By Carla Burgess, a freelance writer in Raleigh
- Introduction
- Demand grows for rare onions
- Contact the grower
- How to find it fresh from the farm
- Prize-winning homemade salsa recipe
- Download the
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June 2003—On a farm in Engelhard, 75 miles due east of Washington, Wilson Daughtry is summoning a crop not traditionally sown in North Carolina. Onions, let alone sweet varieties, aren’t grown on a large scale anywhere else in the state. But for nine years now, the bulbing vegetable has found a comfortable home in the highly organic soils of this Hyde County farm. Here in eastern North Carolina’s “blacklands,” Daughtry is making his mark with a no-tears onion he believes is more appealing than a Vidalia.
Just a breeze shy of the vast Pamlico Sound, the 100-acre fields yield 40,000 pounds of sweet treats labeled and sold as “Mattamuskeet Sweet Onions.” (The farm lies about 5 miles east of the state’s largest natural lake, Lake Mattamuskeet.) Daughtry believes the buffering effect of the sound moderates temperatures, allowing him to overwinter the fall-seeded crop for a June harvest. The result is a plump, mild onion whose flavor has earned it a reputation around these parts.
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