Beaufort County farm is chock full of flowers

One of the most beautiful farms in eastern North Carolina is Terra Ceia Farms that is located near Pantego and the Pungo River in Beaufort County. 

This multigenerational family business grows and sells more than 250 varieties of flowers, ranging from A to Z – allium to Zantedeschia (calla lilies). Especially noteworthy at Terra Ceia are the tulips, sunflowers and peonies.

 

Terra Ceia is pronounced “tara-SEE-uh,” and it’s a Portuguese term meaning “heavenly earth,” says Mark Van Staalduinen, one of the farm owners. (His Dutch surname is pronounced “VAN-stahl-DUNE-in.”) 

Mark’s brothers, Casey and Carl Van Staalduinen, are also partners in the operation of the ever-expanding family farm. (Cornelis was their father.)

 

Their grandparents, Leerndert and Cornelia Van Staalduinen (along with 10 children), left the Netherlands in 1938. “The economy in Holland and the impending second World War precipitated the move,” Carl said. 

The Van Staalduinens relocated initially to Ontario, Canada. They came to North Carolina in 1943. 

The first Dutch immigrants to arrive in Beaufort and Hyde counties came in the 1910s. They were engineers who consulted on the Lake Mattamuskeet drainage project. The grand plan was to drain the lake and turn it into farmland – rich and fertile soil, chock full of nutrients. 

It was a massive undertaking, since Lake Mattamuskeet is the largest natural lake in North Carolina, some 18 miles long and 7 miles wide. Dutchmen have special expertise in the pumping of water. 

Holland is “a low-lying nation famous for engineering its way around rising seas and sinking ground,” explained Molly Quell, an American writer living in the Netherlands who covers “the intersection of science and society.” 

In 1909, the N.C. General Assembly created the Mattamuskeet Drainage District. In 1911, the land was leased to the Southern Land Reclamation Company. In 1915, the world’s largest pumping station and smokestack were built. A community named New Holland sprung up on the southern shore of the lake. 

Between 1916-26, the lake was drained three times. After the third go at it, the lake stayed “de-watered” for five years. Pumping efforts were abandoned in 1932, however, because drainage procedures became too costly, too complicated and were unsustainable. 

The nation was in the throes of the Great Depression. There was no money. 

Some of the Dutch families who had moved to North Carolina gravitated toward the Pantego and Belhaven communities. Newcomers in the 1940s, such as the Van Staalduinens, were warmly welcomed. 

Leerndert Van Staalduinen found the land and climate here offered “ideal bulb growing conditions.”

 

During the 1950s, “he sold bulbs and cut flowers, mainly gladiolus, to the big-city markets up north, particularly in the boroughs of New York City,” wrote Helen Yoest of Raleigh, an avid gardener and author. 

Leerndert launched Terra Ceia Farms’ mail-order bulb business as a sidelight later in the ’50s, but it caught on like gangbusters. 

Through it all, Carl Van Staalduinen is partial toward the peonies that his grandfather loved to experiment with.

 

Katie Saintsing of Our State magazine visited Terra Ceia. She wrote: “Peony plants take up to five years to establish a root system…to support their heavy, showy, fragrant blooms. And they’ve been known to live for 100 years or more – so the peonies your grandma once tended are a gift that keeps giving, spring after spring.” 

Saintsing added that peonies, although hard to grow, are highly nostalgic – holding a “certain magic for many people.”