NOTTOWAY COUNTY, Va. -- It’s been exactly one year since Tyson Foods announced the company was closing its Glen Allen processing plant.
That closure impacted more than 50 poultry farmers across seven Virginia counties, including Triple R Farms in Nottoway County.
The back field of Triple R is where Roger Reynolds spent nearly every morning for 40 years.
"I still catch myself wanting to turn to come down here," said Reynolds.
But this past year, it became a space where he was no longer needed.
"A whole lot less to do, unfortunately," he noted. "Everything you've done in your life has just turned upside down.”
March 13, 2023 was the day Reynolds received a letter from Tyson Foods, explaining his broiler contract with the company was being bought out.
"Everybody was like, 'Oh my God... what are we gonna do?"" Reynolds recalled. "How are we going to pay the bills?"
Reynolds was forced to halt operations and even had to lay off his daughter, the heir to his fourth-generation farm.
"The first few months was terrible," he explained.
Uncertainty and fear hung over Triple R and every other chicken farm in the area.
"Looking at four houses empty every morning, it's very difficult," said 33-year farmer Pete Watson.
But Reynolds and Watson weren’t going to let their farms die without a fight.
"I've called everybody I know to call and aggravate them, I'm sure," laughed Watson.
Watson and a handful of other farmers, with some help from the state, joined forces to create the Central Virginia Poultry Cooperative, a group dedicated to keeping chicken farming in Central and Southside Virginia.
"We've gotten interest in the area," noted Watson.
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That interest just landed them a new deal, a decade-long egg production contract with Indiana-based Dutch Country Organics.
"I think it is a golden opportunity," Watson explained.
"We're going to do commercial eggs, organic eggs and eating eggs," said Reynolds.
But the change from chickens to eggs won’t come without challenges.
"It will cost more to convert two houses than it cost when I built all four of these in 2011," Reynolds shared.
The 62-year-old has to ask his bank for over $2 million to pay for new equipment.
“I don't want to reinvest and go out on a limb again at my age," said Reynolds. "But what choice do I have? I can either store round bales in them or convert them and put poultry back in."
The Central Virginia Poultry Co-op is small now, but it’s helping to save Nottoway’s economy.
"I mean, it would have been a it would have been a monumental collapse," said Nottoway Supervisor John Roark when explaining what his county would be like without poultry farming and the tax income it brings in. "To see our farmers be able to breathe again, now that that gives us relief.”
Roark isn’t underestimating the impact 365 days without poultry exports will have on his country's finances because chicken farming makes up 80 percent of Nottoway’s agriculture exports, its largest industry.
"You may say it was only one year loss, but you're talking about the interest that develops from that revenue loss as well," he noted. "So something that happened in a year may put you back 1 1/2 half, two years.”
Roark is confident the county will rebound thanks to these farmers.
"They were not going to be defeated," Roark explained.
Because while change isn’t always welcome in rural Virginia, eggs will keep Reynolds' farm in his family.
"I want to save what we've built right here. I want to get up in the morning, I want to get my hands dirty," explained Reynolds. "I enjoy that and I've done it my whole life — and that's what I want to do.”
Reynolds plans to have his chicken houses converted and full of thousands of chickens laying at least 62,000 eggs a day by the end of 2024.
Because of this change and partnership with Dutch Country Organics, both Reynolds and Watson are confident their farms will be around for their children to take over.
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