Hobbton Highway has a new country store, Dirt Farmer Mercantile, and in just over a week, it has already drawn a steady stream of customers. Some items have sold out almost as quickly as they’ve been stocked, keeping owner Tonya Honrine busy restocking shelves while continuing to refurbish the historic building. Although the store is new to many customers, its story began nearly 90 years ago.
At the end of a busy day, as the flow of customers began to slow, Honrine settled into one of the same chairs where visitors often gather to chat. Looking around the store, she reflected on its long history.
“It’s kind of one of those things — if the walls could talk,” Honrine said. “There’s so much history to this store.”
Originally built in 1936, the building operated as a country store until 1963 before sitting vacant for decades. In 2006, it was moved from its original location across from what is now Sylvia’s in Newton Grove. The store was originally owned by Pete Gregory before later being operated by Purdy Williams. In its early years, it served not only as a country store but also as a service station, and at one point housed a working barbershop.
“So many people have told me, ‘Yeah, we remember going there,’” Honrine recalled. “They would trade eggs for sodas or whatever they had on the farm. I decided … let’s do like a barter thing. People have brought local eggs in for me to sell, and we traded them for blueberries because we have a blueberry farm in Newton Grove. So it’s kind of like still doing that old-school stuff.”
Honrine first operated the mercantile in 2006 after her father moved the building to Clinton. The store sold glass-bottled drinks, produce, flowers, pumpkins and Christmas trees brought in from the mountains. Eventually, she stepped away to work in sales for a produce company in Wilmington before later moving to Charleston, where she worked for Harris Teeter and held several other jobs.
Returning home in 2024 led Honrine to reconsider the old store and the possibilities it still held.
Many of the antiques that line the upper shelves once belonged to her family. Much of the collection had been gathered over the years by her father.
“My dad would bring in all of this stuff. He would go somewhere, and he’d find bottles and plates and bowls and stuff,” she said. “When I was cleaning up around the farm, I had gone through a lot of stuff. He and my grandpa — his dad — they didn’t get rid of anything because one day, they would always say, ‘You never know, you might need it.’”
After her father passed away in 2017, Honrine inherited the items he had collected over the years. When she returned home in 2024, she began sorting through them, setting aside pieces she hoped would one day fill the shelves of the old country store.
“As I’m cleaning up stuff and taking stuff for scrap metal … I’d sit me a pile to the side, and I’d go through something and sit another pile to the side, and I’d go like, ‘Okay, this is gonna go on the top shelves.’”
She said reopening the store eventually became more than a business decision.
“I don’t know what people think about religion-wise, but I feel like you’re called to certain things,” Honrine said. “As I was cleaning around the farm, I’m like, ‘What am I gonna do?’ I’m like, ‘The store’s out there. I wanna open the store.’”
Once she made up her mind, Honrine devoted countless hours to restoring the building, often working late into the evening painting and preparing the interior.
“As I’m in here … in my mind, I’m thinking about all the people who walked through these doors, and how many country stores used to be open that aren’t open anymore. People would go there and get everything they needed — the flour, the feed, the seed, everything. That was their grocery store.
“Every day, there are people who walk in the door, and they see somebody they haven’t seen in years, or I see somebody I haven’t seen in years. Where we’re at, you’ve got to go either to Newton Grove or Clinton to get stuff, and the people know I’ve been in this enough to know I’m going to bring quality products in.”
Many of the store’s offerings come from nearby farms and growers.
“That bell pepper came from Cottle Farms in Faison. The yellow squash that we sold out of came from Faison. These tomatoes came from the mountains. The peaches come from McLeod Farms in McBee, South Carolina,” Honrine said.
For Honrine, knowing where the produce comes from is part of what makes it special.
“My thing is, if you look at something like those tomatoes, it looks like a tomato, but does it taste like a tomato? If you get that true vine-ripe tomato, it’s going to have a great taste to it. I know where those peaches come from, so it just makes it better.”
Looking back on the store’s first week, Honrine said the response from the community has been rewarding.
“We opened last Friday, and just being able to see all of these people come in here … some kids had never opened a glass bottle drink with a bottle opener. People sit down, and they’re chit-chatting. Back in the day, you had all these farmers who would gather around on their little break out of the field. They’d grab a drink and a pack of nabs, and most of the time that was their lunch before going back to the field. So it’s kind of like bringing that back into this age and time.”
While much of the store embraces its historic roots, Honrine has added a few modern conveniences. Dirt Farmer Mercantile accepts credit cards and Apple Pay.
Located at 9435 Hobbton Highway, the store is open Wednesday through Sunday. Hours of operation and contact information are available on its social media pages.
The store’s motto is “Sow, Reap, Repeat,” a phrase Honrine believes reflects more than agriculture. She hopes each customer who walks through the doors leaves not only with something to take home, but also with a renewed sense of the community connections that country stores once helped foster throughout rural Sampson County.