An Afternoon in Chesapeake, Virginia

the-everyday-emma

Jul 13, 20202 min read

Updated: Dec 3, 2020

Last weekend while staying in Virginia Beach, I spent an afternoon in Chesapeake, Virginia with my friend, Madison. We went to two places, which happened to be right next door to each other, and the activities we did at each location were outside. First, we went to Bergey’s Breadbasket, a family-owned market store with homemade products, including sandwiches, pies, ice cream, and much more. Behind the store, there is Bergey’s Barnyard, an outdoor petting zoo with goats, bunnies, pigs and piglets, cats and kittens, sheep, alpacas, cows, ponies, and a donkey. The entrance fee was only three dollars to be able to pet the animals, feed them, go inside some of their cages, and even pick up some of the smaller animals. I was surprised by the number of animals and the freedom that customers had around them. We were able to hold baby bunny rabbits, young goats, kittens, and even piglets. Being able to interact with animals so closely for such a small fee, you’d expect the place to be bustling, but there were only a few other groups of people, including a couple families and some young people around our age.

Next door to Bergey’s is Mount Pleasant Farms which is another family-owned farm with a red, barn-style market store, selling produce, dairy items, baked goods, and locally-made products, farm animals, and activities like peach picking. We went into the market store to purchase the bags for our peaches and then walked past the chickens, goats, pony, donkey, and horse to get to the orchard. It is a beautiful and quite large orchard with plenty of peaches to grab, though most were high up, so we had to do some jumping. All in all it was a super fun afternoon, and I’d love to visit both Bergey’s Breadbasket and Mount Pleasant Farms again in the future. If you are ever in the Virginia Beach area go check out Bergey’s and Mount Pleasant because they are only 30 minutes from the oceanfront and 26 minutes from Sandbridge!

As a reminder, if you are leaving your house or traveling right now, make sure you wear a mask and keep your distance from other people. At both locations, we kept our distance from other patrons, but, whenever we were nearby any of the other groups of people or inside the market stores, we wore our masks. Also, if you are visiting during the summer, remember to bring a water bottle with you because, as always, it gets hot, hot, hot in Virginia!