Down on the farm: Tours aim to provide missing piece to story
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Recommend ThisBy Ben Orcutt -- borcutt@nvdaily.com
FRONT ROYAL -- Members of the farms tour subcommittee for the 175th anniversary celebration of Warren County felt there was a glaring hole in the festivities, according to the subcommittee's chairman, Ben Weddle.
With no tours of farms planned for the celebration, "We felt that there was a real hole in the whole plan," Weddle said Tuesday.
Therefore, Weddle and his subcommittee came up with a tour of six farms in the northern portion of Warren County that will be part of the county's 175th year anniversary celebration.
The tours are slated for 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on May 14, and are free of charge.
A former Shenandoah District supervisor who was a longtime Virginia Cooperative Extension employee, Weddle said it is only fitting that the farms tour be a part of the 175th anniversary celebration of Warren County.
"This [Warren County] was started out as from 1836 when it was formed, it was all farming then except for a few merchants in town," Weddle said, noting that the county's seal features two shocks of wheat.
"For this 175th anniversary celebration one of the things we're going to do is introduce them to some of the farms that we do have," Weddle said. "We've got really a variety of farms, and good farms too."
The six farms on the tour are: Gentley Farm, 2732 Rockland Road; Golden Acres Orchard, 2608 Ashby Station Road; Maple Grove Farm, 1795 Ashby Station Road; Oxbow Farm, at Milldale Road and Oxbow Road; Shaffer Place Farm, 2555 Ashby Station Road; and Sunflower Cottage, 150 Ridgemont Road at Reliance Road, Middletown.
Oxbow Farm is the largest of the six farms that will be featured.
"We have 1,400 acres here," said farm manager Gene Doody, 42. "About 650 acres are in crop, mainly for the horse market. We make small square bales of hay. We also produce straw and the grain from the straw, wheat grain. Our goal is to make high-quality square bales of hay and straw to sell locally. ... We make 50,000 square bales a year and sell all but the little bit we use here on the farm to feed the livestock here."
Oxbow Farm is owned by Adie Von Gontard and Beatrice Busch Von Gontard.
"We have about 150 acres dedicated to wildlife, nesting birds and pollinators," Doody said. "We grow warm-season grasses and wildflower mixes."
Doody said Oxbow's best features are "the views and just the types of crops growing."
Doody said Oxbow is looking forward to having guests visit as part of the 175th anniversary celebration. "It's nice for the people in the area to know what we do [and] that there's still farms around."
Weddle, 82, who owns the 240-acre Folly Farm, said he would match the farms in Warren County, and especially state-of-the-art ones like Oxbow, with any around.
"We've got as good a farms as they have anywhere," Weddle said. "That's the way I look at it. And the variety is interesting too. There's nobody around that I know of that has any more modern hay-making equipment than they have right here at this farm [Oxbow]. They've got everything you need to make top-quality hay. ... They don't plan to touch a bale until they sell it."
Doody said the only time one of the Oxbow hay-making personnel picks up a bale of hay is to load it on to a truck to take it to a buyer.
"We have a machine that drives down the field and picks up the bales while they're laying on the field, brings it back and unloads them in the barn and sets them in a stack," Doody said. "Then we have to manually load them on to the truck."
Doody explained why the farms tour is important.
"It's just a dying breed," he said. "There's just not very many pieces of property being farmed and working with the land. [I] just really enjoy it and [it] keeps the country to country as far as I'm concerned."
Weddle said there's another important element connected with the majority of farms on the tour.
"This farm [Oxbow] is in a conservation easement with [the] Virginia Outdoor Foundation, and actually there are four of the six farms on this tour [that are in conservation easements]," Weddle said. "There will never be any development on it. I think that says something about the way people look at the land out here. They believe that it's quality land."
Showcasing some of Warren County's farms is an important part the county's legacy, Weddle said.
"So it's pretty important historically to this county, and economically and I think its quality of life," Weddle said. "It's extremely important that we have farms intertwined with our housing developments so people know really what life is all about."
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I was born and raised in Warren County and although I moved away in the late 70's...I still feel a connection to the area. It has saddened me to see all the development going on there. Where once there were fields of grazing cattle or crops..there are now shopping centers, new homes or apartments. Farming is an important part of our economy and our well being. I was thrilled to see it hasn't been forgotten. Thank you for showing a forgotten part of the history of Warren County. You see...US Farmers feed the world.