Calving Season 2023
Note: This post was written by a real person–me. All photos by me unless otherwise noted. March Fifth, Calving Season Begins
Conservation Vouchers, Making Farming Safer and More Efficient
The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay has a program that helped us be more efficient and safer farmers with conservation vouchers. It’s called the Healthy Streams Farm Stewardship program. It awards $3,000 worth of conservation vouchers per acre of riparian forest buffer up to $20,000. In addition, the program allows...
Hope and Healing: Reflections and Pictures 2022
The worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is over. Science, reason, and truth prevailed over doubt, fear, and lies this year. In this post, I’ll share some pictures and thoughts from 2022 that may bring you some hope and healing for the new year. Note: All photos by R. Whitescarver unless...
Protecting the Farm Forever–Chapter Three, Recording the Easement, Costs and Benefits
A Historic Day for Farmland Staunton, Virginia: It was a hot summer day on August 4. We met the senior easement specialist with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation at our lawyer’s office to walk the four blocks to the courthouse. Our lawyer, Alan Garrison, said he could have recorded our conservation deed...
There Has Never Been a Better Time to Fence Cattle Out of Streams
Note: The text of this post was published in the Virginia Mercury on 9/1/2022. My wife and I are beef cattle farmers in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Two years ago, we enrolled in Virginia’s Agricultural Best Management Practice Cost-Share program. We used this state funding to fence our cattle...
Drams From Whiskey Creek Angus–Summer 2022
The grazing season is in full swing at Whiskey Creek Angus, and the bulls are in with the ladies. We rotate our two herds of cattle to different pastures about every four to six days depending on the growth of the forage. The tree seedlings we planted last year are...
Breakfast on the Bay with Jeanne, Bobby, and Val
The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay made a three-minute video of Jeanne, Val, and me working at Whiskey Creek Angus.
Drams from Whiskey Creek Angus Spring Surge—May 2021
Spring Surge of Grass During the month of May, everything grows like crazy. Here at Whiskey Creek Angus, the grasses and clovers in the pastures grow more in this month than in any other. As I write, the grasses in the hay fields are waist high and their seed heads...
Drams from Whiskey Creek Angus: We Bought the Farm and Fenced the Cows Out of the Streams
Adventure of a Lifetime Well, here we are at Whiskey Creek Angus. I’m 65 years old; Jeanne is 60. We sold our dream house of a lifetime, Meadowview, and bought a farm during the worst pandemic in a century. What’s up with that? Meadowview, located in Swoope, Virginia, was built...
The Unnamed Tributary
The unnamed tributary. That little creek, or seep, or spring, or bog, or wetland without a name begins its life as surface water when it emerges from the ground. Most streams don’t have a name. In fact, about 60 percent of all streams are unnamed. I’ll bet you know of...
