Little Cabin in the Woods: A Practical Guide to the Farm B&B

So in an interesting twist on the traditional farm business plan, Susan and Dean also have a cottage that they use as a B&B. And this week, I had the opportunity to stay there when my parents came to visit for a couple days.

Normally, my experience with the cottage has been limited to cleaning it. Staying there was phenomenal - leisurely breakfasts of farm-fresh eggs, sitting on the back deck with a steaming mug of tea and seeing a bald eagle fly down the Robinson River, staying up until midnight (gasp!) to finish reading my book. No internet, no phone. Pure heaven, if you ask me.

But quite apart from the very enjoyable act of inhabiting it, the cottage has something else going for it. It happens to be the most profitable enterprise on the farm.

A little background: the cottage started out as a small, delapidated A-frame back when Susan and Dean bought this property ten years ago. Based on the original cottage, they designed a new and improved model with significant expansions, including a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and back deck. Their daughter and her boyfriend did the actual construction, which included using timber from the property and reclaimed lumber (including chesnut).

Once the construction was finished, they had to purchase everything that goes inside: furniture, decor, linens, microwave, refrigerator, oven, plates, pots and pans, cutlery, games for the kids... well, to make a long story short, they dropped a pretty significant chunk of change on the place to get everything ready. And now, five years later, they have just finished paying it off.

That being said, the amount of money that they must put into the cottage now is minimal. Cleaning supplies, cute little bars of soap, food for the breakfasts (some of which - eggs, for example - comes from the farm)...it's easy to see why, in terms of net profit, the cottage is the most profitable thing happening on the farm. It's also one of the enterprises that takes the least amount of time... and time, as we all know, is money. Especially on a farm.

So how much does an evening in the cottage go for, anyways? I think it's actually pretty reasonable. Sunday through Thursday is $110 a night, and Friday/Saturday are $150 a night, not including a 10% lodging tax.

Mostly the cottage guests are what Dean calls "refugees from DC". Lots of couples out for a romantic weekend, and families with small kids who want to help feed the animals. In any case, it's the perfect getaway for anyone who wants to turn off their phone and laptop for a few days.

It's no Red Roof Inn, thank God. You definitely get what you pay for, and then some.

Lamb Chops? Not this girl.

Last week, we were eating dinner when Brian came in and said, "Um... I think Eunice is lambing." So we all ran outside, abandoning our meal to the flies.

AND she's a girl, so we get to keep her! Huzzah.

Look at those eyelashes. I'm in love.

180 degrees later in the circle of sheep life: on Saturday I went to Front Royal (about a 75 minute drive) to pick up Mr. Wether*, the lamb we dropped off last week who now resembles a cooler full of vacuum-sealed lamb chops.

Blue Ridge Meats, where Susan and Dean get their animals processed, is "humane certified". They don't use electric prods on the animals, they don't deny them food or water (some places do that because it apparently makes less of a mess on the kill floor), and they don't do anything to cause the animals any suffering. So I think I can enjoy a Mr. Wether burger without too much guilt.




*Wether: noun a male sheep who has had his bearings removed.

Paperwork and the Farm

The concepts of paperwork and bureaucracy seem antithetical to farming, which we tend to think about as practically the most natural activity one can do, short of actually going to the wilderness and living off the land. The farmer pays close attention to her fields and livestock. She touches the earth with her bare hands daily, is far more in tune with the geography and weather than the average person, and depends upon the well-being of her beets and fennel, grass and sheep for her health and livelihood.

And yet... there is paperwork. A hefty amount of it, too. If you are USDA Organic Certified, that is. Which Brightwood Vineyard and Farm happens to be.

We must write down everything we do on the farm - and I do mean everything. We write down what we plant, which rows, how many feet. We record every "input" (e.g. compost or fertilizer) that goes on the plants. We meticulously catalog how many pounds of every single piece of produce we harvest, how many feet of each bed we harvested, the quality of the harvest, the seed lot numbers, and where it is going.

This, of course, is nothing compared to the leviathan piles of paperwork that Susan faces whenever her USDA Organic Inspection comes around, which it did last week. Documentation proving that her seeds are organic, and if they aren't, a minimum of two letters proving that she tried to find organic seeds and couldn't. Pictures of cover crops and videos of said cover crops being tilled into the field. Lists of every single seed she has purchased in the last year, if it was planted, where it was planted, and organized by a seed lot number that she assigns it. Maps of the farms, showing how they look in relation to one another, storage facilities marked, vegetable fields marked, livestock areas marked... heck, everything marked.

All this time and effort spent on paperwork appear, to me, completely anathema to the idea of farming. Most of the farmers I know became farmers because they wanted to be linked closely with the land, not so they could sit inside and stare at a computer for hours each week. That's certainly not why I chose this job.

Just how necessary is being USDA Organic certified, anyway? I just finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and he does an excellent investigation of two opposing viewpoints of this topic. On the one side, you have "Industrial Organic": large-scale organic farms that farm hundreds of acres of crops or rear thousands of livestock without pesticides, herbicides, or antibiotics. These include such enterprises as Earthbound Farm, Cascadian Farm, and Horizon Organics - familiar names to anyone who frequents the organic aisle of their local supermarket.

Diametrically opposing these farms is Joel Salatin, the farmer who runs the now infamous (in farming circles, at least) Polyface Farm in Staunton, Virginia. Salatin does organic livestock, but he isn't USDA certified as such. He refuses to be. And Pollan provides plenty of salty quotes to illustrate this point. For example:

We never called ourselves organic - we call ourselves 'beyond organic.' Why dumb down to a lesser level than we are?

And my personal favorite:

Me and the folks who buy my food are like the Indians - we just want to opt out. That's all the Indians ever wanted - to keep their tepees, to give their kids herbs instead of patent medicines and leeches...But the Western mind can't bear an opt-out option. We're going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Bighorn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate.

So that's how Mister Salatin feels about the subject. And, honestly, I identify with him to a large degree. Big Organic has no soul - it has compromised the spirit of the organic ideal that started in the 60's.

But, if we compare conventional farming and Big Organic farming, there is very clearly a lesser of two evils. Although Big Organic farms may be "free range" in name only, may look exactly like a conventional farm from the outside, they are much more environmentally friendly. They aren't degrading their soil and polluting the land with pesticides. They aren't pumping their broilers or cattle full of hormones. Said chicken may not be living a life full of chicken enjoyment on the open farm, but at least we, the consumer, know that it is the healthier option, for us and the earth.

But honestly...the best option of all is to go to a local farmer's market and purchase food from someone you trust.

These are the farms that fall in the middle of the extremes. And the choice of whether or not to get USDA certification is a highly personal one that each of these farmers must make. Do their consumers care? Are they willing to put in the extra hours, poring over hundreds and hundreds of papers until their eyeballs bleed? (Figuratively speaking.) For some farms, it's a choice they feel is necessary. For others, not so much.

All Work and No Play? Hardly.

Although there is no denying that I'm on the farm the lion's share of the time, I don't want to give the impression that I never have time off. I do. It evens out to one day a week - usually Sunday - but due to some creative scheduling, I had both Thursday and Sunday off last week.

And there is plenty to do here. Charlottesville is an hour's ride away, while the smaller towns of Orange and Culpeper offer shopping, restaurants and coffee shops closer to home. I'm a thirty minute drive from Shenandoah National Park, for which I purchased a year-long pass almost the instant I arrived. That's what happened Sunday - a 13.4 mile hike that included a black bear and cub sighting (wonder if it was the same pair?) as well as some time for solitude and reflection.

Normally I go hiking on my days off, but Thursday I decided to better myself and learn a little bit about Virginia's history by visiting Montpelier, the home of James Madison, fourth President and architect of the U.S. Constitution.

After touring the mansion and walking around the grounds for the better part of five hours, I headed over to Barboursville for a sandwich and to check out the Barboursville Ruins, a house originally designed by Thomas Jefferson for the Governor of Virginia that burned down on Christmas Day in 1884.

Virginia is also home to hundreds of wineries, so I took the opportunity to visit Barboursville Winery, where one may taste 23 wines for a $5 fee. A great deal, I might add.

Wineries dotting the landscape, a rich historical background, a nearby national park... these are just some of the many opportunities for enjoyment near the farm. Not to mention, I'm only 90 miles from Washington DC, where I'm headed this weekend for the 4th of July. Cheers to that!

Local Meal in the Vineyard

Saturday night, we enjoyed the company of several friends of the farm as we celebrated summer with dinner in the vineyard.

Guests brought food, of course - mostly appetizers and desserts, which were all (of course) delicious. But as a result, the meal was almost entirely from the farm!

Starting from the top left: Beet Salad (Autumn), Gnocchi with basil pesto (Brian, with Autumn and myself rolling and shaping the dumplings), Roasted Goose (Susan), beet chips (from a local store called Yoder's) and Marinated Swiss Chard (me). Not pictured: Pear Wine (Dean).

It was a beautiful evening, and a wonderful chance to eat a local meal together as a community. This is how a meal should be - a gathering, a communion and a celebration, rolled into one.

Microgreen Madness

Although the farm's microgreens production is technically not organic - Susan can't get most of the seeds organically, although we obviously raise them without any non-organic inputs - it's still a fun part of what we do.

Microgreens are exactly what they sound like - tiny versions of plants such as basil (above), mizuna, cress (below), mustard, and so on. We sell them to Fresh Link, a local wholesale operation that provides produce for DC-area restaurants. The microgreens are typically used for garnish... and no wonder, for they are lovely.

We start with plain potting soil, which we put into the trays.*

Today, we're going to plant Purple Kohlrabi.

Using our lovely little seeder, we sprinkle the seeds liberally over the dirt.

Then we tamp them down with our handy tamper.

After they germinate inside, which just takes a day or two in summer, we take them out to the nursury to join the other happy little microgreens:

Well, to be perfectly honest, not all of the microgreens are totally happy these days.

That ugly looking splotch is some kind of fungal growth that has been popping up and decimating the beautiful microgreens. Basil, amaranth and purselane all seem especially vulnerable, although it's shown up in some of the other greens too.




*Did I mention that the main reason I really like this job is that I'm allowed to play in the dirt?

Mail Order Chickens

On Sunday, we recieved a box.

Whatever can it be?



Gasp! Baby Chicks!

Fifty-seven of them, to be precise - mostly Araucanas, which lay blue/green eggs, and Silver Laced Wyandottes. They all came from McMurray Hatchery, which is in Iowa, and were only one day old when they arrived.

Here is their new home, which I like to call the Chicky Red Light District:

The maroon ambiance comes from a heat lamp, incidentally, and is not actually an aura of illicitness resulting from their naughty night-time chicklet activities.

See? Totally innocent looking.

Nothing to see here. Move along.