Growing concerns.

• Author: Donsky, Martin
• Position: F.P. Wood and Son family farm

Growing concerns

At 61, with seven grandchildren, Winnie Wood is not prone to fantasizing.

But there are days when she imagines herself surrounded by shoppers in the produce section of a supermarket and screaming at the top of her lungs: "Do you have any idea how all of this stuff got here?"

"Most people," she explains, sitting in her office, her voice soft, "have little grasp of how hard it is to run a business in which you grow things."

Which is precisely what Winnie Wood does for a living. The family farm started in the early 1900s by her late father-in-law, F.P. Wood, today covers about 6,000 acres of Camden County in the northeastern corner of North Carolina.

She oversees a business that grows corn, soybeans, broccoli and potatoes (some of which wind up as Frito-Lay's chips), operates the local grain elevator and runs a string of convenience stores.

Up until a few years ago, F.P. Wood & Son was one of the largest hog producers in the state, but the Woods got out of the business because margins narrowed and workers grew scarce. "Nobody wanted to be around those smelly, messy hogs," says Jimmy Harrell, who runs the day-to-day farm operations and has been with the Woods for 30 years.

Still, with 30-plus people on the payroll at harvest, F.P. Wood & Son is one of the largest employers in this rural, isolated county (population just 6,000, about one resident for every acre that the Woods farm). It's hard to say whether the region's greatest claim to fame is the Dismal Swamp, the wildlife refuge that covers the northern half of Camden County, or Catfish Hunter, the former Yankees and Oakland A's pitcher who hails from Hertford in Perquimans County.

There are no fast-food strips, no malls, no high-rolling developers. The fastest way to get here from Charlotte is to rent a private plane and land on the highway. The next-best way is to fly to Norfolk and rent a car. Shopping? If you can't get what you need at Charlie's Corner Store at the intersection of Highway 343 and U.S. 158, you might as well head one county west to Elizabeth City. "If you want a fancy pair of shoes, though, you'll probably want to go to Norfolk," Wood says.

Camden County borders Virginia, and Norfolk is about 35 miles north. Like other northeastern counties, Camden's ties to the Tidewater area are far stronger than its ties to Raleigh. "We're very much a part of Virginia," Wood says. "Thousands of people go to work in the Norfolk-Hampton Roads area each day."

The Wood...