Exactly how much farming takes place in the immediate locale of central Virginia? There are no fewer than twenty-five operational farms in the Charlottesville MSA, some of which fit the VDACS profile and many of which don’t. Agriculture in central Virginia is a mix of trends and tradition, a mixture of heritage farmers and homesteaders. For every third-generation large-scale farmer, there seems to be an increasing number of smaller operations run by young families interested in wholesome food production. Many of Jefferson’s interests in agriculture and horticulture, whether it be his general health-consciousness or desire for local economic solidarity, still factor into the reasons why farmers choose to either enter or stay in the agricultural sector.
For many, the business of farming is as much a career path as a lifestyle choice. The sheer number of hours that farm management requires, not to mention the attempted cooperation with nature and the threats to one’s livelihood from circumstances outside of human control, prevents farming from being an easily compartmentalized, low-stress job. Battles with wildlife, land leases, government regulations, poor harvests, broken machinery and finicky customers are merely a handful of the challenges facing modern farmers, many of which are no different than the agricultural problems of Jefferson’s time. Vacations for farmers are spare and hard earned, as are sick days or time off. The mountains that so mark the local landscape also create mudslides, road blockages and torrents of snow that can mark or mangle even the most well-run enterprise. To make order out of chaos in the form of a peach orchard, neat rows of peppers or pasture pens for chicken takes not only skill but also strong desire.
Agriculture in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area and its surrounding counties features a cast of characters as varied and flavorful as the crops themselves. There are the young guns, eager to put muscles and enthusiasm to work in place of experience and tradition. The homesteaders are a more ideological, perhaps Jeffersonian offshoot of the young farmers, a group whose interest in backyard pigs and fledgling apple orchards takes on the feel of anti-establishmentarianism. There are family operations both new and old, run by husbands and wives, three generations of men or an entire community. Some local producers have even become household names, showing up in the pages of Southern Living or on-screen in Food, Inc. Many of these farmers inhabit more than one of these roles, combining aspects of and interests in different trends and traditions. A feeling of camaraderie and inclusiveness makes such variety possible; there is a place for the newcomer in the stall right next to the inheritance farmer at the City Market every Saturday.
The agricultural underpinnings of the commonwealth’s economy, coupled with its more than four hundred years of history, result in some long-term farming institutions. Virginia is home to 1,254 Century Farms, operations that have been maintained and family-run for over one hundred years.52 The state government views family farming as a distinctly Virginian heritage, citing sustenance farming at Jamestown as foundational to our success as a state and a nation. Twenty-eight of these farms are located in the Charlottesville MSA, with nearby Augusta County boasting forty-six.53 With the state government recognizing the importance of and achievements of heritage farming, it’s no surprise that family-owned farms account for a majority of agricultural operations in Virginia. Yet it often doesn’t take a century to establish a well-run farm that can be inherited by future generations.
Ownership of land is the most elemental necessity when preserving the family business, as many farmers have sold off their land to high-paying developers. Though the Virginia General Assembly initiated a farmland preservation effort in 2001, the offers of real estate and commercial developers can be all too alluring for farms not under VDACS’s current one-thousand-acre area of protection.54 If the land is there, dedication and interest are the next step toward establishing a generationally inherited enterprise. The willingness to continue in a farming parent’s footsteps coincides with firsthand experience of the structure of an agriculturally focused household; before taking up the management of a dairy or an apple orchard, a son or daughter will have witnessed the physical, economic and social effects of a farming career choice on a parent. To continue a family investment in farming is no casual choice; it can be a calculated move to expand a business, a way of preserving property or simply a means of keeping family connections close and consistent.
Successful operations of inheritance farming often seem at ease with recent technological advances of the modern agricultural industry. Perhaps decades and generations of capitalizing on technological advancement and successful weathering of farming hardships have made modern family farms more receptive to using larger equipment and more corporate farming techniques. That’s not to say that Virginia’s Century Farms or well-established operations are corporatized and bloated. A familiarity with large-scale production methods and the need for a considerable workforce doesn’t take the family out of the family farm; rather, successive generations have often proved essential in getting new technology and methods of production in place on aging operations.
KEEPING FARMS IN THE FAMILY
A thriving community of many first-generation farms as well as lineage farms lies in the Shenandoah Valley in an area inhabited by Mennonites. These Mennonite farmers, often less visible to the Charlottesville food scene on account of conservative social practices and religious guidelines, have provided the area with large amounts of produce since establishing a community in Virginia in the eighteenth century.55 Brett Wilson of Horse & Buggy Produce, a local grocery business, cites the Mennonite farmers as some of his major suppliers, responsible for the success of his business. Zach Miller of Timbercreek Organics in Charlottesville names Arlen Beery of Shenandoah Valley Family Farms Co-Op as a major influence on his farm’s ethos due to Berry’s “dedication to the best biological principles.” In the case of the Mennonite farmers in the Shenandoah Valley, farming is as much a way of life as it a socio-religious occupation.
Outside of both Century Farms and community-wide long-term agricultural structures, family farms of a singular nature continue to act as the building blocks of Virginia agriculture. Donnie Montgomery of Homestead Creamery, an offshoot of his three-generations-old dairy farm in Franklin County, has carved out a niche of delectable, minimally processed dairy products. Running a business capable of selling ice cream in North Carolina and delivering fresh milk to local residents, Montgomery has been able to develop an inherited farm into an interstate business. He notes that a farm must develop and adjust like any business to the demands of the market and available resources. “I have to use more business tactics than I used to when we were smaller,” Montgomery allows of his now-booming business. “The farm makes you a little more open-minded because you have to change and do things differently than you planned on doing.”56
Such changes have occurred in the form of government aid, with Governor McDonnell funding the creamery with the first-ever grant from the Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development (AFID) in 2012.57 Over a period of three years, this grant “will increase Homestead Creamery’s purchases of Virginia-grown agriculture products by almost $1,500,000,” as well as double its staff.58 Montgomery seems most excited about this grant not for the additional revenue it will create but for the increased opportunity to reach more consumers. To Montgomery, the creamery looks forward to further growing the “traditional dairy methods that consumers are embracing as they seek all-natural products for their families.”59 The Virginia government is clearly interested in promoting these methods for both economic and health-conscious reasons.
An interest in protecting and providing for Virginia families underpins most of Montgomery’s business ethos, whether it’s keeping his own children involved in the farm and creamery or providing nutritious dairy for local families. At Homestead Creamery, grass-fed cows receive no antibiotics or growth hormones. The creamery’s milk, contained in old-fashioned, thick glass bottles, has a list of all the additives that are not in the product. The creamery’s silky,
rich ice cream has no corn syrup and is based off a custard recipe so simple that Jefferson would have likely been able to produce it. Though the creamery produces over 500,000 gallons of milk a year, Homestead keeps family first in the midst of a large-scale production method.60 According to Montgomery, the idea to turn his family’s dairy business into a creamery stemmed from a desire to avoid a “mega-dairy” production; processing his own milk as well as the dairy of business partner David Bower allowed Montgomery and his two sons to add value to the farm’s products and pay for the farm without converting to a larger format.
The Homestead Creamery milk truck. Photo by Nancy Overton.
Families remain Donnie Montgomery’s ideal—and actual—customer base, just as the business itself reflects his interest in preserving his inherited occupation. “I think some of the younger families have realized that they’ve gotten away from the farm long enough that their children don’t understand how food is produced,” Montgomery hypothesizes.61 “I think it intrigues a lot of them that they can teach their children [about] that.” The local food movement has provided considerable business for Homestead Creamery, as families interested in seeing exactly where their food comes from can take a trip to the facility for a day. The creamery’s petting zoo, open house structure and welcoming country store create a wholesome, approachable experience that’s attractive to people from six to sixty. Homestead Creamery’s delivery business, a four-truck system that carries fresh, creamy milk to over one thousand families within an hour’s drive, has an air of nostalgic Americana and promotes familial togetherness in its own way. Parents can spend less time grocery shopping and more at home with their kids, who are eager to drain the bottle and leave the empty glass out for the milkman to magically refill it the next morning or week.
To Montgomery, the allure of family business and family-based marketing is directly related to the benefit of community-forming: around dinner tables, or bowls of ice cream, people become connected and nourished. Montgomery notes the specific atmosphere of an ice cream shop as particularly dreamy, finding that “if you compared it to some businesses, usually when you come into an ice cream shop, you’re coming in to relax or have fun.” At Homestead Creamery, the concept of an ice cream social is still alive and relevant. One scoop of Lemon Crunch ice cream or a frozen take-home chicken potpie made from scratch with local chicken and eggs makes even the most worn-out urbanite feel comforted.
However, it doesn’t require three generations’ worth of practice to start and maintain a well-run family farming enterprise. Zach and Sara Miller of Timbercreek Organics have managed to create a thriving cattle, pig and poultry farm out of a former quarter horse training business. A drive to Timbercreek’s meandering property on Garth Road in Charlottesville involves a good deal of free-roaming pigs, rolling green pastures and the tail-wagging of a couple farm dogs. Off the farm, Timbercreek has a much more luxe appeal. At Feast!, a local high-end grocery store, buyers can request translucent red slices of Timbercreek prosciutto, aged nearby at Kite’s Hams in Wolftown, to pair with a variety of menus; rich, grass-fed beef from their farm appears around town everywhere from gourmet burger joints to high-class Italian restaurants. Yet for such a successful operation doing good business in a well-saturated market, the Millers appear to have started their farm on little more than excitement and curiosity.
When asked what experience or skill set with farming he possessed before starting Timbercreek, Zach Miller’s enthusiastic response was, “None!” Armed with only a Joel Salatin book and a general interest in sustainability, Miller and his wife, Sara, started Timbercreek in 2007 as a fully integrated business. The integration comes in the form of carefully delineated and rotating spaces for cattle, poultry and pigs. Beef and poultry are linked through grazing and field prep, whereas the pigs use parts of the farm that don’t fit perfectly in an evenly divided setting. The pigs rooting around in wired-in segments along the farm’s driveway are as intentionally placed as the fields for cattle. A sense of harmony and closeness marks the Timbercreek operation as the kind of farm one dreams of nostalgically.
The concept of biomimicry is a crucial underpinning of the design of the farm’s physical spaces as well as the choice in animals and plants to fill up those spaces. No animal species at Timbercreek can grow successfully without the others, based on the way the Millers cultivate their animals. Biomimicry “studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems,” according to biologist and sustainability consultant Janine Benyus.62 Though this discipline has been applied to everything from the Coca-Cola Company to Colombian coffee farms, biomimicry has achieved headway on these several acres of prime Virginia farmland. The ecological interactions between landscape and animal species eliminate the need for pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers or antibiotics. Miller says their cattle provide the farm’s most successful product, as the grass-fed and finished beef serves valuable ecological functions on the farm.
The Millers and the success of Timbercreek Farm are a variance on a current widespread trend in farming: the advent of the young farmer. As a response to the mechanization of farming practices that occurred in the 1970s, many new farmers are primarily interested in alternate forms of agricultural processes. Those who are just entering the agriculture industry—rather than growing up in it—often fall into the “young farmer” bracket of forty-and-under. Young to middle age, relative inexperience and general enthusiasm underpin their study and utilization of almost radically traditional methods of animal husbandry and horticulture on their operations. This particular bracket of newcomers includes both young adult farmers and those who have chosen agriculture after different career paths proved unsatisfying. Drawing inspiration from sources as varied as Joel Salatin’s individualistic sustainability to medieval modes of efficiency, these young farmers, referred to as “greenhorns,” often start with big ideas and little capital. Acquiring land is a challenge, as is learning the ropes of an industry before the wildlife roots out the succulent pleasures of pasture-penned chickens. The young farmers who are able to combine hard work and good fortune with quickly adaptable methods have fast become heavy-hitters in the local agriculture scene.
GREENHORNS: YOUNG FARMERS AT WORK
To the Millers as well as many other young farmers, a business in agriculture offers both a career and a lifestyle choice. Often, the decision to farm for a living involves a rejection of a more corporatized American job structure with set hours and a predictable schedule, albeit with paid vacations. To Zach Miller, “you can have a lucrative profession or you can have a job that comes with a type of lifestyle that you don’t have any reason to want to leave.” In order to make Timbercreek an institution, the Millers understand the necessity of being physically rooted to their farm and land. Like the Century Farms before them or third-generation farmer Donnie Montgomery, the Millers view farming as a family operation and value it, in part, for this reason. A visit to Timbercreek Organics often means interacting with the Millers’ toddlers, whose presence on the farm is as much a given as the Millers themselves. Zach states with pride that Timbercreek “is a family project.” He acknowledges that “it has to be a viable business for us to survive” but notes that “we also recognize the importance of lifestyle it creates for us.”63
The farming lifestyle, with its natural-seeming promotion of close bonding among individuals as well as between individuals and the land, has drawn more than locals to make a home and a business on a Virginia farm. Oklahoma-raised Erica Hellen, another young farmer who runs Free Union Grass Farm with her fiancé, Joel Slezak, settled into Free Union, Virginia, via an internship at Joel Salatin’s monolith of an operation, Polyface Farms. In her late twenties with a laid-back attitude and a nose stud, Hellen looks more like a California surfer than a poultry and cattle farmer from Tulsa. If the close-knit family unit of the Millers offers one case study of young farmers, Hellen and her partner’s nonchalant ease and cool-kid vibe lend an entirely unexpecte
d face to another side of agriculture in Virginia.
Free Union Grass Farm is a patchwork operation, knitted together of various properties and various agricultural products into a useful, cohesive whole. Slezak and Hellen raise poultry and cattle, but what truly sets their farm apart is their sustainably raised and processed duck. Though many local farms offer pastured chicken, Hellen found that duck promised to be “the attention-getter that we needed” at their fledgling business. Though thick feathers and a watertight design make ducks harder to process, the lucrativeness of the waterfowl has allowed Hellen and Slezak to save money in other areas. A visit to the Free Union Grass Farms stall at the farmers’ market offers one a taste of silky chicken liver pâté or the opportunity to take home some rendered duck fat, perfect for roasting potatoes.
While Joel Salatin’s teachings on sustainability led Hellen, like Zach Miller, to agriculture, it is a love of the farming mindset that has kept her here. “It’s not just a job,” Hellen insists. “It’s not a hobby—there’s a tax bracket for those people.” To Hellen and Slezak, farming is their “everything,” both a reason to get going in the morning and the cause of many sleepless nights. “You can never just forget about it or put it away,” Hellen states. “It’s important to have the stress, you have to jive with that responsibility.”64 Though coyotes howling at night may keep Hellen and Slezak awake, the devotion Free Union Grass Farm’s products have inspired in local restaurants and cooks has made Hellen and Slezak’s hard-earned vacation and downtime that much sweeter.
The particular layout and geographic challenges of Free Union Grass Farm are reflective of a widespread issue for start-up farmers: high cost and low accessibility of farmable land. High land prices in Albemarle County offer a hurdle for young farmers to jump over before even getting to the growing stage.65 Hellen and Slezak’s operation has used no fewer than four different fields and properties since beginning in 2010. The farm now uses three different fields for raising its animals, operating on a total acreage of forty to fifty acres. Hellen notes, “It’s tough in this particular part of the county to access affordable land in large quantities because it’s either already owned by someone who’s had it in their family forever or it’s enormously expensive, or it’s owned by some absentee landowner who doesn’t really want anyone to use it, or it’s in conservation and there are too many stipulations.”
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