Click here to see Part 1, Parlor and Guest Rooms
Click here to see Part 2, Dining Room and Grounds
A reminder that we are open for business. To protect your safety, we have put these policies in place.
–All rooms will be left vacant at least 24 hours between guest occupancy.
–Use of face masks are recommended when appropriate but but not required.
–We require guests and ourselves to maintain at least a 6-foot social distance from others.
–Per Virginia guidelines, breakfast can only be served outdoors or in guest rooms or as carry-out. Our front porch is a great place for breakfast.
–For protection of staff, guest rooms will not be cleaned during guest stays. As an alternative, we will provide bags to place used linens and discarded service/waste items to be left outside your room. We will provide replacement linens as needed the same way.
–Disinfecting hand sanitizers will be available at the entrance. We ask guests to wash hands when entering or leaving their rooms.
With Virginia entering Phase 2, lots of local restaurants are reopening either for carry-out or indoor dining at 50% of capacity. We’ve been taking out food about once a week at several locations, which either bring the food out to your car or leave it in a bag in front of the restaurant. You can see a list of these restaurants at the Halifax County tourism website.
It has been 200 years since tobacco farmer Thomas Easley built Oak Grove in in Cluster Springs, a stop on the stagecoach line before South Boston became a town. Easley, an ancestor of innkeeper Pickett Craddock, served a term in the Virginia legislature. He built a home that was two rooms wide and one deep, with woodwork and mantels in the federalist style. The house was built with heart of pine wood cut from the farm and bricks made on the farm. Easley and his wife, Harriet, had 10 children.
Education was important to the family, and the oldest son, Thomas, went to West Point but was killed in the Mexican-American War. Son William was Captain of the Black Walnut Calvary Dragoons in the Civil War’s Peninsula Campaign but got sick and came home to die in 1861.
Oak Grove opened as a bed & breakfast in 1988 and has been serving customers ever since.
You haven’t tasted good vegetables and fruit until you’ve tried them straight from the farm. Halifax County is loaded with roadside stands and farmers’ markets that sell them. “Fresh and local food is a lot better for you than store-bought produce,” says Pickett Craddock, who runs Oak Grove Plantation bed & breakfast. “I never knew corn and tomatoes could taste so good,” says her husband, Mike Doan. We always serve local fresh fruit for breakfast when it’s available.
This time of the year, July and August, is the best time for cantaloupe, watermelons, corn, squash, zucchini, okra, eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, blueberries, blackberries, beets, onions, cabbage, peaches and beans. Strawberries, asparagus and flowering plants are at their height in May. Fresh eggs are also popular here. and pumpkins are available in the fall.
Some of our favorites places for buying produce are the Downtown South Boston Farmers Market (open Monday through Saturday), the Town of Halifax Farmer’s Market (open Saturday mornings), Reese’s Farm Fresh Produce in Scottsburg and Centreville, Puryear Farm Market and Deli south of South Boston on U.S. 501, and various roadside stands, including one across from the Cluster Springs post office.
One of the great things about Halifax County is that it is dark at night. Really dark!
In such a rural area, there are no city lights to diminish your view of the skies. The planets and constellations that you can’t see in Washington or Raleigh are quite visible here.
You can do star gazing from our front yard to see the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Orion or whatever else you want to view. But you can also go to a star-gazing program at Staunton River State Park, about a half hour from here. The park offers star gazing programs on Aug. 3 and Sept. 1 from 9 to 11 p.m. This is an opportunity to gaze at the night sky’s celestial bodies through high powered telescopes with the guidance of seasoned astronomers. The star gazing is held near the visitor center. Ask us for details.
You can take your dog with you to local restaurants if you are going to a dog-friendly B&B like ours. We checked with a number of restaurants with outdoor seating and found that they all let you bring your well-behaved pooch .
“It’s happening more and more,” says one restaurant owner. Among the local restaurants we confirmed it with are Busy Bee, Bistro 1888, Windmill Farms and Southern Plenty in South Boston and Molasses Grill in Halifax.
This week we had a nice dinner at Cotton restaurant along the Dan River in Danville with our two standard poodles lying patiently next to our table. The waitress brought them large bowls of water and even gave them treats. Mike left a large tip (large for him anyway).
One piece of advice: Don’t tie your dog to the table. Once I saw a dog spot a squirrel and everyone’s dinner end up out on the street.
We’ve been saying all along that our region is great for bike riding. We have good bikes in our basement that you can borrow. But if you’d like to ride in nearby Danville (30 miles) you can even rent a bike easily through Zagster, a bike sharing company.
All you have to do is download the Zagster app (http://bike.zagster.com/danville/) join and use your smart phone to unlock and use a bike for a ride along the beautiful 7.5-mile Riverwalk Trail in Danville. The first hour is free and after that, it is $3 an hour.
Using our bikes or your own, you may want to ride the beautiful roads from Oak Grove Plantation. Or you can drive the 6 miles into South Boston and ride the 2.5-mile Tobacco Heritage Trail (maybe making a few round trips.) By summer of 2020, the trail is scheduled to be extended to 4 miles.
Other great options; The High Bridge Rail Rail through Farmville (60 miles away), a longer segment of the Tobacco Heritage Trail near Boydton (36 miles). But for now, forget about the Ringgold Trail, about 20 miles west of Oak Grove. Parts of it were wiped out by a hurricane last November and are not passable
It’s a big week for Oak Grove Plantation Bed & Breakfast as we open our 31st season. We’ll we’ll have an open house on Saturday (April 27 10 a.m.-2p.m.) to celebrate our Earth Day and to host visitors along the Barn Quilt Trail. And this Thursday (April 25), Pickett is traveling to Harrisonburg, Va., to accept a Virginia Green Leader award at the Virginia Green Travel Conference.
In front of Oak Grove, we have a barn quilt—a large piece of painted wood that looks like a single quilt block, the kind that are used to decorate the side of a barn. For the second straight year, there will be a celebration of the barn quilts that are displayed in front of churches, farms, houses and even a jail, as part of the Halifax County Barn Quilt Trail.
At Oak Grove, the beautiful star quilt was sewn together by the great-grandmother of Pickett Craddock, who runs the 199-year-old plantation house as a bed & breakfast. Appropriately, the marvelous quilt hangs in one of the three guest rooms, the Thomas Day Room.
Besides the tour of the elegant house, visitors will get to examine the solar panels and the electric car-charging station, one of the few in Halifax County, and hear about furniture maker Thomas Day and his relationship with the house. Guests will see a square from the star quilt in front of the B&B at 1245 Cluster Springs Rd. in Cluster Springs (six miles south of South Boston.) Bathroom facilities are available for touring quilt fans.
Also on April 27, we are taking part in the Earth Day Extravaganza at the Halifax Farmer’s Market. Virginia Clean Cities and the Carolina Solar Energy are among participants, along with Oak Grove, which will have brochures and information about the solar panels and other energy-conservation measures.
A mix of 19th and 21st centuries will be found at the Oak Grove Plantation on the Halifax County Barn Quilt Trail April 27 The bed & breakfast in Cluster Springs has 48 modern solar panels in addition to rooms with custom-made mantelpieces, doors and windows and a table put together before the Civil War by Thomas Day, a prominent local African-American craftsman.
The beautiful star quilt was sewn together by the great-grandmother of Pickett Craddock, who runs the 199-year-old plantation house as a bed & breakfast. Appropriately, the marvelous quilt hangs in one of the three guest rooms, the Thomas Day Room.
Besides the tour of the elegant house, visitors will get to examine the solar panels and the electric car-charging station, one of the few in Halifax County, and hear about Thomas Day’s relationship with the house. Guests will see a square from the star quilt in front of the B&B at 1245 Cluster Springs Rd. in Cluster Springs (six miles south of South Boston.) Bathroom facilities are available for touring quilt fans.