“Here’s a toast: That we may learn the connection between land and water.” That’s the last line in Surf and Turf, a Chesapeake Bay Watershed Story, a short documentary showing that what we do here in the Shenandoah Valley, how we farm, profoundly and inextricably affects the water leaving our...
I looked up and saw smoke rising from a field far upstream. I stopped in wonder. It can’t be smoke, I thought, because it’s brown. Then I realized it was a giant cloud of windblown soil reaching over a hundred feet into the air. Then I saw the tractor. The...
Note: This was written by a real person . . . me. There are no popups, no ads, no AI. All photos were taken by me. In January, Jeanne and I traveled to Portugal and visited three of its many wine regions: the Douro, the Alentejo, and the Algarve. The...
Our farm in Virginia’s legendary Shenandoah Valley affects the waters of America’s largest estuary over three-hundred miles away—the Chesapeake Bay. How we manage our land profoundly and inextricably affects groundwater and surface water. In other words, our turf affects what’s in the surf. Surf and Turf It was a special...
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...
Jeanne and I were successful at getting the county to amend its comprehensive plan so that part of our farm will be classified as urban open space instead of low-density housing. We paid a fee to apply for the change and spoke at two public hearings before the county’s board...
Imagine paddling a canoe upstream forever. That’s my metaphor for environmental activism. Activists have been paddling against the current with the Clean Water Act on their backs ever since its passage 50 years ago. We have made a lot of progress, but it’s been against the current the whole time—and...
A farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia was going to be the storage site for millions of gallons of industrial food waste and other sludges until the community rose up to fight the project. Industrial food residuals, poultry slaughter rendering residuals, and bio-solids from other counties and perhaps other...
Jeanne and I have put a lot of sweat and money into making our farm a powerhouse for ecosystem services. It produces not only wholesome food but clean water, air, and wildlife habitat. We rotate our beef cattle through a system of perennial pastures where they drink abundant clean water...
I love looking up the trunk of a 30-foot-tall Willow Oak that I planted in 2004.
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