Posted by Joe Barnes on March 10th, 2010 in Agriculture, Nature/Environment
With the Spring on its way. We are starting to experience the arrival of new calves around the farm. The other day I noticed at least 9 newly born calves dotting the pastures. Here’s a bit of video of them moving around.
I love watching the young calves romp around. They remind me of large puppies, make me smile and probably lower my blood pressure too.
Posted by Leif Riddervold on March 10th, 2010 in Nature/Environment
The last few mornings when I arrived at work,
The last few mornings when I arrived at work at the Baldwin Center, I have been greeted by eighteen visitors. For some reason they never make an appointment! This morning they were actually scratching up against the foundation.
Leif Riddervold – Natural Resources Manager
Posted by Joe Barnes on March 9th, 2010 in Bundoran Farm Events and Occasions, Education and Inspiration, General, Project Updates
This past weekend was one of those weekends that makes me feel blessed and grateful to live in the Charlottesville area — a place with some many interesting things to do and people to hang out with.
I started my weekend off on Friday evening at the opening reception of “Our Water, Our Future” at the Charlottesville Community Design Center. “Our Water, Our Future” is a unique and informative exhibit on the Charlottesville-Albemarle community water supply system presented by Charlottesville Tomorrow. In addition to walking through this engaging and interactive exhibit about the goals, details, potential cost and impacts (both good and bad) of the areas 50 year water plan, I got to spend some time with several of good friends I have made over the past few years and met some new ones along the way.
Friday evening was capped off by a wonderful dinner at one of the many fun restaurants on Charlottesville’s pedestrian Downtown Mall. As expected, not only did my wife and I have great time with our dinner companions, we ran into and chatted with a few other friends and colleagues from the area.
The weather this past Saturday afternoon was spectacular. Having a sunny day in the mid-60s was extremely welcomed after the rather unusually snowy winter we experienced this year. My wife, 2 boys and my Boston Terrier, Hunter and I headed down to The Corner, picked up some sandwiches from Little John’s (including my favorite sandwich of all times, “Five Easy Pieces”) and had a picnic at and long stroll around my favorite place in the entire world, The Lawn at the University of Virginia.
Sunday was another great day, weather and activity wise. After church and a bit of grocery shopping, my oldest son and I went to the Virginia versus Syracuse lacrosse game. We were thrilled when Virginia, ranked 2nd in the country, beat number one ranked Syracuse, 11 to 10. Go Hoos!
Sunday evening was Oscar’s Night. For my wife, a great movie buff, it’s like Christmas, her birthday and July 4th all rolled into one. Typically, she is at home watching it from the red carpet through to the Best Picture award. The rest of us in the family try our best not to disturb her. This year the Academy Awards were even more exciting for her. We attended the live telecast of the show at the Paramount Theatre on the Downtown Mall. Charlottesville was one of only 51 places across the world have live telecast like this.
Dressing up, walking down the own red carpet, sampling food from several Charlottesville restaurants, attending a pre-party sponsored by Virginia National Bank, in addition to watching the show in high definition on a movie theatre sized screen is seems like it is the next best thing to being in Hollywood. I’m really looking forward to next year’s Academy Awards.
The highlight of my weekend occurred on Saturday morning. Each year around this time, we hold the Bundoran Farm Community Association Annual Meeting. In addition to going over the property owners association’s business, we spend time bringing everyone up to speed on what has been accomplished over the past year and what we are looking forward to the following year and beyond.
While the meeting was long – starting at 9:00 AM and finishing up around 12:30 PM – we enjoyed every minute of it and left energized and inspired. It is such a privilege for everyone on the Bundoran Farm team to work with a group of property owners that are so caring, thoughtful and respectful about the land and their neighbors, not to mention just fun to spend time with. What a diverse group of people with interesting background sharing common appreciation for this legacy landscape. The more time I spend at Bundoran Farm and with the families that are making this place their home, its easy to see how the future this wonderful place will be in good hands with the wonderful people living here.
Next weekend, maybe I will just take a long nap. Or, maybe I won’t. I’ll just have to see what is happening around town.
Posted by David Hamilton on March 1st, 2010 in Education and Inspiration, General
When I visit a new city, the first thing I want to know is “why is this here?” The answer tells you a lot about a place: sheltered deep-water harbor (Boston), big river for powering mills (Albany), inland navigable limit of the river (Richmond). And Charlottesville? Well there’s some transportation history (railroad gateway), and some shipping history (Scott’s Landing, but that’s really twenty miles south of town), but when you get down to it, Charlottesville is what it is because it’s beautiful.
Someone let Thomas Jefferson site his long-planned “academical village,” which would become the powerhouse institution we know today as UVA, and he plonked it down on a beautiful spot near his house. Guess he wanted to trim his commute.
The decision was fateful, and not just for the scholars. Generations of residents, boosters and officials have, for the most part, fiercely protected the natural and man-made beauty of this area. Paired with the intellectual firepower associated with the University, the result is a town that seems engineered to get mentioned in those interminable “best of” lists.
Usually, we mention these lists in passing, maybe on our Facebook page, but I’ve just run across one that’s pretty surprising: Charlottesville has been mentioned again in CNN/Money’s Top Places to Start a Business list. OK, so we’re not #1, as we often rank in Best Places to Live, but dig a little deeper, and understand that the other “towns” mentioned in this list include Portland, Oregon, Charlotte, NC, and Denver, Colorado. Charlottesville is fighting WAY above our weight class.
Last week, while profiling Gearhart’s Chocolates, I absentmindedly wondered why it is that so many local businesses are thriving in Albemarle, in an age of globalization. The Money list runs through the usual suspects: smart people, good government, etc., but it seems to me that there are at least a couple of reasons for this area’s success.
First are outfits like Carter Mountain Orchard, our orcharding tenant at Bundoran Farm. Obviously an orchard is, as a business, inexorably tied to the land. Their “factories,” like the southern shoulder of Tom Mountain here at Bundoran, take decades to build. While many comparable businesses have fallen to the difficulty of competing with cheap imported apples, the family behind Carter Mountain has “doubled down” on its local roots, and created a premier agritourism destination here in Albemarle. While competing with larger and better-situated rivals for the conventional supermarket apple business, they’ve also created a place where families (including mine) make lifelong memories.
At the other end of the spectrum are global information firms like SNL Financial, who’ve realized that their business is bits, and that given sufficient bandwidth and brainpower, they can run these businesses just as well from a community like Charlottesville as they can from Lower Manhattan, and they can walk to lunch on the downtown mall, which beats northern New Jersey any day.
The landscape between is peppered with small firms and sole proprietors, people who’ve chosen Albemarle County as the place to raise their families, to enjoy an abundant and beautiful landscape, or to grow old with opportunities for education and improvement. They’ve established a network of local professionals and businesses with tremendous support for each other, bringing some of the best minds and talents to bear on a college-town economy. To illustrate this, just make a doctor’s appointment (or lawyer, accountant, et al), and you’ll probably find, as my family did, a level of practice and competence beyond what one would expect from a city this size. You’ll find, as we did, individuals who could (and have) worked at the greatest heights in their professions, and who have chosen to bring their talents to Albemarle. They recognize, as Mr. Jefferson did, that if you put something special into this valley, people will seek you out, the locals will support you, and the landscape will sustain your spirit.
Posted by Joe Barnes on February 26th, 2010 in Agriculture, Bundoran Farm Events and Occasions, General, Nature/Environment
With this season’s record snowfalls, Bundoran Farm has become a winter wonderland. The verdant pastures and majestic forests are covered with a broad and deep white coat making it quite easy to understand and appreciate the land’s features and resulting life experiences of this distinctive place and time.
By means of a short poll, we came up with a list of some of the top things to do in, and with, the snow at Bundoran Farm.
Please let us know what you think we should add to the list by e-mailing us at info@bundoranfarm.com.
Posted by David Hamilton on February 16th, 2010 in General
Bundoran Farm’s protected rural environment is beautiful, but what makes it special to us is the proximity of this idyllic spot so near to Charlottesville. This little college town continually surprises us, and this Valentine’s Day, the surprise we enjoyed most was Gearhart’s Chocolates.
Pastry chef – chocolatier Tim Gearhart established the business that bears his name in 2001. His shop, at the City Market on West Main Street, anchors the dessert end of a local-food mecca, including friends-of-Bundoran Feast (when you need a legitimate Calabrian Sopressata, and you need it now!), and the Albemarle Baking Company (you’ll need a ciabatta to put under that sopressata).
Gearhart focuses on a few kinds of chocolates, executed with precision, and made from the best ingredients available (it turns out Venezuelan Criolla Cacao, whatever that is, makes a difference). The chocolates look like they’re on loan from the Metropolitan Museum, and the price can be kind of surprising if you’re used to picking up a half pound of dark chocolate at Rite Aid.
The most interesting thing about Gearhart’s is the shop itself, which should be on any food enthusiast’s agenda for a Cville trip. Entering the storefront, no bigger than your average master-bathroom, the visitor encounters a small table, with a catalog and sample dish, and sees a jeweler’s case against the back wall. The chocolates, six or eight varieties, are presented like diamonds. Seeing the product in this case causes an incredible mental transubstantiation: these are no longer expensive chocolates, they are incredibly affordable jewels, and edible!
This mental process is important, because we didn’t understand, until our first visit, how much better it could be to enjoy one or two really terrific chocolates, than to consume the comparably-priced giant bag of Reese’s cups we favored in college. It’s a lot cooler, and we can attest that these chocolates also have magical powers with regard to one’s marriage, especially when deployed on Valentine’s Day.
For us, Gearhart’s exemplifies Charlottesville: a community which has made room for artisans and cultivated local businesses that want to do something extremely well, to create something special and otherwise hard to find. These small pleasures are all around this area, and finding them is, for us, every bit as enjoyable as finding the jack-in-the-pulpits on Bundoran Farm’s trails.
Posted by Joe Barnes on February 9th, 2010 in Education and Inspiration, Nature/Environment
The Common Flicker, Ants, and the Web of Life
Observing bird life at Bundoran Farm this winter has been hampered by the weather, but flickers have made themselves known by their calls. They are active, one bird covering a territory of 150 acres or more and this time of year you are likely to hear their loud drawn out “keeogh” call, sometimes their loud “wicka-wicka-wicka” call which is somewhat similar to the Pileated woodpecker.
The common flicker is a striking bird, with a black crescent on the breast, lovely large brown spots on the lower breast and abdomen, and a white rump when it flies. The neck is a warm tawny color and red patch on the nape provides a contrast to the warm browns on the back.
The flicker is a woodpecker, so it not only excavates nesting cavities and eats insects found under bark and in wood. It is our only woodpecker that commonly feeds on the ground, searching for ants and beetles. They are very fond of ants and may be seen on lawns pecking away.
There are estimated to be 20,000 species of ants in the world and currently the biomass of all the ants is about the same as the biomass of all the humans.
Ants are important in the food chain, not only to flickers and anteaters, but too many other birds and animals. Ants are very important in seed dispersal, especially for our spring ephemerals. Spring ephemerals are those little woodland flowers that will becoming up soon to grow and bloom before the deciduous trees leaf out and shade them. These plants have evolved along with ants and the seeds have a structure called an elaiosome attached to them. The elaisome is very nutritious to the ant, so the ant carries the seed to its nest where the elaisome is eaten and the seed discarded, to sprout and grow later. Ants also fertilize some of these flowers since they bloom before flying insects are very active. Ants also eat many types of insects including termites, thus providing biological pest control.
Ants burrow in the ground and excavate tunnels thus are important in natural soil aeration, helping humans in another way. Many societies utilize ants as food, and some for medical purposes.
When the spring beauty, bloodroot, dutchman’s breeches, toothwort and other spring ephemerals appear in our woodlands, remember the common flicker!
Dorothy Tompkins — Master Naturalist and Bundoran Farm Steward
Posted by David Hamilton on February 3rd, 2010 in Architecture and Design, Baldwin Center for Preservation, Education and Inspiration, General, Green Building, Project Updates
In belated honor of J.D. Salinger, a deceptively simple observation on homes, by Joyce Maynard:
“A good home must be made, not bought.”
Taken a bit out of context, this assertion is, when you think about it, pretty radical. We buy homes, like we buy cars and home theater systems, though usually with a bigger loan, and always with more of both fear and hope. We imagine the lives we will live there, and weigh the impact of bedrooms, half-bathrooms, views and porches, neighborhood schools, even trees and neighbors not likely to last as long as our occupancy. We renovate, but relatively few of us ever have the chance to make a home for ourselves. Statistically, even those Americans with net worth greater than ten million dollars, even people for whom “custom-made” is customary, only rarely build themselves a home.
Having built my own home (without benefit of net worth), I’ve always found this statistic a little sad. For me, making a home was an exercise in understanding myself and my wife, the way we work, live and sleep, an enumeration of what we hold dear, and of what we can do without, almost a plan for the people we wanted to be. We stood on a ladder on our homesite, to figure out the view from our “bedroom,” and imagined our children, not yet born, and where their swingset might be. For a couple who’d previously imagined life in terms of the next academic degree, or the next six months at work, the creation of something permanent and personal was a rare opportunity for introspection.
My work at Bundoran Farm has given me a front row seat as the first residents of this community have thought, re-thought, and ultimately committed to building the home of their dreams. The first two new homes have now been occupied for about six months, and the difference between them couldn’t be more obvious. One home, nestled into a forest preserve, is half the size of the other, which peeks over the shoulder of its pasture site to a 270 degree view of rolling farmland. If you met these two couples at a party, you’d never guess that their visions might diverge so dramatically. Of course, the magic of this process is that each of these two homes looks as if it were meant to be there, and the owners seem at home in a way that suggests many years’ connection to their land.
A second building boom is currently underway, with at least three homes being designed, and another pair of homes under construction. Again, these two owners would look pretty similar on paper: accomplished professionals with a seemingly limitless affection for nature, and once again, their visions of home couldn’t be more different. I’ve attached some images below of these two homes, both on Hightop Drive, to illustrate what we at Bundoran Farm find so fascinating. The first home, on Maple Hill, is a charming, clean-lined and well-sited (check out the view from the front door) farmhouse being built by Abrahamse + Co., and the second, “Woodhill,” being built by Artisan Construction, is a smaller, highly sustainable home perched on a hillside amidst Bundoran Farm’s most impressive poplar forest (look closely, these trees are giants).
As with so many other elements of life, the endpoint of building appears to be subordinate to the depth and quality of this process of consideration, discovery, design and execution. Both the homes underway are already obvious successes for their owners, and for the community: at once respectful, sustainable and exciting. It’s hard to express the gratitude we feel, as stewards of this land, toward the owners, designers and master builders who have taken the vision of Bundoran Farm and extended it into the incredibly personal and unpredictable world of home-making.
Posted by David Hamilton on January 29th, 2010 in Agriculture, Baldwin Center for Preservation, Education and Inspiration
For those relatively few of you who don’t subscribe to Pork Magazine, (the leading periodical of porcine agribusiness), I pass along an interesting article. It covers a study from Iowa State that compared Iowa farm acreage, as an investment, to the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index.
The study’s authors conclude that the wisdom of putting your money in stocks or topsoil depends on when you invest, and how long you hold. What I find most interesting is that it’s apparently pretty darned close. Close enough that the study’s not really conclusive, which makes the recent news about hedge funds buying farmland across the world sound slightly less nutty. Which makes me wonder: why there aren’t people from Edward Jones calling me at dinnertime to sell me acreage, just for a change of pace? And why is there an exchange in New York where guys bark at each other to buy and sell shares, but no equivalent in Des Moines or, for that matter, Charlottesville?
I mention this because folks who make the
ir home here at Bundoran Farm own not just a home, but a slice of a large and productive farm, which is managed (professionally) in common. The idea, of course, is that the protected and managed agrarian landscape adds to the value and security of the owners’ home, with the ancillary benefit of protecting most of this arresting landscape and local-food capacity for the long term. Maybe it’s the other way ’round?
Posted by Joe Barnes on January 29th, 2010 in Architecture and Design, Education and Inspiration, General, Project Updates
Virginia Public Radio recently aired a segment on Bundoran Farmand our efforts to preserve the character and use of the 2,300 acres of this legacy landscape, promote ongoing environmental stewardship and craft a great place for people to live in and enjoy the countryside of Charlottesville, Virginia and Albemarle County region. Click here to for a podcast of this segment “Conservation Development”.
Sandy Haussman’s reports on this new model of conservation development we refer to as “Preservation Development.” In addition to providing as high level overview of the development concepts, you can hear first hand comments from Fred Scott, the previous owner of Bundoran Farm, Mary Tillman, one of Bundoran Farm’s Founding Stewards, Bob Baldwin, Jr., Bundoran Farm’s co-general manager, and Ed McMahon, a Senior Fellow with the Urban Land Institute.
To add pictures to these great verbal descriptions, I encourage you to check out our website or better yet, drop by for a visit at 5005 Edge Valley Road.