck, $500 is big to me.”
He wouldn’t say what number the developers who drop in are offering, so we had economist Terry Clower do a bit of estimating as to what the several parcels that make up the Nalls Produce property might be worth. Clower is director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, and as such, keeps an eye on property values, taxes, transportation, and the rest.
“With all things economic and real estate, the market value of the properties around Nalls depends on a few factors,” Clower says, adding that he is not a commercial property appraiser. That said, given the location somewhat near the Franconia-Springfield Metro station, the fact that any residential construction would require creating more parking, and the current zoning of the site (one single-family dwelling per acre), Clower says, “It would not surprise me greatly to see someone offer $25 per square foot or even higher, with a contingency based on replatting [consolidating] and rezoning the parcels.”
The bottom line?
“I could easily see this as a $4-plus-million deal after land assemblage and rezoning.” And if it’s for rental units instead of single-family homes, “the value could be even higher given the acceleration of rents in this region,” he says. “All of this assumes there are no unknown challenges to the site, such as contamination, bad soil, shallow water table, and other factors.”
Still, a possible $4-million-plus haul. Not bad for someone who escaped high school by non-traditional means. Nalls says he hated school because he already knew that he was going to farm for a living, and more schooling was slowing him down. He graduated from nearby Hayfield High School in an unconventional way, as thanks for a favor — the delivery of patio furniture and appliances for an English teacher and puppies to the government instructor. “My mother said, ‘Don’t tell me how you did it,’” he says. She was proud of him anyway, he adds.
Nalls is the farmer he wanted to be, and after 60 years of trial and error, he seems to be able to rely on instinct. An example: He spent the first few days of April hauling a shipment of saplings by forklift into a protective shed because, despite the day before’s balmy and unseasonably warm 80 degrees, “It always gets cold after a full moon in April.”
Boy, was he right: The next day, temps plummeted into the 50s for nearly a week, darkening the skies with a dauntingly cold overcast. Those saplings would have been kindling. Does he use an almanac to predict weather? “Naw,” he says with a small laugh. “You learn things when you have to take $20,000 of merchandise to the dumpster. You don’t make that mistake twice.”
Nalls is quick to share the six decades of success with the loved ones around him. “They’re smarter than me. But I know my value, too,” he says. Among those are his ex-wife, Sharon, who is co-owner and keeps the books, and his son Cary Jr., whose successful landscaping company works in tandem with the retail outlet.
Then there’s daughter Valerie. And the question of there being a Nalls Produce for the next generation might just lie with her.
“I started out thinking I wasn’t going to stay here, that I was going to go into plant science,” Valerie Nalls says. “Rutgers [University] in New Jersey is an excellent school for that, but it’s so expensive. So I said, well, I’ll go to George Mason [University], I’ll get my general education stuff knocked out, and then I’ll transfer.”
Then reality set in. “I hated all of my organic chemistry courses and calculus, and everything I had to take for this plant science program in New Jersey. But I loved my management courses.” She graduated from Mason in 2007 with a management degree.
At Nalls Produce, Valerie combines her passions: business management and growing and selling things. And for her trouble, in 2015, she was chosen for the Young Retailer of the Year Award from Green Profit magazine, which covers the horticulture retailing industry.
“That was pretty cool,” she says. “It’s an honor to be picked; the industry is big, and there are a lot of sharp people, and it’s an industry that’s challenging. So in order to make it, you gotta be kind of scrappy.”
When Cary Nalls was asked about the future of the store, he grew wistful as he recounted a conversation with his grandson and Valerie’s son, Blake, 9, who said he wanted to work at Nalls Produce when he was older. “He said they were going to run the bakery. Isn’t that sweet?” Nalls says.
“Actually, Blake was speaking for himself and his sister,” Valerie adds, adding her daughter Morgan, 7, to the equation. “They said they’re going to do a team-up deal” on a bakery yet to be installed.
“I’m hearing them say that, and I got to experience what I’m sure my dad experienced 20 years ago when I said I was interested in staying on and working here,” she says. “It’s awesome to see the next generation show any interest — and they want to expand a little bit.”
But Valerie is wary: “It’s not an easy career path,” says the woman who is on it. “It’s not physically, mentally, or emotionally easy, and it doesn’t lead to a lot of financial prosperity, and it doesn’t lead to a whole lot of free time. So, you know, anybody that shows an interest in this industry really has to be passionate about it.”
Well, there are real estate developers who are willing to change that, overnight.
“You know, I don’t see that happening,” she says. Cary and Sharon make ownership decisions together; so far, selling out isn’t on the table, Valerie says.
But …
“If somebody was to get really sick or if there was an awful accident — those kinds of scenarios,” she says. “But at this point, we can afford the taxes, we’re still having fun, we can still make a modest living, and we have all the benefits of keeping this cool little piece of the country in the middle of suburbia.
“We have fantastic community support, and we don’t want to sell anytime soon. We’re still having fun.”
This story originally ran in our July issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly magazine.