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Kecia Kalu of “Manna”

A vegan restaurant in South Boston? The menu at “Manna: The Natural Experience” says “ribs,” “chicken salad,” “hamburger’ and other dishes. So how could that be?

The answer is in the seasonings: “Chicken without seasonings has no taste whatsoever. If you take tofu or wheat glutens and season them correctly, it tastes the same as chicken,” says owner Kecia Kalu. She also offers herbs and teas and health food items, and in the back is an aroma therapy room for meditation. In the evening she offers health and cooking classes

Manna, which opened last year at 217B Main Street, is one of three major lunch places in downtown South Boston, all of them recipients of grants from Destination Downtown South Boston.

Joe and a Bow, which also opened for breakfast and lunch last year at 530 Wilborn Ave., is a hybrid mix of boutique children’s clothing along with a restaurant with sandwiches, main dishes and a salad bar. It also offers gourmet coffees, lattes, frappes, teas, milkshakes and smoothies, in addition to bakery items such as muffins and croissants. Its high ceiling and brick walls are reminiscent of the Star Laundry, which once occupied the building, part of historic South Boston.

Quiche with rice pudding at Southern Plenty

Southern Plenty, at 206 Main St., recently opened the entire upstairs to help handle its volume of lunch and breakfast business and for an art gallery. It offers a variety of salads, quiches, cheeses, chilis, specialty groceries, deli boar’s head meats and sandwiches, one of them called “the kitchen sink.” It also sells coffees, smoothies, bakery items and other sweets, cakes to order and premade salads by the pound. Southern Plenty also teaches cooking and painting and wine sipping classes.

Charge your car while you stay at our bed & breakfast in beautiful Southside Virginia. We have Class-2 chargers that work for Teslas and four-hour universal chargers. During July, you can get 20% off the regular $115 to $155 room fee if you have an electrical vehicle and book through our website, www.oakgroveplantation.com or email oakgrove1943@gmail.com. We have a fine electric vehicle ourselves, a Nissan Leaf.

Like Broadway shows? South Boston is the place to be this summer. Two all-time favorites, “Oklahoma” and “Gypsy “ will be performed between June 22 and July 22, just a 10-minute drive from Oak Grove Plantation.

If you see “Oklahoma,” you’ll get to see Mike appear as a farmer in his sixth role in six years. Mike says Summer Theater provides the best of two worlds. “You get the feel of New York and Broadway when you are in the theater. Then you walk outside and you are in the easy parking, light traffic and small-town atmosphere of of South Boston, Va.” And there are top-notch restaurants nearby.

This isn’t just community theater. It is summer stock—a combination of locals and college students and grads from throughout the Southeast who auditioned for prized roles.

We have had many family and friends of actors and tech people stay iwth us in past seasons. We have provided living accommodations for several Summer Theater staffers in the past.

Besides the great songs, there are some terrific dance numbers in “Oklahoma.” Oh, and Mike is briefly in one!

Details: www.prizery.com

Have we really been in business for 30 years? It seems just like yesterday when Pickett Craddock opened her ancestral home to guests from all over the world from May to September. Not many innkeepers stay in business that long, but Pickett just loves to show off the house that she and her family have occupied for 198 years.

Since opening in 1988, Oak Grove has added a bathroom, a handicapped accessible guest room, solar panels and an electric car charging station. Its 400 acres, once planted in tobacco, are now filled with pine trees.

Come and celebrate the season with us, and get ready for the 200^th anniversary of the building and grounds in 2020!

Welcome to Oak Grove Plantation Bed & Breakfast

Less than a half hour from Oak Grove Plantation is a road racing track hailed as one of the six best in the United States by Car and Driver Magazine. Often racers, spectators and their families stay at Oak Grove to be close to Virginia International Raceway, yet able to unwind in a calm, rural setting away from the noisy race track

Two of the biggest events are on top in July and August.

July 14-15 CCS Fall CycleFest of Speed (motorcycles)

Aug. 17-19 Michelin GT Challenge and Biscuitville Grand Prix

Sept. 21-23 Heacock Classic Gold Cup Historic Races

For all events, current military are admitted free, and veterans get a 50% discount.

Virginia Green Travel noted Oak Grove’s solar panels, electric car charging station, tree conservation program and other environmental effortson on March 2 in naming Oak Grove the Green B&B of the year for the third out of the last five years.

What attraction in Halifax County is the most unique? I would say Robert Cage Sculpture Farm, which has an amazing collection of whimsical art created by cast-off industrial materials.

I often drive friends and guests to this amazing garden, with a goat bridge over the main driveway and dozens of large sculpted pieces.

Cage, who died in 2014 at age 91, led a remarkable life. He had been a Marine in World War II and had jobs in widely varying locations, ranging from a veterans’ hospital in Miami, oil wells in Texas and a tennis club in Beverly Hills. Returning to his native Halifax County, he won the world championship in tobacco auctioneering in 1984.

Visiting Rhodesia, as part of his tobacco work, Cage obtained a degree in fine arts at the Salisbury School of Art and studied art for a summer in Paris. Then he started turning out these art works, which are scattered throughout the county and were displayed after his death at the Portsmouth Art Center.

Where did he get these industrial materials? “He took me to a junkyard on our first date,” says his widow, Sandy Rusak Cage. Others he got from highway projects and contributions from the community. Today the farm is maintained by his 3 children, 2 of whom live on the property, and one of Cage’s friends, a long time employee.

Much of his art can be seen on this website, www.robertfcage.com. To get to the sculpture farm from downtown South Boston, drive east on U.S. 360, past Ernie’s Restaurant, make a U turn at the next intersection Highway 854, and turn right onto Cage Trail. –Mike Doan

A note from Barry Kolen, a visitor to our art exhibit last month:

“Craddock,” she said, as she reached for her card. “I dropped the Mary,” As in Mary Pickett. Too many women in her family were also named Mary. As for Pickett, her name reminded me of one of the Civil War generals. “Graduated last in his class at West Point,” Pickett informed me.

A Splash of Sunflowers

I listened closely as Pickett explained that her family had occupied the Oak Grove Plantation in South Boston VA “for 200 years” according to th

e attractive flyer I’d been given. Three of its rooms were available for rent since Pickett had made the plantation house and its 400 acres a bed and breakfast. One featured half-teaser headboards on its pair of twin beds.

Pickett’s living quarters comprised a sizable wing in the back of her historic home.

“See the solar panels,” she said as she pointed to two banks of them just beyond her living quarters.

Oak Grove was immaculate. It served as a perfect setting for a house-wide display of paintings and giclees by one of America’s most talented water color artists, Karen Shelton. As I toured the upstairs with Pickett, Shelton’s high school classmate,

I noticed exceptional woodwork.

“Thomas Day did that” she mentioned. Days’ shop had been in nearby Milton, N.C., (He was a free black furniture and cabinet maker before the Civil War.)

South Boston News & Record, June 5:

Oak Grove Plantation Bed & Breakfast in Cluster Springs consciously appeals to the ecotourism traveler — a group that now includes guests who roll up in Tesla electric vehicles.

In late summer 2016, the historic Cluster Springs inn became one of a dozen inns in Virginia to be fitted with Tesla charging stations, making Oak Grove a natural draw for people who want to see the countryside while riding around in their high-tech sedans.

What makes Oak Grove an even more appealing stop for green energy advocates is the source of much of its electricity: solar panels.

In a given year, solar energy powers anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of the inn’s electrical needs.

Originally built in 1820, Oak Grove has a long history of running off its own energy sources. More than a century ago, the home utilized a giant Delco Electronics battery in the basement, powered by a windmill behind the house where the solar panels stand now.

Converted into an inn in 1988, the idyllic Cluster Springs plantation possesses a strong “self-sufficiency tradition,” says innkeeper Pickett Craddock, whose ancestors lived in and tended to the home for close to two centuries.

Admittedly, the archaic windmill powered only the home’s light bulbs, but it was part of a longtime devotion to being green and close to the land. The house was built with timber felled on-site and bricks made locally, Craddock said. Much of the interior woodwork was done by Thomas Day, the master woodworker in Milton, N.C.

As for why Tesla funded a free charging station at the B&B, it goes back to the design of its vehicles. Electric cars use high-capacity batteries to power their motors, getting anywhere from 100 to 250 miles per charge. While Tesla owners can charge their cars at home, on the road they need special stations to juice up their batteries once the charge gets low. Tesla decided to strategically place recharging stations along major highways and travel routes.

“I think Tesla really jumped at the chance to put one here,” said Michael Doan, Craddock’s husband.