Dogwood Farms: A Canvas of Color
Flowers by the acre, honey by the jar
and views out of this world
By Ross Howell Jr. • Photographs by Lynn Donovan
As you turn into the gravel driveway at Dogwood Farms in Belews Creek, you’re met with a field of yellow sunflowers stretching into the distance.
Continuing along the driveway, you’ll pass brightly-colored zinnias, purple coneflowers, redbud trees and a brilliant red hibiscus.
I park in the shade of an oak tree and get out of the car. The late-July morning air is still cool. I see Chris Crump, founder and owner of Dogwood Farms, step out of his tidy farmhouse. He’s flanked by his handsome, 11-year-old son, Colt, who wears a farmer’s cap — like his father.
Two chocolate Labs lope up to complete the welcoming committee. They check me out with a few sniffs, then bound off to more interesting pursuits.
Chris and I shake hands. There’s a touch of gray in his beard, and from his grip you recognize he’s a man who’s known years of labor.
And he’s a man who’s mindful of legacy.
“Did you notice the hibiscus next to the driveway?” he asks.
I nod yes.
Chris tells me that the plant first grew at his great-grandmother’s home. It was later transplanted to his grandmother’s new house when it was built, and then to his mother’s. When his mother and father decided to move, he transplanted the red hibiscus to the farm.
“Over the years we’ve separated the roots and given transplants to family members, friends and neighbors,” Chris says.
“I think my grandma would really get a kick out of knowing it’s been shared with so many people,” he chuckles.
Chris grew up in the Sedge Garden section of Winston-Salem. While his parents weren’t serious gardeners, his grandfather was.
“My Grandpa was a huge gardener,” Chris recalls with a smile.
The city of Winston-Salem had more of a country feel to it back then, he tells me. On vacant lots, neighbors often would cultivate community gardens.
“I still remember the smell of the dirt when Grandpa would dig potatoes,” Chris says. Together they’d walk the rows, picking up potatoes and sacking them.
After high school, Chris studied horticulture at Forsyth Tech Community College. Straightaway from earning his degree, he took a job with the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
He worked for NCDOT for 25 years — much of that time, supervising teams who planted and maintained wildflower beds along our roadways. As his boss neared retirement, Chris realized the position would probably fall to him. It wasn’t something he wanted to take on.
“I knew it was time to step away,” Chris says. He left NCDOT in 2001.
He purchased his first parcel of land for Dogwood Farms — 24 acres — in 2003. The farm had been neglected for years and was overgrown with trees, bushes and vines. When Chris’s father took a look at the place, he said, “You’re gonna be working till you die if you buy all that land!” “It’ll be all right,” Chris remembers saying to his dad. “I’ll have plenty of kids to help me.”
But 10 years passed before his son Colt was born.
“I bought this place thinking I’d raise a bunch of kids here,” Chris says. “Turns out, there’s only one.”
“But I think it all happened for a reason,” he adds.
That reason’s about legacy, too.
“In my mind, I’m laying the foundation for him,” Chris says, nodding toward Colt. “I want this place to be something he can build on.”
“He’s an old soul,” Chris continues. “I feel like he’s going to be in some kind of heavy equipment. That’s his thing.”
Chris tells me about Colt’s natural hand-eye coordination, about videos he’s shot of his son operating a 12-ton excavator, spinning it around to clean its tracks, skillfully manipulating the bucket to uproot trees from uncleared ground.
“College isn’t going to be for him, and that’s fine,” says Chris.
I ask Colt about his responsibilities at Dogwood Farms.
“I do the honeybees, the honey,” Colt answers, grinning broadly. “We call it Colt’s Signature Honey.”
Colt explains that the farm will be making its first “pull” from the five beehives on the property in the next few days. He describes the process of cleaning out the hives after winter, feeding the bees to keep them healthy, and spinning and putting the honey in jars so it can be sold.
When I ask him how long he’s been managing the bees, he answers, “Five years.”
So Colt’s been a beekeeper from the age of 6.
He scurries back into the house, since he’s getting materials together to enter sixth grade at Triad Baptist Christian Academy in Kernersville.
Chris and I start walking toward the back section of his yard.
“A friend comes over to help Colt,” Chris says. “He has a lot of experience with producing honey. He’s our bee mentor. Working with the bees has been a great learning tool for Colt — seeing how a business works.”
We stop at the edge of the yard and look back toward the farm entrance and the field of sunflowers.
“When I purchased this place, what I wanted to do had nothing to do with flowers,” Chris says. “I wanted to grow ornamental trees for landscaping.”
Chris had done landscaping on the side and had several friends in the business, so he figured he would be able to establish a market readily. But the Great Recession brought home building nearly to a standstill.
So he bided his time.
Then a friend told him the Rockingham County Cooperative Extension office was offering a class on wholesale cut-flowers farming. He decided to attend, and it sparked an interest.
But he wasn’t sure what route to take. He’d grown flowers to give to neighbors and grew sunflowers for dove hunting. And he’d always grown flowers along the property fronting the road.
Then one day a young photographer stopped in and asked if she could take photographs of the farm. In exchange, she’d make family photos of Chris and Colt for free.
Chris figured, sure, why not?
Later, the photographer said to him, “You need to charge people for coming out to the farm.”
Chris answered, “Nobody’s going to pay to see this farm.”
He shakes his head, smiles at me and says, “I was wrong.”
In 2015, after going through a divorce, Chris decided to get serious about opening Dogwood Farms to the public. He’d also bought an additional tract of land that nearly doubled his acreage.
That year, a professional photographer in Charlotte called Chris. She said she wanted to book four hours of shooting on the farm for clients flying in from California.
“I’ve got some pretty colorful friends that love to pull my chain,” Chris laughs, telling the story.
“So I said, ‘Is this a joke?’ She said, ‘No, a race team owner’s son and his girlfriend want to do engagement photos.’”
“I said, ‘You mean to tell me there’s not a sunflower field somewhere between Santa Monica and Belews Creek?’ And she laughed and said, ‘Apparently not!’”
“I said, ‘Absolutely, bring them on.’”
Chris tells me four vans of equipment and people drove in the day of the shoot. And the pièce de résistance?
“The photographer got one picture of a lightning bug that landed right on the girl’s engagement ring,” Chris says. “They told me that photo was used on billboard advertising for the ring designer out in California. I was blown away.”
Interest in Dogwood Farms seemed to snowball from there, mostly on the internet. Photographers scheduled professional sessions. Individuals and families came to pick flowers and take photos, posting their images to Facebook and Instagram.
He tells me people have visited Dogwood Farms from many states — even as far away as Europe.
“Last year we even had refugees from Ukraine,” Chris says.
Now we turn our gaze toward the back of the property.
Chris tells me in the spring a pair of ospreys built a nest in a cell phone tower visible above the tree line. (Belews Lake is not far away.) He points out a dead tree nearby.
“For weeks I’d watch two ospreys crash into that tree, breaking off dead sticks — four or five feet long — and carry them up to that tower,” Chris says. “It was amazing.”
He turns and points toward the view on the horizon.
“Those are the Sauratown Mountains, and you can see Pilot Mountain right there — it’s kind of hazy today — and right behind those trees is Hanging Rock,” Chris says.
“That’s what brings people to this place — our views,” he adds. “The sunsets here are unrivaled.”
Chris and I hop into his ATV to drive toward the back of the property. We pass another field of sunflowers planted later than the field at the farm entrance. They’ll bloom in a couple weeks. We go past the pond. Just beyond the pond, at the woods edge, are Colt’s beehives. Next is a field of zinnias with plump, green buds that will soon be in bloom, too.
Take a moment to imagine that — a field of zinnias with blossoms of red, orange, yellow and pink, the colors of sunset.
And I haven’t even mentioned the spring season at Dogwood Farms.
“The spring flowers we had this year were just out of this world,” Chris says. People were in awe of his field of red poppies.
When we reach a knoll, Chris stops and cuts off the engine. The sunlight is warmer now. When the breeze stirs, it’s soothing. There’s birdsong all about. Bluebirds, finches. Near the pond, a killdeer calls. Cicadas drone in the trees.
The land rolls away from us into a valley thick with shrubs and saplings. Chris points to the tree line in the distance — the edge of his property. He tells me a little stream there feeds into Belews Creek.
“The creek bed is rock,” he says. “Almost like a rock water slide.” He tells me one day that spot will be another great place for photographs.
“It’s getting these last 10 acres cleared that’s the thing,” he sighs. “And making a way for people to get back in there easily.”
Atop the knoll where we’re sitting are piles of raw earth, moved here when the pond was excavated. Chris explains he’ll use the earth to raise a roadbed through the ravine toward the creek.
Where thickets grow now, he’ll plant Bidens cernua, called nodding bur-marigold.
“Just think of all that valley as a river of yellow,” he muses.
And that’s Chris Crump’s genius. He imagines a landscape canvas and sets about painting it with living things.
He tells me after all the years, all the seasons, all the workdays on the farm, at day’s end, he will pause here a moment to reflect.
“God got you to the end of the day and the sunset’s your reward,” he muses. “It’s like a tribute, so you can say to the good Lord, ‘Thank you.’”
And that’s a legacy, too.
“Sunsets here never get old,” Chris adds. OH
For more pictures and information on the attractions at Dogwood Farms, follow Dogwood Farms on Facebook, @dogwoodfarmsupick on Instagram or visit www.dogwoodfarmsbelewscreek.com.