Local sixfortyseven

Derek and his wife Amanda Luhowiak operate a mobile food kitchen out of their home on route 647 in Fauquier County called “Local sixfortyseven” whose name comes from their address and Derek´s roots in Pittsburg, a city with a strong union presence. Having given up their day jobs the young couple have embraced all that is sustainable serving up their local fare on sugar cane plates that are themselves compostable. Their idea is to motor up with their portable kitchen and serve food at the local farmers markets.

Talking over a bottle of Barrel Oak Norton wine--a winery from which Derek and Amanda recently resigned to pursue their passion full-time—Derek and his wife serve up a lunch from their kitchen which is stainless steel and fully equipped.

Derek, who learned to cook at the Pennsylvania Institute of Culinary Arts, says last year he went to interview for a job as a sous chef in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At the interview they told him to go to the farmers market, buy food and cook for four people. Derek says, “The Chapel Hill farmers market was out of this world. They have a really cool foodie kind of local scene there. As I was walking around I was thinking 'I don't want to go back to the kitchen. I want to go to the farmers market.' So the idea kind of sprung up around me being at the farmer's market.”

On a day late in winter Derek servers venison hamburger (he shot that so cannot sell it), deviled eggs from local free range chicken, mayonnaise and pickles for the visiting journalist. Plus there is a salad of local greens including wild onions (called “ramps”) that Derek picked from the forest. There are no summer vegetables yet because it is a tenet of the local organic food movement that one must eat only what is season and squash does not grow in winter.

The chalkboard menu propped up outside their portable kitchen is left over from yesterday´s trial run. It lists ramp soup, tamworth paté, asparagus lemon and ricotta tart, creamy polenta and local pork chops, ricotta, and grass fed baby beef slider which they fed to friends over the weekend. Derek says, “We had the grills going the saute going everything at once it was a little hectic at first. All 20 people showed up and all 20 people ordered at the same time.”

Derek and Amanda make everything they serve including the sickles, bread, even the ketchup. Everything is locally sourced. “I am going to work with small farmers who maybe have 10 acres and two cows per year. A lot of these farms are trying to create their market. I am sure they would love to be able to sell fresh.”

Saying he is sort of a wholesaler himself because he buys from so many local producers Derek rattles off a list of their farm providers. They buy greens and vegetables from suppliers such as the Tuscarora Growers Coop. Organic eggs come from Ayshire farms where Derek worked for three years as executive chef. They make paté from tamworth hogs bought from Matt and Ruth Szechenyi at Briars Farmstead in Boyce, Virginia. Derek says, “They are really small doing 1 or 2 cows per year.” They buy grass fed beef pimarily from Angelic Beef in Remmington. Because local organic farms are so small Derek has to buy from different ones at different times when one has inventory and other does not.

The Local sixfortyseven entrepreneurial debut was at the George Mason farmers market on Earth Day. There they served grass fed beef, bratwurst sausage, cookies and fresh brewed tea from filtered virginia well water. Then they were off to the Winchester farmers market, Centerville, and back to Barrel Oak winery where they will be twice a month from 12 to 8. Their calendar is filled all the way to November.

To be “sustainable” a cook should grown his own food so Derek and Amanda are trying out that. Outside their house they have raised beds with rosemary, thyme, rows of garlic and onions in freshly turned soil. He used a Bobcat to rip the sod then backbreaking labor to dig it to 20 inches deep so the plants roots would thrive in the loose soil. He says, “When we started in mid October and it was just moss and rocks. Now you can stick your hand down to your elbow. My mom's boyfriend was a farmer out in Pennsylvania and he said double dig everything with your hands.” For compost he ordered a big truck load from the Fauquier Livestock exchange.

Outlining his vision Derek says, “If I can pull up to the farmers market I can buy everything I need straight from the farmer. We see ourselves as an integral part of the farmers market. You have consumers who don't really know what ramps are or what to do with dandelions--how to cook this or how to cook that. We see ourselves as an educational tool. If I can cook it in a tiny little kitchen you should be able to take it home to your house and roughly do the same thing. Essentialy in a nutshell that´s pretty much it.”

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Local sixfortyseven

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Boutique Wineries in Chile

Ed Flaherty says in Chile a “boutique winery” means a winery whose owner is the winemaker and viticulturist and not an absentee landlord. He says boutique wineries in Chile really are small family-run operations and not the mega custom crush operations found in his native California.


Flaherty Wines


Having arrived in Chile 16 years ago, this son of an American agronomist sits behind the computer ordering wine barrels for future vintages as chief winemaker at the million case winery Tarapaca. This towering gringo longs to get his hands into the pomace and away from the keyboard having worked as chief winemaker at the mega wineries Errazuriz and VIA Wines. So on the weekends Ed Flaherty heads home to the Aconcagua Valley where he produces 25 barrels of red wine a portion of which when it is available includes tempranillo which he is planting at a new vineyard in Cauquenes near the Italian-owned Caliboro winery.



Ed fostered an interest in tempranillo having worked a harvest in Spain and having spent time in Argentina where are a consultant for the Zuccardi family he developed a tempranillo wine. Of Chile he says, “There is very little tempranillo planted in Chile, maybe10 hectares so no one really knows what the potential of the variety is or where it grows best in Chile”. Ed selected Cauquenes for his new plantings of tempranillo, syrah, and cabernet franc because this coastal mountain region has just enough annual rainfall to allow dry farming. The area is heavily planted with 100 year old head trained mission grapes, called “país” in the Spanish. Ed says, “the Red clay soils, rolling hills and moderate climate 40 kilometers from the coast have started to produce some really good red wines from carignan, carménère, syrah and a occasional cabernet sauvignon.”

UK Agent: Boutique Wines of Chile


Koyle


For Chileans the name “Undurraga” is synonymous with those odd shaped wine bottles with the wide bottom. But that is history as the family has sold the label. In its place they have planted 35 hectares in the upper Colchagua Valley and joined the ranks of boutique winemakers in Chile. The father Alfonso and daughter Rebecca work in finance and administration while one of the sons, also named Alfonso, works both at the new winery and as commercial manager at Matetic. The other son Cristobal left his day job working at Aurelio Montes´s Kaiken winery in Argentina after having worked one vintage at Chateau Margaux, another in Napa Valley, and at the Rosemount Estate where he picked up English saying his French is pretty bad but improves with a glass or two of Bordeaux. Having quit working for others he has plunged headlong full-time into the new family venture working as enologist and viticulturist. Cristobal says he went to work in these overseas wineries to gain experience that he could apply to Undurraga. At the Rosemount Estate he says he learned to apply quality standards to really large quantities of wine. At Chateau Margaux he found winemaking with passion coupled with a constantly development of new techniques. He bundled those experiences into what he calls a “fusion” of old and new world styles and brought them back to his native Chile.

Koyle is located in a corner of the Colchagua Valley where grows a rare purple flower of the same name. The vineyard situated here at the foothills of the Andes is divided into three terraces. Syrah and carménère in the bottom terrace are planted on grafted rootstock to reduce their vigor. But cabernet sauvignon and other red grapes planted on less vigorous soils are planted on their own roots. The vines are so well balanced that they require hedging only once per year or not at all during the growing season.




UK Agent: Genesis


Polkura




Polkura vineyard in the Colchagua Valley produces exclusively syrah on yellow granite soil whose name in the Mapuche language is “Polkura”. The partners here include Sven Bruchfeld who was chief winemaker at the giant Chilean winery Santa Carolina.

Having quit Santa Carolina last year to pursue his 2,000 case boutique winery full-time, Sven Bruchfeld is one of Ed Flaherty´s protogées from Errazuriz. This Chilean whose mother is from Norway planted the Polkura vineyard in 2002. The property is located in Marchigue between Santa Cruz and Pichilemu. Neighboring vineyards include Montes, Los Maquis and Bisquertt. Of the location Sven says, “It is sort of an area in between. It is not cool climate, but it is not warm climate either. So you get cool climate character on the nose but on the palette is it more warm climate--more full bodied and textured wine.”





Agent in UK: Direct Wines Ltd


Antiyal





Alvaro Espinoza and his wife farm Marina Ashton farm two vineyard red wine grapes in Maipo. In 1996 they planted Antiyal which is 1 hectare of carménère, cabernet sauvignon and syrah valley vineyard followed by Kuyen which is another hectare of syrah and cabernet sauvignon. Alvaro is considered by many in Chile to be the innovator of the boutique winery concept and Chile´s foremost biodynamic grape grower having planted the Emiliana Organic Vineyard and others. He is much in demand from his grape growing and winemaking clients so his wife Marina takes care of day-to-day operations of the family vineyard. Marina says, “We started Antiyal Winery, with the vision of making a family wine teaching our kids to make wine, have a nice time, and grow grapes organically in our own vineyard.” With accolades flowing in from the international press this small family business soon became a full-fledged winery producing 19,000 bottles per year leaving Marina with her hands full. She says, “In the year 2000, we stated selling and I started helping Alvaro, I had another job, but then we had more and more orders. Someone needed to take care of the day to day work.” The vineyard is readily identifiable as one of Alvaro´s biodynamic projects with flowers planted in the vineyard rows to attract beneficial insects and chickens scratching at the soil to get rid of the bad ones, mainly mites. Horse drawn plows cultivate the soil instead of tractor mounted equipment. The weather here in Maipo is for the most part rain free so there is no need to spray systemic nor manufactured chemicals. Because the vineyard is biodynamic the harvest and training of the vines is timed to the rhythm of the moon and stars. Compost replaces fertilizer.


UK Agent: Adnams

Facundo




Facundo is not a winery but a label. These wines are produced by the husband and wife team of Felipe García, a winemaker from Casas del Bosque; and Constanza Schwaderer, whose day job is making wine at Córpora where her husband says she is in charge of all the top projects. Formerly, Felipe was a winemaker at Calina which is Kendall Jackson´s operation in Chile. He says working at Calina he learned to buy high quality grapes from such farm flung locales as the Limari Vallley. Of that experience he says, “For that reason the grapes that we choose for our project are really small growers with unique conditions.” Now he sources grapes for Facuno from Itata Valley to the South and Limari in the bone dry North.

Facundo does not have their own winery nor equipment so they use the facilities of the Tabonkö winery where works his former boss from Kendall Jackson. While acknowledging that it could be difficult for anyone to work too much time with one´s spouse, Felipe says his wife brings some French perspective to this Chilean operation. Felipe says his wife, who he calls “Cony”, worked side by side with French winemaker Pascal Marchard making pinot noir and chardonnay in he Burgundian fashion. Córpora have been a joint venture with the Boisset family of Burgundy then called “Veranda” but then Córpora bought out the French.


UK Agent: No agent in the UK

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The soils of Calyptra

In the flat vineyards of Chile growers who do not use drip irrigation simply flood their vineyard from one end to the other. As the gentle giant winemaker François Massoc at Calyptra explains in English, “Water has owner”. This 35 hectare vineyard and 100,000 liter winery might lie along both sides of the Cachapoal river, but in the arid desert farming which is Chilean agriculture one cannot simply siphon off the water just because it is within arms reach.

Most of Chile´s vineyards are located in the flat plains in the valleys. But Calyptra is 1,000 meters up in the Andes, a twisting and turning 45 minute drive beyond the city of Rancagua just beyond the entrance to one of Chile´s nationalized copper mines. Here in winter--unlike in most of the country--it actually snows as photos provide by François attest. Most Chileans are accustomed to looking up at the snow of the Andes from, say, Santiago but here at Calyptra you can walk in it. Beyond copper and snow it is an accident of geography that the vineyard here surrounds the famous Cauquenes hot springs on two sides. A resort is build over the top of the hot springs there that well up into a cavernous somewhat humid and dripping Roman-bath-style building. Above the hotel is an aqueduct built high into the hillside traversing deep canyons in open air as it ferries precious irrigation water from one side of the mountains to thirsty farms and vineyards in the other direction.

François came to the 20 year old Calytra five years ago having studied winemaking in Burgundy. For Burgundians by traditionthe most important part of making wine has little to do with the winemaker are more to do with the vineyard soils and location. This notion is etched into law by the French system of appellation d'origine contrôlée .

So it is with François and his outlook. This former barrel maker who was Chilean manager of the French cooperage Nadalie and still makes his own barrells says, “I am ashamed to say I am an enologist. I don´t think the winemaker is important.” He says the best wines in the world are made in the vineyard the machinations of man not withstanding. After school he tempered his enthusiasm for manipulations and all things French with a tendency to remontage, pigeages, and otherwise orchestrate the gushing red juice into the barrel and bottle. “I try not to put my signature on the wine. I try to respect the fruit. Here you don't need an intervention. I prefer to make an honest product. The great wines in the world are like that. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and it's neighbor La Romanée, that I know very well and I have tasted. They are wonderful, but very different. Because they are honest winse. That is one part of the French philosopy that I want to keep is honesty."

The vineyards here of pinot noir, chardonnay, cabernet, syrah, merlot, and sauvignon blanc are delimited by soil type which François has carefully measured and mapped. Each plot is fermented separately, measured, and blended together again according to the taste of the winemaker which he says varies by soil. In melodious that is self taught François says what is important is soil drainage which in turn turn depends on the percentage of rocks in the soil, their make up, and using the French word he says “argile” meaning clay.

François repeats some of the sometimes amusing observations which are prevalent throughout Chilean vineyards. In the winery grapes are sorted along a vibrating table staffed with women because their dainty little fingers are more nimble than those of men. The women can snatch up unripe or rotten grapes and toss them to the side for quickly than men. Asked about this François says, “Of course it is true.” In Chile such sentiments might be labeled “machista” (chauvinist). But in the USA such this type of thinking can get you into trouble with the feministas and their government mandated oversight.

The wine tanks here are insulated with cooling jackets so there is a temperature gauge on each none of which are to be trusted. Yes says François that presumption is true too.

In traditional Burgundy men plunge nude into the tank or open top fermenter punching down grapes (pigeages) so they don´t dry out as the gases of fermentation cause them to rise. François keep his cloths on doing when he does this using his feet to push the fermenting grapes back down into the juice taking care not to crush any seeds. He says, “I learned that in Burgundy. As there is a lot of carbon dioxide its really dangerous for my workers. As I am the tallest it is safer for me.”

We take a tour of the vineyards on this day late in the harvest season in June driving down a winding mountain road. The last of the harvest has just been completed and end-of-season rains have caused the mountainside to come tumbling down in a mudslide that nearly took a truck heavily laden with fruit over the side. The driver had just driven past just before the hillside gave way.

Because the weather is ideal for grape farming in Chile, there is not much use of agricultural spray to combat the rots and fungus as is done in the rainy parts of Europe. At Calyptra only sulfur is applied. They spray it every two weeks to keep botrytis and powdery mildew off the leaves and fruit.

François has changed much since coming to the farm. Part of the vineyard was overly vigorous producing too much fruit that had to be dropped off by hand in what is called a “green harvest”. So François changed the training of those vines from spur to guyot. The vines here are otherwise well balanced only requiring hedging one time per year where as in more vigorous sites in Chile it can be up to 4 times . One plot runs north to south instead of east to west. François says that alignment with the sun produces 1 gram less of acid in the final fruit. So he sells that fruit to other wineries keeping the best for himself.

Regarding acid he says Chilean white grapes measure up fine but that all of the red grapes in Chile need to have acid added by the winemaker. This is because in the long California-like growing season the fruit hangs in unending sunshine their the sugar level increasing while the pH falls off as does the level of tartaric and malic acid (low pH means high acidity) as the optimal part of this curve is reached and surpassed. This is generally not the case is regions with more rain and cloudy weather like say Virginia or New York.

François did his thesis at the university in preserving color in pinot noir wines. But here as in most of Chile the greatest portion of the red wine production is cabernet sauvignon while he does produce some pinot noir. So François gives a barrel tasting of 4 different cabernet sauvignon wines produced from different plots to show the differences owing to the differing soil

Starting with plot number 23 François asks with boyish humor from whence came the name then supplies the answer, ”It is called 23 because it is located between plots 22 and 24”. Laughing at his answer he says the vines here had been a tangle of fruit which the owner had not bothered even to prune and wanted to abandon. François dug deep pits to inspect the subsoil and mapped the property by the electrical conductivity of the soil. He then told the owner it would produce fine wine in this plot saying he would pay the costs of production and harvest himself if he was wrong on this point. François says the soil in plot 23 are older alluvial soils--which are those round stones worn down by the river and glacial erosion--coming from the last glacial period of which there have been four.

The wines from plots 24a and 24b are big tannic wines somewhat similar, but plot number 8 produces wine that is less gripping. François says these are colluvial rocks which are the big rocks that crack off and fall from the mountain. He says, “This is the youngest soil of them all. It has the most complexity and is the most feminine of the wines of the four. It is a welcoming wine. It has nice length.”

All of this discussion of soil makes sense to the farmer. I have a vineyard and farm in Virginia. The first vines I planted by hand before I had money to buy a tractor to drive the wooden trellis posts. It was back breaking labor because the topsoil was shallow clay on top of hardpan subsoil. Another richer farmer might have hooked up a subsoiler to crack the subsoil where roots could penetrate. Instead the roots in my vineyard grow outward in all directions interlacing themselves with neighboring vines unable to grow deep. This is not bad as the fertilizer the farm applies to the soil leeches only a few inches into the group. But grape vines roots explore going deep were they can reaching a depth of as much as 40 feet in places like Burgundy. As the roots go deep they dislodge minerals in the soil bringing them up to the surface and into the fruit and foilage. In short this is why soils matter.

Putting the last bung into the barrel François relates a French dictum that “One must respect the barrel”. In other words as you taste wine you can spit out what you don´t drink but not pour it out on the floor. You have to respect the barrel by returning the wine inside. In Spanish “Tienes que respectar la barrica” .

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Bari California Olive Oil and Wiebe Farms

Gordon Wiebe and his brother-in-law Richard Sawatzky farm olives, nectarines, plums and peaches in the San Joaquin Valley 30 miles west of the Sequoia National Forest. These orchards were first here in 1956 by Gordon´s father. The land is so flat that special laser guided machines are used to grade the slope to 1 degree so that irrigation can flow to all corners of the individual farms that Gordon calls “ranches”. The ranches here are delimited by dusty rural roads that have the oddly urban sound name of “avenue” even though nothing looking like a city is anywhere nearby. Seemingly more latinos than gringos live here and even the local English language newspaper has classified ads in Spanish that read “se vende pollos” (Chickens for sale).

The great majority of America´s fruit and vegetables come from this region of California and even Gordon marvels at this size. Just the weekend before he flew his airplane for three hours across the valley, over the mountains, and out to the ocean saying he did not overfly even one city. Fruit farms growing pomegranates, peaches, almonds, every conceivable fruit are interlaced with dairy operators and mile after mile of high alfalfa forage and of course corn.

Gordon is a Mennonite farmer who says he started planting olives in his fruit orchards a few years ago when most of the migrant workers here turned to construction and labor became scarce. Olives can be harvested by machine so it requires less workers than peaches, plums, and nectarines which are harvested by hand. But when the construction business collapsed the migrant workers hung up their hammers and saws and returned to his 600 acre ranch. He says, “Today there are 200 people working today on 600 acre of peaches and if all of that was olives you could do it with 20 people.”

The olives grown here are not destined for fruit although that is what The University of California is trying to promote with their local extension office. These olives will be pressed into oil and sold under Bari Olive Oil Company’s own label “BARI® ”. Inside the processing facility is a tasting room and gift shop with oils from different types of olive trees. This fall a brand new olive oil mill will be installed to process their olives. The extra virgin olive oils are quite good with different hues of color and tastes that vary from mild buttery to intense fruity and pungent flavors. These are from oil that Bari Olive Oil Company purchased from other growers. Their own fruit must wait until this year because their three year old trees have just come into production.

Here in the Central Valley orchards are ripped out and replaced from one year to the next as market conditions change. It takes three years at a minimum to produce fruit from trees which is the same for grape vines. Of course corn and alfalfa can be rotated in and out of a field in the same season. But here you see piles of bulldozed orchards stacked up like ghosts along the landscape as one grower's decision to plant, say, pomegranates is replaced by another, say, who decided to grow olives. These former orchards without the irrigation which keeps them alive quickly revert back to desert so flat, hard, and dusty that you can drive off the road there without so much as jostling you car.

Olive trees that line the streets of certain cities like Phoenix are too big to be harvested by machine but here at Bari Olive Oil Company Gordon and Richard have planted hybrids that are bred to grow short like bushes. Plus they are pruned. That way a harvesting machine can straddle the plant and shake it vigorously tossing the fruit into a hopper. This way one or two men can do the work that otherwise would require many times that. Gordon points out that olives used to be more widely planted in California in areas like the hills around San Diego and the olive district of Fresno. Now all of that turned into cities. He is trying to lure local producers to the area predicting that the politically-correct and healthy olive oil consumption may drive the California production and market ahead of the Italians in a dozen years or so.

The temperature here in this bone dry region is 105 during the day and there is no rain during the growing season. This is good for the raisin farmers who drop their Thompson seedless vinifera grapes straight onto the ground where they dry in place outdoors.

Irrigation is what makes farming possible in this bone dry desert. Every citizen who lives in this water district is taxed to pay for the system of canals and ditches and the men who monitor the water usage by the farms and keep the system working. But the supply has been cut as the reservoir is running low owing to the continuing California drought and increased demand from the cities. Gordon says the ditches will provide him water only 60 days this year. “We have to rotate with the neighbors. There's a guy that watches it and regulates it. There are no meters they can measure flows. Its more how much is allotted from the dam for irrigation in this area. The other system [we have] is ground water. We are irrigating first irrigation in April and [the last] in September. We have to irrigate every 10 to 14 days. We get the water allotment through the canal system but we need water for 6 or 7 months. If we don't irrigate in 2 weeks we are dead. The San Joaquin valley is really a desert. We get 12 or 14 inches of rain per year. We just need a few more dams to store it.” But he adds that the city people would be against that.

A few miles down the road from the olive processing facility 50 to 60 Mexican workers are working in the Wiebe Farm's packing house processing peaches for delivery to a cold storage facility where they will be drawn from inventory and shipped to Costco and Walmart and others. As part of a local group of farmers marketing their fruit together , Wiebe Farms’ fruit is sold under the Summeripe® label. A camera inspects fruit as it zips along the processing line separating the peaches by quality. Different colored paper stickers are applied denoting the market for which it is intended. Some fruit is shipped to the stores right away while other will be kept in high humidity and warm temperatures to soften them up a bit. Fruit that has begun to splits open is discarded and allowed to drop through the processing line where it will be returned to the field as compost, sold to make juice if a buyer can be found in that crowded market, fed to dairy cattle, spread along the avenues here to keep dust down on the farm, or given to Gleanings For The Hungry, where the fruit is dried and sent to hungry people throughout the world.

Gordon says the average person has no idea where their food comes from. He says driving around here the tourist or city dweller cannot see much. “A lot of activity goes on in the fields and most people don't see and recognize it. They think these are all quiet farms.” Farming is hardly profitable. He says, ““Farming has not been lucrative over the past 15 or 20 years." For growers he says they get $10 to$11 per box but need $13 to make a profit. Gordon says were it not for his packing shed--which allows him to cut out one layer in the business model--he would be losing even more money. Now he says he is just getting by. He says, “5 or 6 more packing houses will may go out of business this year. “ Gordon grows alfalfa and corn to sell to dairy farmers where it is too expensive to replant trees. “Last couple of years we have been thinking how can you lose less money. But I still love farming!”

(Further reading: The California Olive Oil Council.)

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Eldon Farms

John Genho, is a 29 year Ivy League school graduate who reads the Wall Street Journal and farms 7,600 acres of pastureland and forest in Rappahannock County. His crew includes a cowboy from Florida, a former rock-n-roller who had a top 40 hit, two other farm hands, an office person, and a pack of border collies and other types of working dogs.

People who live in Rappahannock County know Eldon Farms, if only by reputation, as the local environmentalists eye what might be the largest tract of contiguous land in three counties hoping the owners never carve it up for development. Running all the way from Slate Mills Rd to  Sperryville this sprawling farm cross both sides of highway 522 with 24 rental houses and 100 buildings on the property plus 65 miles of fencing. Unlike so many of the hobby horse and cattle farms in the county—whose owners sometimes say they “farm” although they produce no profit--this farm is a working farm whose revenue pays the salaries, the medical bills, the food, and the clothing for the handful of people who work there.

Eldon Farms has for 40 years belonged  to the Lane Family whose founder William “Bill” N. Lane, II  died in an automobile accident near the family's Bell Ranch in New Mexico some 30 years ago. The late Mr. Lane was an astute businessman who bought an interest in a Chicago book binding company acquiring other properties which continue under family ownership as Lane Hospitality, Acco Brands and others. His widow continued to spend time at the house they call “Little Eldon” and his son Nelson still knows people in the county.

John Genho does not deal with the family members too much since Eldon Farms is owned by the corporation and run as a business. The same environmentalists who are eager to assert an easement across the farm will be comforted by the fact that John sits on the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District board, a generally elected position, with Monira Rifaat who of course is an advocate of conservation easements. Cliff Miller was formerly on that board and has put much of his Mount Vernon Farm into the CREP and BMP cost sharing programs which pay farmers to keep cattle out of the stream. Eldon Farms is doing that too although it will take a while with so many miles of fencing to replace. The BMP cost sharing program has been boosted from 75% to 85% plus Rappahannock has a matching funds program from a donor for $50,000 for the 15% gap.

John is a Mormon who went to school at Brigham Young then Cornell where he studied animal genetics. He lives on the farm in a large house with his child  ren and wife who likes to take photos and upload them to the family's blog.

Farming, of course, is hardly profitable anymore the costs of machinery, grain, and land having put profitability out of the reach of possibility for most family farms. John says Eldon Farms breaks even and has a positive cash flow in the years when he is able to cut timber, the mountainous forest here harboring some veneer quality red oak. Because of the crash in the housing market ,  timber prices have  fallen  to “65-70% of what the value was a couple of years ago” so logging is no windfall.

John says, “When you look at our accounting we make money off cattle.” But it won't make you rich adding, “It's not something you would want to take out a loan and start a business. We have 24 rental houses. If we can cut timber we have positive cash flow.”

Every day John checks the price of feeder cattle and corn on the Chicago Board of Trade. He says that for years corn traded for $2 to $4per bushel. “But last summer corn was trading over $7 dollars. Grass has all of a sudden become more valuable.” The traditional model for a cow calf operation has been to raise cattle to 500 pounds weight then sell them at the livestock auction where they would be shipped off to large feeding operations in Nebraska or small Mennonite Amish-run operations in Pennsylvania where they would be fed corn until they reach their 1,200 pound slaughter weight. Corn is now back down to $4 per bushel, still feedlots prefer calves that weight 700 to 800 pounds because it takes less time and less money to fatten up the cows for slaughter. In order to each that extra weight 200 to 300 pounds of weight the rancher needs to overwinter the cattle which is difficult to do if you have to pay for hay. Eldon Farms does not have to buy hay because they bale their own  and stockpile fescue for the winter—that means they simply leave certain paddocks ungrazed and unclipped.

John has 1,400 head of cattle on the farm including 500 calves which in June will be headed to market. In January he sold those calves which weighed more than 600 pounds to the Winchester livestock market and was pleased by the price in the off season sale. October and November are, “The Absolute worst time to sell them, because no one wants to take them through the winter.”Calves kept over the winter are called “stocker cattle”.

Of other parts of the country John says, “Nebraska grasslands are prime cow calf country”. But the disadvantage there is you have to supply hay in the winter while in Virginia fescue grass can be stockpiled for the winter. He says, “The three best things about fescue  are January, February, and March and the worst are June, July, and August.” By this he is referring to the endophyte infected tall fescue grass which dominates the landscape here. The fungus lives in harmony with the plant thus giving it the ability to tolerate the cold winters here. But in summer endophyte causes cattle to lose rather than gain weight as their respiration and heart rate increase. The alternative would be to try and kill all the fescue and replace it with orchard grass or something like MaxQ fescue but that takes time and costs money.

To boost protein Eldon Farms plants some summer annuals like pearl millet and small grains like barley but only on a small scale for their heifers that will become breeding stock to give them an extra boost. His focus instead is to maintain the highest quality pasture as he rotates stock from one paddock to another to both improve the grass stand there and keep the animals from overgrazing pastures, which would expose them to lethal intestinal parasites which live in the soil.

John's ideal pasture management system would be to sample 20% of the pastures each year and then apply fertilizer according to the soil sample. But prices have wrecked havoc on the ideal situation. He says, “What we are really interested in is getting the phosphorus and potassium right and for nitrogen we figure if we can clover into the field nitrogen will take care of itself. Unless we are stockpiling fescue we cannot afford to put nitrogen on the field.” But he ads, “Potassium prices went from $100 per ton to $1000 per ton so we cannot afford to buy that. I would love to put potassium and phosphorus  down on our field. Nitrogen gives you a short term bloom but it leaches out pretty fast. Potassium and phosphorous give you a good healthy field.”

The two cowboys Robert Gainer and Rich Bradley and the farm manager John Genho offer to saddle up the horses and move the cattle on horseback for the visiting journalist but pick up trucks and dogs will do just fine. Ray Bennett is waiting at the other end of the pasture several miles away as the  lowing herd is marshalled toward tender new ungrazed grass at the other end of the village of Woodville. The grass here is a mix or orchard grass and clover with some blue grass and fescue mixed it—it is what the farmers would call “lush”. A dozen bulls barely lift their heads as we drive by in a pickup truck in order to meet the cowboys and the herd. The bulls have long ago worked out which one is dominant and the lesser males take care to stay out of the way of the largest. John says each year a couple are injured killed fighting.  He says, “This is what it means to be a male.”

We have completely blocked one of the winding lanes leaving Woodville as the herd is turned down the road. The working dogs snap at the heels of the cows as they push them along. There are so many cows one wonders for a moment whether you  would  be crushed if they stampede. John's border collie is meant to be at the front of the pack but is working at the back as he responds to John's verbal signals. The border collie lurks behind a few stubborn cows then nips at them as the cows briefly challenge the dog then retreat. A couple hundred heifers are in the pasture on the other side of the road and crowd the fence trying to join the larger herd. Traffic, if there were any on this almost abandoned road, would not be able to pass as the animals have taken over a ¼ mile of unpaved roadway. The cattle kick up dust on their way to the other pasture. The herd moved to the new location the cowboys return to their never ending task of maintaining the fences.

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Eldon Farms

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What Happened to All the Silos?

Drive across the landscape in Virginia and the observant person notices that practically all of the silos here are no longer in use except on some dairy farms. Instead of being used to store silage—that is, grain that is fermented so that it will not spoil—trees are growing up through the middle of these ghosts of the landscape which have not been used for some years.

There is an old saying which is very much true for those who bale hay: “Make hay while the sun shines”. When you cut hay you have to let it dry for a couple of days in the sun before you bale it up. Otherwise if you bale it damp it will rot. Not so for what is called “bailage”. This is grass which is cut then baled straight away and wrapped in air tight plastic. The bales ferment turning into something akin to vinegar. Cattle love it, the cow hands at the 7,600 acre Eldon Farms in Rappahannock County say they even lick up the juice from the plastic and the ground.

In the past sillage was made by lifting grass or corn stalks into the anerobic (i.e. oxygen free) environment of the silo. Sillage can also be made by shoveling forage into a pit into the ground and covering it with plastic and tires. Or you can just bag up some green grass in a plastic bag and wrap it up tight.

Jim Bowen farms wheat, cattle, and hay on 3,700 acres of land in Culpeper owned by the Germans. He has been working here since 1981. His farm is well-known throughout the state having hosted the annual Virginia Ag Expo which is the largest event in the state for row crop farmers. Jim is well-positioned to explain why there are no more silos.

Standing in front of an enormous 8-tire 248 horsepower tractor in front of empty silos and functioning grain elevators Jim explains what he does here.

“I have silos and grain bins and grain elevators I don't use the silos. Mostly what we do is we use it grain for sale corn and to store [soy] beans for grain.”

For his cattle he says, “All I feed is hay but I feed sillage hay. I use ballage which is sillage wrapped in plastic. You can make the hay at 50% moisture. All I do is cut it and bail it.  No need to dry it. With ballage you can bale it the next day.Wrapped it tight and it ferments. Used to be, to make a bag you would push 50 rolls into a bag and you would cut a little slit it in but now you don't have to do that because we wrap it so tight. Almost all dairy farmers use silage.  It is a great feed. Pits work the same way. You put the sillage into pits and you pack it as you put it in. Cover it up and keep the air out. Uncover it as you feed it. So it won't turn into compost you need to pack it good. You don't want air to get all in it.” He says most sillage pits are made of concrete..

Jim says, “You can make hay and sillage out of winter rye. Its a real early crop its almost ready now [April]”. At this time of the year area lawns and pastures are still grey from winter but rye and wheat feels are bright green especially if they have been fed nitrogen.

Asked about fertilizer he says, “I will put nitrogen on the wheat in the fall or early spring. I just put nitrogen on it last week. Last fall I bought nitrogen. I paid $450 per ton right now it is $200 per ton that costs 70 cents per unit—I can hardly make money at that”

Jim runs about 200 Angus cows. He put has 7 frost-free Merafont watering systems that use the temperature of the soil to keep themselves ice free even when it is below freezing. He says, “ I try to limit the grazing along my farm banks. I didn't want my cattle in the streams.”

When straw prices are high Jim sells straw but otherwise leaves in on the ground as he rotates to the next crop. Because of the crash in housing prices there is not much demand for straw now as few builders are seeding new lots.

“Hay” is forage which is cut wet, allowed to dry, then baled. “Straw” is wheat which is allowed to dry then cut after the combine has taken away the grain. Jim farms and sells orchard grass to area horse and cattlemens. They prefer that over alfalfa he says, “There's not many people who buy alfalfa. They don't want something which such high protein. Because most of these horses are not working. They get fat if you feed them alfalfa. Most horse people in this area like the 2^ndcutting orchard grass which is a lot shorter and finer cut.”

Of the costs and revenue he says, “It probably cost me $70 year fertilizer on my orchard grass and I normally make 2 – 2.5 tons per acre of hay. Selling it for $45 per bale I am grossing $200 per acre and $45 for 800 an pound bale. I do some small bales too”.

Most of what Jim grows is corn and soybeans which is pretty much what most row crop farmers do and they collect a subsidy for that but Jim does not as this farm is foreign owned. Jim markets his grain to the chicken industry. I have written about two row crop farmers on this blog to date and both of them sell to Perdue. These chicken operations obviously buy a lot of area grain.

Jim says, “Everything you see here thats green here like that is wheat. Most of my wheat I sell to Perdue farms and it used for export out of Norfolk. I grow wheat corn soybeans rotation. I sell it by the bushel. 60 pounds to a bushel. I sell spot market and futures contract..”

Because of all the chicken farms in Harrisonburg and elsewhere there is a surplus of manure available for fertilizer. Jim says, “Right now chicken litter is $30 per ton just dumped on your farm. Contact Mount Pony Farm. They are brokers. Talk to Billy.”

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What Happened to All the Silos?

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Cliff Miller's Mount Vernon Farm

As county administrator he had responsibility for the maintenance of the roads.  As a poet he was less inclined to do so.----paraphrased from Julian Barnes

 

Scene:  A young suburban couple shopping at a grocery store

 

Shopper A:  Look.  This tea is on sale. 

Shopper B:  Let’s buy it. It’s organic.

Shopper A:  Yes, it must be better than that one.

Shopper B:  That’s right, because it’s organic.

  

For Cliff Miller “grass” is a metaphor for all that is good about ranching.  While farmers around him break even or lose money selling cattle to grain-finishing feedlots, Cliff’s revenues are up over 20% from last year from the sale of grass-finished beef and lamb and pastured pork that he sells directly to retail customers from his Mount Vernon Farm in Sperryville, Virginia.  His secret lies beneath his feet saying, “This is a grass farm.  What we are really about is growing grass.”

 

What is wrong with feeding cows grain (corn, oats) instead of grass?  Michael Pollen in “Omnivores Delight” put into print what followers of Alan Nation, editor of “The Stockman Grass Farmer”, and other grass-farming profits like Jo Robinson, author of “Pasture Perfect” have known for years.  Cows, lamb, goats are ruminants designed to eat grass and not corn.  Ruminants have a special 4-chambered stomach which is designed to break down the cellulose fiber found in grass and leaves.  They can consume and in fact thrive from vegetation that other animals would hardly find palatable.  Having digested a meal for the first time ruminants regurgitate it, chew it some more, and then digests it again.  This is where they old expression “chewing the cud” comes from. 

But man, or rather corporations, in their quest for quick profits are impatient with nature.  As the documentary film “The Corporation” makes clear their only interest is “the bottom line” so the morals of what they are doing are not a factor in their design.  So rather than wait two years as Cliff does to grow cattle to slaughter weight—that is, to “finish them off”—90% of farmers pack them off to the misery of the confined feed lot where they are fed grain, a diet which will kill them as it lowers the pH in their stomach and eventually causes their liver to fail.   The feedlot is a downward spiral of discomfort from which they are given antibiotic shots just to keep them alive. 

 

Jo Robinson in her book writes, “Most of our animals today, including cattle, are being ‘finished’ in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, of CAFOs—corporate owned, highly mechanized, fuel-intensive factory farms where large numbers of animals are confined in a small amount of space.”   Gauchos in the pampas of Argentina--whose vast corn, soybean, and of course cattle production rivals that of the United States—believe the white colored fat of an American grain-fed cow indicates an unhealthy animal preferring their own leaner grass-finished animals.   All of these concerns have been shunted aside in the decades head-long rush toward profits that is the corporate farming model.

 

Here in rolling bucolic Rappahannock County the mountains of Cliff Miller’s 850 acre Mount Vernon loom above the village of Sperryville surrounding it on three sides.  In addition to owning a forested mountain Cliff is in the enviable position of having over a hundreds acres of flat river bottom land through with the Thornton River glides having tumbled from the rapids of the Shenandoah National Park which lies just beyond the town.  Cliff and his family have been farming this same land for 181 years.   For generations they disked the soil, spread fertilizers, and raised orchards, livestock, and row crops.  But in the 1970s this once profitable local farm, like so many across the nation, began to lose money as the model of local sustainable agriculture was cast aside in favor of much larger farms where profits could be managed only by planting thousands of acres of corn and soybeans instead of hundreds and where one needs thousands of cattle instead of dozens in order to turn a profit.  So Cliff began to look around for a way to make his farm profitable so that his heirs would not have to sell it off to others would could potentially carve it up into smaller lots.

 

Cliff’s full-time live stock manager, Darren Busét, is a pig farmer from Warren County with years of experience.  With a heavy canvas jacket, range hat, and a pony tail mane, Darren is an experienced veteran rancher to whom Cliff has turned mainly for his knowledge of raising hogs.  Darren’s dawn to dusk job is to maintain the electric fences, keep the water lines drained at night, and most importantly move the herd.  Cliff says, “Darren is a great addition to the farm.  He is the point man as far as the animals are concerned on the farm.”

 

Mount Vernon Farm practices what is called “management intensive grazing".  This basically means Darren sets up and tears down portable electric fencing to move the cattle from one paddock to another every couple of days or more frequently.  For example in one 40 acre field, 50 cattle are herded together in one small 1/3 acre moveable paddock.  When Darren tears down the paddock the cattle go willingly into the next 1/3 acre enclosure which Darren puts together in about 30 minutes.  What they leave behind is a sheen of cattle manure that fertilizes the field.  Darren will march the animals across the pasture in this fashion all winter.

 

Most cattle farmers simply turn their cattle loose into large fields and then feed them hay all winter.  Such a wide dispersal of animals does little to fertilize the pasture as their manure is placed haphazardly as they cherry pick the most succulent forage leaving thistles, Johnson grass, and other undesirable weeds in their wake.  If you herd the animals together tightly it not only controls the weeds it also lays down manure fertilizer in proper amounts.  This improves the pasture and lowers the farmers cost of production as well.  Cliff says, “For years this was a traditional farm and we put down whatever [fertilizer] we were told to put down.  And we have not put down chemical fertilizer for 8 years.”  He doesn’t bale hay either saving the cost of diesel fuel and avoiding a practice which he says takes nutrients away from the soil.  He says, “We’re not having to make the hay. We’re not having to feed the hay.  We’re not having to spread the manure.  That is being done by the cows.”   Asked how all this dormant tall fescue grass compares with baled hay he says, “It [the dormant grass] is full of sugar.  It tests better even than the best hay, even in February.”    

 

Cliff does not give his animals growth hormones, vaccinations, or dewormers either.  He says, “Everything fits together here”.  The sheep are rotated behind the cattle.  They also naturally kill each other’s worms.  We never deworm our cows. And for the last 8 years haven’t vaccinated any animals.”   As for the pasture Cliff explains, “The sheep and the cows only compete for about 30% of the grasses. “ In other words, “They don’t eat the same thing.”

 

Cliff says when you rotate the heard the grass is eaten in what he calls its “adolescent” stage where it is neither too young—so that grazing it would damager the plant--nor too old—in which case it could damage the cow especially if it is so-called endophyte infected fescue which is what dominates the landscape here in Virginia.  The result is twofold:  the cattle graze the highest quality forage and the field is fertilized with a large dose of manure which causes a flush of growth in the spring.  The cattle are then moved on the next spot and the cycle repeats itself. 

 

One problem with all the boutique farms that dot the Virginia landscape is they don’t always have enough inventory on hand.  This is why the big grocery stores prefer to deal with Cisco and other mega distributors who buy their meat from Midwestern cattle producers and produce from California growers.  This is the biggest problem for the local food movement and proponents of local sustainable agriculture.  Cliff wants to avoid these inventory problems so he is expanding into poultry and has tasked Darren with growing the herd of swine.  Cliff says, “It also helps with our sales to have three different meats”.

 

In prior years Cliff bought 65 pound piglets from a breeder in Gordonsville and finished them off here.  He raised them for about 5 months and then butchered them at 180 pounds.  Now he and Darren plan to breed pigs themselves and raise them year round.  Pigs are profitable.  Darren says old time farmers called pigs “mortgage lifters”.  (Note from author: My father raised everything from cattle to tobacco to catfish and eels making money only on hogs he said.)  Breeding as prolific as rabbits, pigs can have three litters per year but Darren plans to breed them twice saying it takes “3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days” for a sow to produce a litter.

 

Darren explains that the Tamworth hogs farmed here are a heritage breed that are known for their ability to thrive on grass pastures.  Pigs are not ruminants like cattle or sheep so Darren says, “You need to supplement with grain.”  He says they get, “Cracked corn and soy meal.  My grandfather added a little bit of wood ash for the potassium”.  Cliff says they also feed them vegetables and fruit from neighboring Roy’s Orchard.  “We get a lot of his stuff that he would normally send to the dump.”

 

The pigs here are working animals.  Darren explains that, “Every animal on the farm has a job”.  The pig’s job is to reclaim the 4 acres of vines and weeds where they are currently living and turn it into pasture. With their firm snout and keen sense of smell pigs root in the dirt turning it over as they look for grubs.  Cliff says, “They not only eat grass, like a goat they will east honey suckle, poison ivy, and everything else, which is what we have them doing which is denude the soil.”  When they finish cleaning out this area Darren will move them to another and turn their pen into pasture.

 

As we talk a dozen or so eager reddish brown piglets are munching on grass at our feet and one light colored fellow reaches out so Cliff can pat him on the  head.  The little pigs are supposed to stay inside the electric fence that contains the boar who is their father and one of the three sows who suckles 10 of them at a time with her two rows of teats.  One little fellow is not paying attention and he backs up to the fence with his hind end.  The electric fence cracks audibly and the piglet squeals having learned the lesson to respect the hot wire.  (The fence is not dangerous.  On my farm I am constantly being shocked by the same.)

 

One reason Cliff’s farm is more profitable while so many area farms are less so is he sells everything retail.  He says, “Primarily we sell by the cut.  We have buyers clubs at 8 different cities.  On the web site in an order form. This past year we did 18 hogs and planning on 30 next year.  We did 163 [lamb] last year and probably [will do] 200 for the coming year.  For the beef we could have sold twice and we did 18 [will grow to 30].”  Asked whether grass-fed beef is tougher than their grain-fed counter parts he says, “ If our meat was tough we wouldn’t sell our filet for $25 per pound.  If our lamb was tough we wouldn’t sell 200 of them per year to 500 to 600 people.”

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Cliff Miller's Mount Vernon Farm

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"Agripenuers" Step in to Help Local Farmers

At an meeting at the Virginia Cooperative Extension Office last week the topic of conversation was how to grow a community food system. A novel idea was presented by two self-described “agripenuers” Agro-Depot and the Virginia Brewing Company:

Agro-Depot

A key problem for local farmers is how to bring their product to market. Successful area farms that grow organic vegetables or grass fed livestock sell it by subscription or by going to the farmers market every weekend. But how is the farmer to work the farm and attend the farmers market too? This is where a middle man—or in this case middle women--like Agro-Depot can help.

Sarah Roussos retired early from another career but she has not slowed down. On the contrary this woman who describes herself as having lots of “spit and vinegar” got fired up with when someone told her “real farmers never do business with business”. After having sold herbs and goats from her farm she decided to jump right into the problem of how does a farm market to the end user. So she started FAARM last year which she has renamed “Agro-Depot”. She says, “We took on farmers in Loudoun county and other areas who did want to do business with businesses.”

She says the problem with selling produce is one of perception. Restaurant customers would tell her, “I want pretty tomatoes and they have to be here in December.” Tomatoes of course do not grow in Virginia in December. She says, “We realized very quickly there was a problem. ”

Her partner is Debbie Heimburger owner of the Hill High Country Store in Round Hill which has been in business since 1946. While there is a certain nostalgia to country stores Debbie says she seems them as an opportunity for commerce not to be written off as artifacts. She says, “As we travel we always make a trek to see country stores and they have fallen by the way side.” She points out that these small stores are thriving in Napa and Sonoma so she sees potential to reinvigorate them here in Virginia by making them an outlet for the local farmer.

But the problem with selling local grown produce at a country store is one of supply. Debbie says, “The hobby farmers only generate enough produce to sell at the market at a very high price. If you don’t have the product there you are not going to get the traffic.” So Sarah and Debbie have teamed together and have more than 200 farmers providing customers to their retail outlets three of which are up and running today.

Kenner Love of the Rappahannock County Cooperative Extension service asked what size farms is Agro-Tech working with. “Is it a 50 acre farm or a 5 acre farm?” Kenner is a practical minded person and he is looking for someone who wants to buy all these peaches that are just now getting ripe out in the county. He says the farmers do not even get $1 per pound for these. Kenner says, “We have a lot of peaches coming is now in Rappahannock county. We would love to sell those peaches for $1 a pound off the farm. We don’t do that. We are not close to do that. These guys are retailing for a far lower price. How can you help those guys elevate their price? They have a set price but the price is not high enough.”

Sarah says the farms they work with are for the most part less than 10 acres. She says, “We have Stoney Brook Farm, Luke Wiseman. He has an 11 acre total organic farm. He is one of our wonderful sources. Endless Summer harvest in Loudoun county. They have a hydroponic operation and green house. Our interest is in working with farmers who can produce a little longer [i.e. use hoop houses and so forth to extend the season].” Debbie says they also have some larger farms Ray Showalter in rural Harrisonburg who was growing curly lettuce which he could not sell to rural peoples there. But in Loudon County at Round Hill store customers obviously understand that.

Molly Harris owner of Edible Garden restaurant in Richmond was brimming with enthusiasm. She spoke up to say, “We want to be your first restaurant client and your greatest public advocate and endorser.” She says, “Our goal in our restaurant is the benefit of eating seasonally. In September she will tell people, “Sorry no more peaches but try our apply crisp. No I am sorry we don’t have a fresh tomatoes in our restaurant and we won’t until July.”.She explains, “It’s undoing the way they have been trained.”

Sarah’s table where she made her presentation was littered with brochures which read in part: “the producer is NEVER [their boldface added for emphasis] asked to sell his product at WHOLESALE pricing. Rather we would allow the producer to SET HIS OWN PRICING at a ‘fair and realistic’ level which would enhance interest and repeat sales of the product.”

Their web site says, “The goals …. are to create venues where local farmers can connect directly with local consumers, to build community in an urban setting, and to provide public education on regional farming, gardening and food preparation.”

Sarah wraps up imploring, “If you a farmer come to us and say I am a farmer I would like to be in this program. If you are a restaurant in our vicinity we bring it to you.”

ZeroPak

In a crowd sometimes it’s the quiet ones who are the most interesting. So it was with Jim Justice president of the Virginia brewing company wearing jeans and alligator skin boots. He sat in the back of the room and did not say anything at first. But then he marched up the dais to make his presentation. His enthusiasm was infectious.

Jim says he is now the current occupant of a 12 acre former apple packing plant in Winchester that no one else wanted. The landlord basically said he could move in for free. Now the problem is ,“How do I pay for this monster”. His idea is to bring together beer drinkers, music lovers, local farmers, and shoppers into one venue.

He explained that he bought the bankrupt facility Zeropak which was one of three apple processing complexes in Winchester. He says, “It sat empty for 12 years. We have railroad tracks. I have the tallest building in Winchester. It’s 6 stories.”

One problem mentioned by growers is there is a need for large cold storage facilities. “That’s the one thing I have is massive amount of storage space.” If you have ever wondered how California can skip fresh grapes across the country for so many months of the year the answer is they have cold storage buildings that are several acres in size. “Instead of lasting 3 weeks they last 9 months. Some of our refrigerators have these machines to take the air out of the room.”

Jim is trying to build a farmers market around his brewery to draw in the crowds. He says, “The model I came up with is beer + music = money.” He says, “In my travels in the world the funnest [sic] farmers markets are a festival and I am all about the festival. I have refrigeration space and rail card access. The idea next is to bring the farmers market in.“

So Jim has brought in Sarah and Debbie of Agro-Depot. Sarah tells everyone that she got goose bumps talking about the peanut farmer who sold hundreds of dollars there at Zero-Pak the first day they were open. The farmers had planted and harvested the peanuts himself by hand. That farmer and others will profit from this growing venture.

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"Agripenuers" Step in to Help Local Farmers

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Culpeper Madison Rappahannock Farm Fair Show

On Monday night the Culpeper Rappahannock Madison Farm Fair ended on a bit of an ironic note. The children here at the fair are in 4-H clubs. The 4-H has taught them responsibility for they have cared for the animals they have brought here today, milked them, fed them, purchased food for them, vaccinated and dewormed them and now it is time to sell them to the slaughterhouse. For these children this is not a sad parting. Rather that livestock are grown for food is one of the life lessons taught to these youngsters in this program. The 4-H prizes handed out for best of show and other competitions are for the beefiest beef, the hog with the fattest haunches, the goat that will yield the most milk. This is not beauty show but a lesson in nature grounded in practicality.

Carlson Farm

The auction house here is surrounded by corrals which is where we find Michelle Carson from Rixleyville. She is here with her homeschooled children Rachel, 18; Grace, 9; Jamie, 20, and Michael, 14. Her sister Meghan from Stafford is also here with her 13 year old daughter Jillian. They came to the fair the night before to set up and have come early to the fair at 6:00 AM today in time for the Dairy Goat Show. The women are wearing green 4-H shirts.

Of her goats she says, “The dairy goats we milk and use for our own consumption. We makes goats, cheese, soap. We sell meat goats to the fair and private buyers. There is a pretty growing market for that.” Asked what kind of goats she has she says, “We have Nubians and Alpines.”

Goats are divided into two types: dairy and meat goats. The difference is the dairy goats like the Nubians and the Alpines produce far more milk than it needs. You couldn’t milk a meat goat like a Boer or Spanish goat because there would not be enough milk left over for their offspring. Michelle’s goats produce milk pretty much year round. Like a wet nurse they will continue to lactate as long as they are milked. She says, “You can dry them up or continue to milk about a month before they kid.” (To “kid” means to give birth in goat parlance.)

Michelle says, “We have 9 [goats] at our house. You have to milk them in the morning and at night.” This is a 1 ½ hour process every day, twice per day.

At the dairy goat show the children parade their goats in a circle while a woman wearing a bonnet pokes the animals with her finger. This judge, Becky Dilella, hails from Dixie Does farm in Southwest Virginia. With her bonnet and simple farm dress she looks like one of the religious from Jerry Falwell's Liberty Baptist College. After the show she is headed off with her own goats to a national competition in Kentucky.

Meadowdean Farm

At the booth next to Michelle another family is grooming their goats getting ready for the competition to be held at 9:00 o’clock that morning. The goats have been given a close hair cut and the children are all wearing white.

University student Kaitlin Flathers of Meadowdean Farm is placing trophies on a table in the auction barn. She says she is, “A graduate of this having grown up and done this myself.” She says the awards are paid for by the Culpeper Rappahannock Madison fair through tractor pull ticket sales and advertising sold in the Culpeper, Madison, and Rappahannock Farm Show newspaper published by the Culpeper Times. Her little brother is walking around with black cowboy boots, a black hat, and a red t-shirt that stretches to his knees. They have 20 goats on their 192 acre farm. At their booth one child has written a poem in big letters across from the sign that says “Top 10 reasons to own a goat”. Kate explains that the family actually forgot the poster with the 10 top reasons to own a goat so one is left wonder what those 10 reasons could be. Their poem on goat rearing offers some clues:

Their milk is supreme,

And so is their ice cream.

Say good by to those weeds,

But hello to great cheese.

Chevon is quite fine,

On which to dine.

Jim Massie

At the other end of the series of connected paddocks teenage girls are showing dairy cattle. One magnificent 1,300 pound animal is being led into position by another magnificent animal: a rather tall and strong teenage girl. Its sort of comical to recall the notion that while certain dog owners are said to look like their dogs this corn fed female looks something like her Holstein heifer. Both are equally attractive.

In the next paddock are row after row of sleeping hogs. Every single hog is sleeping so deeply that they appear dead. But dead they are not for Jim Massie reaches into the one of the bins here and loudly slaps one of the hairless pigs with a flat hand. The hog squeals having been woken up rudely.

Jim Massie is here from the Rappahannock County Livestock club. The name “Massie” is an old one in Rappahannock. Jim’s first cousin is Dr. Tom Massie who runs the Rosewood large animal veterinary.

He says, “Our club is small. We used to have a very large club. Now we have 6 at the peak we had 15 or 16. Its increasingly harder to compete for children’s time.”

Asked about his Rappahannock farm he says, “We have a cow calf operation.” He explains that the cows that he raises in winter they keep until the spring but rising costs are a concern. “With the increased cost of production and the grain costs which have skyrocketed I am going to be looking in the fall at selling them rather than carrying them over and selling the grain to the granaries. We sell calves born in the fall sell in the fall of the following year. The spring calves born this year they’ll go possible in 2009.”

Jim sells his cattle either through direct sales and the feeder cattle sales like the Fauquier Feeder Cattle Association auction in Marshall. He raises feeder cattle to 600 or 700 pounds before they are shipped off to confined feeding operations where they are fed corn to rapidly put on an additional 500 to 600 pounds before they are slaughtered. Ask why he does not finish off the cattle himself he explains that he does not farm enough corn for that.

Returning to the 4-H club he explains that the pigs here are called “swine”. He says, “The majority of the kids purchase their feeder pigs in march. Then become “shote” [75-150 lbs]. Then they become “hogs”. They will have them a little more than 100 days. They will take care of them before they bring then to the fair.”

Lileemzo Farm

When you walk into the paddock where the Leppke family is tending their goats the first thing you notice is how friendly these animals are. They are not flighty like some Spanish meat goats or goats that have been raised on vast open pastures. These hand-raised dairy goats long for attention and press any visitor to pet them.

Shari is the matron of this family of Linsday, 19; Levi, 16; Emma, 13; and Zoe, 11 the first letters of whose names collectivity spell Li-Le-Em-Zo or “Leleemzo” which is the name of their 25 acre farm in Fauquier County in Midland, Virginia. Their they have 20 dairy and meat goats, donkeys, and chickens. The family belongs to the Udderly Best Dairy and Meat Goat Club located in Culpeper.

Lindsay is a bright eyed young woman who speaks with the confidence of youth. She explains that at the goat show today, “There are 9 families [in their club] and 8 of them are here.” Asked what today’s judge will be looking for she says that in a dairy goat the judge is looking for an animal that can produce with a good strong back and good udder attachment. In other words those teats cannot be just handsome—they must be functional. This is no beauty show. Accolades go to the practical animals not necessarily the most ascetically pleasing.

Her mother Shari says of her club, “We have 2 families with large couple hundred acre farms.” In other words 2 of the families actually work at farming and the others aspire to work at farming or are hobby farmers. Shari continues, “We lived in Sterling. We wanted a different life for our kids. We both grew up on farms. We moved here and we stated home schooling.” She says the 4-H club gives them, “ The confidence, the responsibility, the integrity through having animals and showing them.” Each child has their own charge account at the farmers cooperative. They keep track of expense and income.” So the 4-H teaches fiscal responsibility as well.

Levi is the sole male in this bevy of females. Asked who he tends his goats he is rather shy. But when pressed he says that he has learned to give the goats vaccinations himself and to deworm them. The goat he has brought to show today is called “Nemo”. The children giggle when then say the word of this Disney character. Levi says he trims his goats hooves and rotates them to different paddocks during the week.

His sister Emma has a Nubian goat a type which is bred for dairy. The one she has today is called “Haleiwa” a female born April 24, 20004. Shari says this goat produces 2 to 3 kids every year and since they are registered the females are sold for $250 apiece through the American Dairy Association. The males are less fortunate go for less money fetching something like $75 at the auction. Such is man’s plight.

Like so many hobby farmers Shari wasp up by explaining that her husband is a commuter. “My husband works in Reston. That’s what pays the bill. He’d love to be a farmer.”

The Auction

At the last night of this 5 day event all of the animals here are sold at auction. Cattle go first followed by lamb, goats, and then swine. The best of show dairy cow is paraded around the ring by its handler. The auction begins and the animal sells for $5 per pound. When the lamb are brought in a young boy of maybe 9 years old skids across the floor kicking up dust as he is unable to hang onto the spry creature.

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Culpeper Madison Rappahannock Farm Fair Show

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Growing Farmers

My wife recently immigrated to Rappahannock County from Chile where every inch of arable land is planted with onions, wine or table grapes, oranges, lemons, apples, corn, beets, tomatoes, and more. One of her first questions when she moved out to the rolling Virginia countryside is why were there no crops planted here. Coming from a land that would be desert without irrigation she marveled at the rolling pastures of cows and horses but she wondered where all the farmers were.

I told her that in Northern Virginia farming is for the most part a past-time for those who can afford it. Many of the large tracts of land here are not farms at all even though they have all the requisite amenities. Further south and east in Orange and Essex Counties there are large vegetable, corn, and soybean farms but here in Rappahannock County and in Fauquier and Loudoun Counties not much is grown. True there is the occasional small organic farms, specialty ranchers who raise sheep or goats, and of course vineyards. And there are lots of cattle. But not many people here actually depend on their land to make a living. Rather those who own land here are retired or work in the city while their well-fed and pampered horses are fed timothy and alfalfa hay trucked in from the Midwest. All of that rolling pasture that at first glance looks like forage is mainly given over to tall fescue grass which is really just a weed.

Still Rappahannock County is home to some people who would like to change this while at the same time keeping the county free from development. Lots of the large properties here are protected from development by zoning and conservation easements---for now. But current landowners worry about the future. Will their heirs be able to pay the taxes on land that most the most part is not profitable to farm? Will they have to sell out to yet another dot-com millionaire or absentee land owner?

Mount Vernon Farm

Cliff Miller is one of these land owners thinking about the future. His 800 acre farm fairly surrounds the town of Sperryville where on this sunny Spring day other landowners and farmers had gathered for a workshop called “Growing Farms” organized by the Virginia Organic Producers & Consumers Association.

Mr. Miller is a 5^th generation farmer whose family has farmed the same plot of land since 1827. This 67 year old farmer with graying hair and glasses had come to the Link community center to talk to eager farm interns and land owners about his plan to bring more working farmers to Rappahannock County. Sitting with him on the panel were Don Loock of the Piedmont Environmental Council, Trista Scheyerlein of the Farm to Table Program, and Shawna DeWitt and Atilla Agoston of Mountain View Farm.

I first met Cliff Miller when he came into the Corner Grocery Store last summer selling blackberries from his Mount Vernon farm. My kids and I bought a box which we ate even before we left the parking lot. I found it somewhat amusing that this man who owned so much land and whose family had been here for so long would fiddle with selling blackberries one $4 box at a time. But as he explained at the workshop just because you own lot of acres does not mean you have a lot of cash.

Cliff Miller says he would not think of selling his farm. He says his farm, “Had been a productive and profitable farm for generations. Since the 1970s it was not longer making money.” He has enough money to keep it for himself but worries about how to pass the farm along to his heirs and their heirs without finding a way to make it marketable. So he has looked for ways to make the farm pay or at least break even.

He has done this several ways. One idea was to tap into every possible private-public partnership program. So he put 180 acres into a watershed protection program called CREP (“Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program”) which pays farmers to plant trees and build fences to keep cattle out of creeks and streams. He also restored 3 wetlands and planted 19,000 hardwood trees. Were it not for money from Ducks Unlimited, the state of Virginia, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation he would not have even contemplated paying the cost of ripping down all the ancient interior fencing of the farm, putting in 10 miles of new fencing for grassland based ranching, and digging three new wells. “I had an emotional commitment to do it.”

His second idea was to latch onto the demand for locally produced grass fed beef, pork, and lamb which he sells by way of subscription and in the farm store on his Mount Vernon Farm. “Grass fed” means the animals that are raised on pastures instead of the industrial feedlots of the Midwest where they are fed corn and kept in close confinement. (Cattle do not naturally eat corn says Michael Pollan in his book “The Omnivores Delimma.” Further to do so messes up the 4-chambered stomach of these ruminant which is designed to digest grass only.)

Cliff’s third idea and the reason for him being at this workshop today was to find entrepreneurial young people who can farm the land themselves. He wants to “encourage young farmers to produce healthy products while respecting the animals.” He is 8 years into his plan and so far has one tenant who rents 30 acres. Raising his eyes looking to make a pointed suggestion to other landowners in the audience Cliff says, “If you have 800 acres 30 acres is not a lot.

Rachel Bynum and Eric Plaksin rent bottom land from Cliff Miller for $50 per acre for their Waterpenny Farm. They have a 40 year lease and have built a house and profitable business on the property.

For the rest of his farm he is currently searching for someone who wants to be a grass livestock farmer. Someone who wants to “use animals to make a living and improve the land.”

Wrapping up Cliff says, “We must encourage farmers to farm land that they cannot afford to buy.”

Mountain View Farm

The farm interns and organic farmers in the audience that day at the Link community center do not look much like the farmers I knew growing up in the William Faulkner South. Most do not come from farming families and have grown up in the cities. Still they are eager and hopeful that the strong demand for locally produced organic food will let them live in the country and perhaps make a living too.

Shawna DeWitt and Atilla Agoston are two farm interns turned farmers sitting on the dais He is from Blackburg, Virginia. She is from Denver. Atilla is young, wears glasses, and sports a 5’oclock shadow which is fitting for a farmer. His handsome freckled wife is wearing a hair band and looks like one of the young girls in Fiddler on the Roof. Both are articulate and passionate about what they do. They have brought their baby with them and pass the child back and forth to each other as they speak to the audience

Atilla says, “We’re not from farming families. We started out as interns”. They looked at one of the many websites that connect interns to farms and found work out in Washington state where they lived in a shack in the woods and contemplated how they might get their own land after having worked for someone else. “The next step was: how do we get our own farm?” Friends suggested leasing land. “We were hesitant to get into debt. Atilla reflected back and said what he wanted, “Was a deer fence, irrigation, a tractor would be nice”.

They found 3 acres of land to rent from the Blue Ridge Center a 900 acre nature preserve in Loudon County. Showing a photo of their rented Kubota tractor he provokes chuckles from the audience when he said because of the tractor they decided, “We’ll move there”.

Atilla says, “When we moved here it was like starting from scratch. There was a tractor, and green house, a marginal deer fence, and a few tools. Here was our chance to do our own thing with minimal risk”.

Shawna wearing crocks talks of their agricultural ideal they have found, “We have acres and this land without a mortgage without debt.” Wrapping up she highlights the point of today’s workshop: “There seems like there is a divide between people who have land and people who want to farm.”

Don Loock

With his flyaway red hair, glasses, beard, and soft-spoken demeanor Don Loock looks like an environmentalist which of course he is. He is the land conservation officer of the Piedmont Environmental Council for Rappahannock and Clarke Counties. He and his wife Kristina are also aspiring smaller farmers finishing off grass fed lamb at their Amissville home.

Speaking to the audience he outlines challenge for new farmers. “The price of land is incredibly high. Processed foods have huge market share. A lot of new farmers are coming from different backgrounds. So the knowledge has not been handed down for generations.”

Then he weighs into the positive side of the equation “Positive trends are educated consumers and untapped markets. There’s huge demand out there for local products.”

Don says part of the problem is the farmers need access to technical assistance, markets, land, and capital. They need infrastructure like refrigeration.

One idea under way is the Central Virginia Community Food Center Initiative to market to school and hospitals. This helps because “Virginia grocery stores not used to dealing with small producers.”

Don says the reason he is here this day is because of his role at the Piedmont Environmental Council to arrange conservation easements. “Conservation easements have helped land owners get equity out of their land. People can afford to keep the land and farm it.”

Farm-to-Table

Trista Scheuerlein who has swapped a pullover and headband for a skirt and pumps dashes in from the Nature Camp at the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection. Her presentation is called “Growing Pride in Rappahannock County Schools through Hands of Experience in Sustainable Agriculture.”

She says she, “Started by own farm in 2003 after being a intern at Waterpenny.” Her mother told her she, “Would never pick a bean if she could buy it in a can.” When she left Waterpenny she wanted to start her own farm. She says, “At least 5 people offered me land.” She found a relation with Joyce Abell whose husband had recently died. “I came onto the property as a caretaker” and there she started her farm.

After farming for a few years the school district approached her about starting a horticulture class for the students. Her enthusiasm was and is contagious. She says “I have my dream job.” At the high school she and her students have planted onions, lettuce, herbs, and strawberries on raised beds. They grow food to give to the elderly poor and the students earn a science credit. Trista says, “When a kid interacts with what they are leaning they are going to learn it better.” Of her students she says, “Not all of them will become farmers but maybe they will have gardens.”

For the next year they have founding funding for a heated greenhouse which will push their growing season into the winter.

The Farm-to-Table program is entirely privately funded. Their patrons include the Rappahannock Garden Club. Trista is thrilled that one of her first students is now studying horticulture at Piedmont Community College through a scholarship funded by the garden club.

Aleta Gadino of Gadino Cellars is a member of garden club. She says, “We support all of the educational aspect of farm to table primarily to promote growing and appreciating the environmental education and the love of growing. We want to inspire young people to keep the earth green. I think for Trista the goal of the program is to show people that you can make a living in growing things in agriculture and I think to keep people in the county is important as well. I think the young people might feel the might have to go somewhere else to find jobs. Hopefully some will stay to pursue that lifestyle to keep Rappahannock rural and green.”

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Growing Farmers

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