The real deal
By Ray Reed on Jul. 07, 2010
(434) 385-5532
ROSELAND — You’d think, watching a television commercial boosting Virginia-grown foods, that John Bruguiere of Nelson County is one of the professional actors who appear in the 30-second video.
“I grew this apple on my family farm,” he says to the camera, holding up a shiny red one before passing it to someone on his left as the commercial continues to run, showing actors who describe the fruit’s path from picker to trucker to seller and, finally, to a customer’s home.
Actually, John Bruguiere is the real thing. He and his brother, Thomas, operate Dickie Brothers Orchard at the foot of Little Priest Mountain.
“He’s the only real farmer we used,” said Greg Hicks, a vice president with the Virginia Farm Bureau, sponsor of the ad.
The Farm Bureau is running the commercial on television stations in Richmond and Harrisonburg this summer as part of its “Save Our Food” campaign, which encourages people to buy products grown on Virginia farms.
People who are curious about those commercials are invited to visit the farm where the apple grew, Bruguiere said.
And many of them do, because the Bruguieres have a retail side to their operation, and it’s about more than apples.
Internet advertising by Dickie Brothers draws people from urban areas including Richmond and Hampton Roads.
“I’ve had someone from Gloucester see their neighbor and ask him, ‘What are you doing here?’” Bruguiere said.
Blackberries will be ripe in a few weeks, and people can buy them right out of the farm’s packing shed. They also can pick fruit themselves, and about half of the visitors do just that, Bruguiere said.
Other products — melons, pumpkins and peaches — that ripen throughout the summer and fall also can be picked as they ripen.
“People come to this area as a beautiful destination, and spend the day in the mountains,” Bruguiere said.
“They can drive their cars to where the fruit grows” and pick it — even apples from trees — while standing on the ground, he said.
The farm raises about 15 varieties of apples, most of them sweet kinds that are popular for eating fresh, Bruguiere said.
The Dickie Brothers Orchard is a family way of life, tracing back seven generations to land grants from King George II of England in the 1750s.
“We’ve been here since the Indians,” John Bruguiere said last week. A few minutes later, he pulled an arrowhead out of his pocket that he’d found that morning while tilling ground for a cantaloupe crop.
Bruguiere said he’s in the commercial because he hopes it will help preserve the farming tradition.
“We would like it to last a little while longer,” Bruguiere said, smiling.
He said he also likes the way the commercial shows other people involved in the farm-to-market food chain, so that consumers can appreciate how many people’s livelihoods they’re supporting when they buy Virginia farm products.
Bruguiere, whose mother’s maiden name was Dickey, came back to the farm after working 10 years as a banker. He said he decided farming was a healthy way of life, and he also came back to help his father and brother operate the farm.
Farming also “is a hard way of life,” he said, because droughts in some years have caused its orchards to produce no revenue.
His parents live in the oldest farmhouse still standing, a stone structure whose water source was a spring-fed stream until a drought a few years ago forced them to dig a well.
His mother and father met while attending college, Bruguiere said, and after his father finished a stint in the Air Force, “they decided this was a good place to raise a family.”
“Without their sacrifice and hard work, we wouldn’t be here. The farm probably wouldn’t have survived,” Bruguiere said.
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