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Historic Pick Pocket Plantation holds Plantation Day Festival today

Historic Pick Pocket Plantation, the site of the first farm that became the Trask family truck farming empire in the Beaufort area, will host its first Plantation Day Festival on Saturday, December 12, from 10 am to 5 pm in Beaufort. The one-day event will be a celebration suitable for all ages, with food, art, fine crafts, Lowcountry history and more. All festival activities will be free of charge to the public.

The festival will offer visitors an opportunity to explore the recently restored historic plantation home and surrounding grounds and learn more about the property’s history and future. Local preservationist John Keith purchased the remainder of the active farmland in Pick Pocket Plantation in 2006 and has devoted the past three years to restoring the plantation home and surrounding outbuildings.

The property was owned for almost 100 years by the Trask family, the patriarch of whom was George W. Trask Sr, as the first acreage of what became their truck farming empire of thousands of acres of farmland surrounding Beaufort. The Beaufort operation was a part of a larger Trask truck farming operation that extended from Wilmington NC to Myrtle Beach and Beaufort.

The historic plantation home and surrounding grounds now comprise more than 15 acres, located in the center of Burton between the intersections of US 21 and SC 170. Hundreds of acres of land in the Pick Pocket area were part of the Trask farming operations, now the site of the commercial businesses centered in the Burton area along US 21 and SC 170. The Trask farming acreage included what is now the US Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort and the nearby Beaufort industrial park, the Burton acreage from Pick Pocket Plantation to Broad River, large tracts on Lady’s and St. Helena Islands including what is now the Royal Pines residential community, and the entirety of Cat, Cane, Gibbs and Distant Islands.

According to Keith, the plantation home has undergone extensive renovations during its restoration. The home is noted for its distinctive architectural style, unusual exterior board siding, wrap-around porches and cupola or widow’s watch. “A lot of work has gone into this house during the last three years, but it’s turned out beautifully,” said Keith.

The home was occupied by George W. Trask Sr. of Wilmington NC when he came to Beaufort with his family in 1912 to operate Pick Pocket Plantation, which he had purchased in 1908, as the first of what became the largest truck farming operation in the Beaufort area. It was part of an enterprise he founded with his father, Daniel Webster Trask, in Wilmington NC in the late 1800s.

Beginning near Wilmington with mules plowing fields and horse-drawn carts hauling vegetables to town, the Trasks built the business in its heyday in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s into the largest truck farming operation in the southeast. They employed and supported hundreds of workers through the Great Depression, World War II and the post-war era until federal-government programs in the 1960s made it easier to get food stamps than to work in the fields for a living.

The Trask operations shipped 32 different varieties of vegetables grown on thousands of acres of land by refrigerated railroad cars and trucks to the large cities in the northeast and midwest in the years before interstate highways, air freight, and frozen foods became the norm. They brought cash from away into the Beaufort community, isolated from the mainland first by water then by tradition and a history of proverty brought on by the Civil War and the Great Depression. Their largest customers were the A&P and Safeway corporations, which looked to the Trask’s farms for much of the fresh vegetables in their produce markets in the big cities in fall, winter and spring months.

George W. Trask Sr. and his wife, Emma, remained in Beaufort with their large family of children, eventually eight boys and two girls, until the Beaufort operation was established, then returned to North Carolina in 1916 to resume oversight of the farming company at its Wilmington headquarters. They were rock-ribbed Baptists who founded churches as frequently and as fervently as they instilled competitive spirit in their sons.

All ten of their children went into the Trask farming business. Three of the eight sons, Neil Sr, John Sr, and Harold Sr, came to Beaufort from Wilmington as young adults to help oversee the Beaufort operations, establishing families of their own here.

Noted for their independent spirit, entrepreneurial energy and propensity to produce male descendants, Trasks remain active members of the Beaufort community today. One of them, George Graham Trask, is the founder of Hometown Local Media, Inc., the publisher of The Beaufort Tribune, and bears the first name of his grandfather, George W. Trask Sr.

John Keith credits interior designer Peggy Norris of Elizabethton, Tennessee, for her expertise in decorating the restored home. Norris has furnished the home with period antiques, Tiffany-style stained glass light fixtures and various collectibles to complement the heart pine floors, beadboard wainscoting, large bay windows, arched brick fireplaces and high ceilings. The unique furnishings include two kitchen possum-belly tables with rounded drawer bottoms and a custom-built dining room table constructed of heart pine wood salvaged from the floor of an old railroad car.

The festival will have plenty of outdoor attractions as well, says Keith. “We’ll have food vendors, educational demonstrations and Lowcountry area artisans selling their art and crafts.” he said. “And the kids can even feed the chickens if they want to.”

Keith plans to use the property to promote area agriculture, tourism and educational activities. The plantation is located at 91 Trask Farm Road in Beaufort, northwest of Robert Smalls Parkway between Neil Road and Burton Hill Road.

The road is one of the last remnants of what was known as the Old Shell Road that was topped with oyster shells and comprised the original route across Port Royal Island to Beaufort from Whale Branch beyond Grays Hill. Until the era of bridges and paved roads in the 1920s, the Old Shell Road was the only way to get to Beaufort by horse and later by automobile, which required a ferry crossing to Port Royal Island from the mainland at Lobeco. In honor of this history, the modern-day road from the mainland to Beaufort is called Trask Parkway.

Directions: In Beaufort, take US 21 (Boundary Street) to the intersection of US 21 and SC 170 (Robert Smalls Parkway). Turn onto SC 170 and travel 0.3 mile on SC 170 to Advance Auto Parts, just past the railroad tracks. Turn right into the parking lot between Advance Auto Parts and Charter Communications. Go straight through the parking lot until you reach an unpaved farm road, which is Trask Farm Road. The entrance will be marked. Enter the farm property and park in the field in front of the plantation home. The event will be held rain or shine.

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