By now, Everyone knows I attended a book festival in this city. Not only is the festival just about my favorite, but I love the city itself.

The Great Dismal Swamp lies just outside, and, I would suspect, some of the city lies on reclaimed swamp land. I’ve taken several tours of the swamp, which provided the basis for one of my favorite of my own books: Death in the Great Dismal.

The swamp was established as a wildlife preserve in 1974. It is a peat swamp and the estimate of the depth is 15 feet of peat. When walking through the swamp it is important to watch your footing; the tour guide dropped a pole down and it rapidly disappeared from sight. The preserve is owned by the wildlife. Signs of bears are everywhere. All the insects bite. Unusual birds flutter through the tall, straight pole pines. Truly an amazing place.

Suffolk is also a major producer of peanuts. A short drive around shows peanut farms and a drive through town brings one to the peanut factories. The peanut itself is a curious plant. The peanut is unusual because, although it flowers above ground, the seeds, I.e. peanuts, are below the ground. They have to be dried to release the moisture from the soil.

As is usual with some of the weird plants we eat for food, how were peanuts discovered? Did someone dig up the roots and find the peanuts growing beside the roots? Who figured out they need drying? That they can be roasted?

The Virginia peanut is large and very crunchy, larger than most, and so crunchy my jaw started to hurt. They are a legume, not a nut, despite the name. These groundnuts, originally only eaten by pigs, were studied extensively by George Washington Carver. He developed hundreds of uses for them but credit for making peanut butter lies with Dr. John Kellogg, he of cereal fame.