The matriarch of Bergey’s Breadbasket died on Easter at age 93. But her legacy lives on in Chesapeake.

On a sunny day at the Bergey’s Breadbasket farm store, so many customers arrived that they had to wait in line just to wait in line.

Visits to the Bergey farm are a Chesapeake tradition whose roots go back to 1933. And on the Friday after Easter, many had likely driven miles and miles to get there from all over the region, down endless country roads near the border where strawberry fields give way to acres of Southern swamp.

Children crowded the fences of the farm’s petting zoo for the chance to meet a bumper crop of baby rabbits and wee goats. Inside the store, they hovered in indecision over country-generous scoops of mint or strawberry ice cream, made according to the same recipe the Bergey family has used since 1978.

“Make sure you know what you want,” said a mother whose son had to raise himself up on his toes to see the ice cream tubs.

When the time came to choose, he still couldn’t.

James Bergey — at 37 years old, part of the fourth generation of Bergeys to serve the family’s farm-fresh wares — presided as calm emcee over the happenings. In part, he was a pedestrian traffic cop keeping customers separated during the pandemic. He was also an enthusiastic salesman for sweet-tart key-lime pie he swore was “world class.” (He might have been exaggerating, but he certainly wasn’t lying.) And in part he was the porchfront barker, calling out the lucky winners whose chicken-salad or pork barbecue sandwiches had come due.

It all felt a little like a celebration. And in one important regard, it was.

Everyone there may not have known it, but their presence was a tribute to Mary Jane Bergey, whose food and hospitality have been woven into the fabric of Hampton Roads for decades.

To the left of the farm store’s door stood a wreath tightly wrapped with pink and red and white flowers. And next to it was a humble sign dedicated to her memory.

Bergey, matriarch of the family and a thread stitched back through Hampton Roads history, died on Easter at age 93. Her husband, James, had preceded her five years before. She left behind her children’s thriving family business, long ties to the community, and recipes passed down to at least two generations of Bergeys.

“She was a fantastic hostess,” said son Harold Bergey, one of four of Mary’s children who own Bergey’s Breadbasket. “I don’t know how much to elaborate on that. Let’s just say she had a rich repertoire of dishes. She could pull them out for a Sunday dinner for a visiting preacher missionary, or it might just be somebody in the community.”

Harold remembers that a neighbor used to magically show up for a visit at exactly lunchtime, to share in his mother’s home cooking. But these days, all of Hampton Roads can do the same — ever since the family founded the Bergey’s Breadbasket bakery and deli in 2006, upon the closure of the family dairy farm.

Her recipes form the backbone of the menu, whether the pumpkin or coconut cream or seasonal strawberry pies, her rich cinnamon rolls, or her take on Southern angel biscuits.

“My guess would be maybe a third of the recipes we use now are really derived from Mom’s cookbook,” Harold said.

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Generations on the dairy farm

When Harold was growing up on the Bergey dairy farm as the eldest of seven children, he remembers, his mother was first and foremost devoted to raising her family. And though she loved the cows, she somehow always got out of milking duty.

“She always managed to dodge milking cows,” he said, laughing. “I don’t ever remember my mom milking. That was always the males in the family.”

Mary and James Bergey had taken over the family dairy in 1961 from James’ father, Titus. Titus had begun the dairy in the depths of the Great Depression with just two Guernseys, driving the long dirt road into Norfolk to deliver rich milk and cream from the trunk of his black two-door sedan.

Even as glass-bottle milk routes began their slide into history, the Bergey farm kept growing under James and Mary’s management. In 1963, Virginian-Pilot columnist Carl Cahill wrote that the two bottles of whiskey he drank each year notwithstanding, milk from the Bergeys’ “golden Guernsey cows” was “far more refreshing than anything I know, alcoholic or otherwise.”

By the ’70s, when the Bergey farm had swelled to more than 60 cows and 2,000 gallons of milk a week, Bergey‘s was one of the few remaining family dairy farms in Tidewater. To diversify, the family opened a dairy store with an innovation: rich country ice cream. To get their recipe right, they consulted the food scientists at Virginia Tech.

By 1983, the farm’s 50th anniversary, Bergey’s claimed to be the last family dairy in the state to produce and process and sell its milk on the same land. They were delivering their milk in mismatched glassware, because the bottles had become so scarce.

But finally, Harold said, the changing times also came for the Bergeys. To pay off $200,000 in debts, they were forced to sell off their cows and all of their equipment.

After more than 70 years, their family dairy farm was no more.

“For a whole variety of reasons, Bergey’s Dairy Farm gradually declined, culminating in closure in (May) of 2005,” Harold said. He still remembers the desolation of those months.

“For a year and a half, the place was vacant. The farmland was rented out. I remember looking out during that year where the petting zoo is now, and seeing a fox standing in the middle of the path. There was no one around anywhere. The foxes had taken over. What was, was no more.”

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A return to the family legacy

What followed, Harold said, was a lot of “grappling, prayer, and legal work.” But finally, he and three of his siblings — Floyd, Lynn and Joy — decided they wouldn’t give up. Instead, they would open a bakery and deli on the family plot.

“I think the four of us were looking to the generations on either side of us,” Harold Bergey told The Pilot in 2006. “We wanted to do something to honor and restore Mom and Dad’s legacy.”

To do that, they turned to their mother’s home cooking.

“Mary Bergey, family matriarch … started baking up a storm this week to prepare for the opening,” wrote The Pilot in October 2006, a week before the grand opening of Bergey’s Breadbasket.

Before opening, Mary had made a test batch of cinnamon rolls, sandwich rolls, a coconut custard pie and a pecan pie. “And they are so good,” daughter Joy told the newspaper. “Her crust is so flaky and just right.”

On the first day, with Mary still working the ovens, customers showed up even before the Breadbasket opened for a chance at her “airy, flavorful buns (iced) with a mix of confectioner’s sugar, whipping cream and pure vanilla extract.”

Mary, already well into her 70s, passed most of the cooking duties on to younger members of the family. The stewardship of Mary’s pie recipes now falls to Harold’s daughter-in-law, Jenny Bergey.

It turned out that Mary liked life better on the other side of the counter. Over the years, she became the bakery’s most dedicated customer for her own cinnamon rolls.

“You know, she had a line: ‘I used to make them. Now I eat them,’” Harold said. “And she did. I think she averaged a cinnamon roll a day.”

Each morning, Mary walked the hundred or so yards from her house to the family store, where customers often recognized her and greeted her fondly.

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That long-lost music

In retirement, she was also able to return to her lifelong love of music. She had first taken up guitar during her childhood in an Amish community in North Carolina; Harold describes her as a “walking hymnal.” In what must have been her wilder years, she even almost ran off to Nashville to find a music career, Harold said.

“I’m glad that never happened,” he said. “Because then there would have never been me, or any of this.”

But late in life, she did finally manage to join a band. The Sunshine Express played music for nursing homes in the area.

“It always cracked me up, Mom at age 90 playing for the old people,” he said.

When his mother passed on Easter, the family received an outpouring of tributes and remembrances. But one of the most unexpected was also musical, stemming from the years that Mary and James had spent on a religious mission to Albania in the 1990s.

”I guess the most touching condolence that I received was a young lady called me from Michigan,” Harold said. “She had lived near the apartment where Mom and Dad were in Albania. And Mom had taught her to play guitar. It was very touching to me that this Albanian lady now living in Michigan, called me on Monday after Mom died on Sunday, and offered condolences. And of course, you get a little teary eyed over that one.”

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His mother loved music so much, and loved so many songs, that the family had a hard time choosing what to sing at her service on April 11. But there was one country gospel song, an old number called “Heaven,” that they knew she’d loved for at least 80 of her years. She’d recorded it with her sister Fanny when she was just a teenager, on a home engraving device for vinyl.

“They’re singing and both playing instruments, and singing two different parts. Mom was the alto part, and Fanny was the soprano,” Harold said.

He still has the recording of his mother’s voice, stored as a file on his computer. The vinyl had gotten a little scratchy over the years, he said, so it’s sometimes hard to make out the words. But the music remains beautiful.

Heaven supernal, goes the old song. Heaven eternal. I’m so glad it’s real.

if you go

Bergey’s Breadbasket is open every day but Sunday at 2207 Mount Pleasant Road, Chesapeake, 757-546-9225, bergeysbreadbasket.com.

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Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com