LONGS — More than strawberry fields straddle the state line.
A family’s past and future, a landmark and one of the region’s original agritourism farms could be in the path of a highway extension.
“The worst case? The route they want would take everything, the fields, the market, our homes. Would we attempt to restructure and find other ways to provide food to the community? Would it work? Well, you got to try it to find out. It’s not something I want to try,” Sallie Bellamy Lun said walking toward an heirloom pumpkin patch at Indigo Farms. “Our hearts desire to grow food for our community. When you’ve worked the soil, cared for the environment, it becomes spiritual.”
In a pair of adjacent fast-growing counties in two states filling with new residents, the need for new roads has been discussed for decades. The two state Departments of Transportation pinpointed extending the Carolina Bays Parkway from its end at S.C. Highway 9 north to U.S. Highway 17 over the state line.
The landing and crossing points creating the routes will be displayed at two upcoming meetings and the public will be given time to talk at another meeting. The newly formed S.C. House Department of Transportation Modernization Ad Hoc Committee will meet at 4 p.m. Sept. 23 at the Horry-Georgetown Technical College Conference and Business Center in Myrtle Beach. People will be given three minutes to talk.
One topic of the ad hoc committee meeting will be concurrency, requiring public infrastructure and services to be in place before new developments are approved.
The parkway extension will be the purpose of the meetings at Sea Trail Convention Center in Sunset Beach on Sept. 29 and Sept. 30 at the North Strand Recreational Center in the Longs community. Both meetings are scheduled from 5-8 p.m. and each will have transportation officials from South Carolina and North Carolina.
The two DOTs have identified seven routes swinging from the last northern exit of S.C. Highway 31, the Carolina Bays Parkway, towards Shallotte in Brunswick County, N.C.
While all the routes are still under consideration, both agencies have picked one called Alternative 4 as the preferred route of a new four-lane highway touted to save eight to 22 minutes in the time it takes to drive the nearly 22 miles of the project.
Like the other routes, the southern end of Alternative 4 begins at the S.C. Highway 9 exit.
It is the route that spills over Indigo Farms off Hickman Road, which is called Highway 57 on the South Carolina side of the two-lane road.
It is the route that worries Lun, her family and more than 13,300 who have signed a Change.org petition to spare the farm.
Lun found a framed map tucked away in the main market showing the routes that date to the last public meeting in 2019.
She dusted off the glass and pointed to the red lines showing the strawberry field and the blue lines of the blueberry field. She had outlined the main market and her parents’ home on the North Carolina side of the farm. She has an arrow pointed to her home on the South Carolina side of the farm.
The map for Alternative 4 traces the route in a light butterscotch color that’s dissected with a darker orange stripe indicating the proposed new four-lane. The Indigo Farms market, two homes, fields and other buildings are located in the light butterscotch swatch. It bubbles around the Bellamys’ property to indicate how the new route will connect to Hickman Road on the north side and Highway 57 on the south side.
A note on the DOT-generated map states the corridors are shown to be 1,000 feet wide, but the actual right-of-way width will be around 400 feet.
Again, DOT noted, the routes are not set in stone, allowing for wiggle room throughout the process.
“When people say, ‘Can’t you farm somewhere else?’ No. You have to learn your soil. You have to learn how to adapt to what your soil is naturally set up to do,” Lun said, scooping dirt in her hand in one field and then feet away holding different looking dirt from another field. “It takes years, years, decades to get this soil right so it grows vibrant, sweet tasting strawberries. That field, potatoes love that soil. The blueberries love that one and this one is for the winter — cabbage, collards, carrots, radishes, turnips. That field, because of adding nutrients to the soil, grows two cover crops we won’t harvest but we can turn to put nitrogen and other elements back in the soil.”
Like at least six generations before, Lun knows the soil, where the wetlands get boggy and how much rain will wash out the little bridge on the dirt road leading to the back side of the farm.
“My entire childhood it was Swamp Road, the road to Granny Winky,” she said of the dirt path that ended at Indigo Branch, an offshoot of the Waccamaw River.
Her family has grown on the same dirt since the late 1700s. Her grandfather Otha, called OK by everyone who knew him, started a roadside vegetable stand in the 1960s that bloomed into opening the farm to the public for events such as hayrides and NAS Pigs, racing pigs marked with NASCAR numbers.
After OK Bellamy died at 92 in 2020 and his wife Mary died at 91 in 2022, the family began dividing the land among family members and selling off a few parcels.
Indigo Farms is now made of 60 acres in North Carolina and 31 acres in South Carolina including the wetlands. Deep in the farm, surrounded by fields edged by trees, the separation is marked by Horry Electric or Brunswick Electric power lines. Along Hickman Road, there are signs welcoming folks to the north state and south state in the other direction. There is a stone marker surrounded by sprigs of grass and weeds with SC etched on one side and NC etched on the other.
On Hickman Road, there is a 2-foot patch stretching across the road that looks like a pothole was planted and is on the verge of blooming where the states meet.
“That will be the strawberry field,” Lun said, pointing to a field with perfectly parallel lines made of dark dirt. “Over there are the two indigo plants we always have.”
Out of habit from talking with customers and farm workers since she was child, she calls her father Sam.
“Sam plants them every year because his father planted them every year because his father planted them,” she said gently touching the tiny pink blooms on the green stalks. “Sam’s not going to do anything with them except save the seeds to plant next year.”
Next year, she hopes the farm won’t be in the path of the highway extension and the family can preserve family history, continue being able to provide food and update the main market off Hickman Road.
She plans to attend the three meetings and tell the officials that Indigo Farms was named a Century Farm by the state, and her family is part of the Voluntary Agricultural District (VAD) in Brunswick County.
While the Century Farm designation is strictly to honor family farms more than 100 years old, it does not provide any protection from development.
But the VAD does offer some buffers against development and eminent domain. The VAD can’t stop DOT from building a road on the property, but it does require procedural hearings that may cause delays.
The July report states there will be more than 910 acres of farmland impacted by the route — 126.4 acres in S.C. and 784.5 acres in N.C.
The final environmental impact statement from the two DOTs will be released in late 2026 and South Carolina will begin right of way acquisition in 2026. North Carolina has not put a date on when it will begin right of way acquisition.
The is no timeline on when or if construction will begin.
The estimated total cost is around $800 million, according to the July report. That amount would be split with North Carolina potentially being responsible for just over $600 million while South Carolina’s share would be around $200 million.
South Carolina will use sales tax funding from RIDE III to buy property for the extension.
Veronica Newsome of the NCDOT said while North Carolina has not set aside money to pay for the project. Making it a toll road is an option.
The report states Alternative 4 was picked as the preferred route partially because it has the lowest number of residential displacements of all seven routes. Under Alternative 4, there would be four residential displacements in S.C. and 35 in N.C. for a total of 39.
SCDOT spokesperson Kelly Moore said Indigo Farms would be impacted by Alternative 4, but it wouldn’t be as severe as other options. She also noted the design hasn’t been finalized.
“They want to work with property owners,” she said, adding that transportation officials plan to discuss how much right-of-way would be needed at the upcoming meetings.
The route also has three business or nonprofit displacements in S.C. and 34 in N.C. for a total of 37.
The Alternative 4 will also impact Mt. Calvary No. 2 Missionary Baptist Church in the Brooksville community on S.C. 111. The church was established in 1875. It was rebuilt on S.C. 111 in 1947 where it was remodeled in 2003.
In North Carolina, the route would impact four churches: Andrews Chapel Global Methodist Church about a mile north of Indigo Farms on Hickman Road; Beulah Baptist Church about two miles north of the farm on Hickman Road; Beach Assembly of God north of the Shallotte River; and Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses on U.S. 17 near Union School Road.
“I know it’s not just us,” Lun said. “It’s a lot of families. We’re not fighting against the highway. We just want them to push it over a little, so it doesn’t destroy us.”