I hope that this post finds everyone well and that you are staying cool through this very hot spell! The heat index today will be about 110 degrees, so the summer heat is certainly on. The rains have been plentiful this year at Bundoran Farm, providing good conditions for the pastures and orchards. Additionally, a small vegetable garden that we planted this year is thriving in these conditions. In fact, we presently have plenty of fresh organic cucumbers available for Bundoran Farm owners and nearby neighbors. So if you are in the area stop by the Baldwin Center and help yourself to a few. We also have a few zucchini and yellow squash available to the first few that arrive. Later in the season we will have some corn, sweet peppers, green beans and plenty of vine ripe tomatoes.

What a great way to enjoy and appreciate the bounty of the land.

Below are a few picture of our small garden and our recent harvest.

During his recent vacation, Leif participated in the 25^th Annual James River Batteau Festival.  The festival included 25 flat bottom, wooden vessels that are replicas of the boats used Colonial times into the 19^th century to move cargo along the James River and is a tradition for many boating fans.  Some even dress in period colonial outfits.  Leif helped crew the Rosalee on the 120 mile trip down the James River from Lynchburg to Maiden’s Landing.

As highlighted in the May 26, 2010 issue of the Washington Post, these “boats were vital to Virginia’s early commerce, when much of the state could only be traveled by horseback.  The cargo typically included tobacco and other crops, along with some passengers, and were navigated by batteaumen who used long poles to push the huge boats around rocks and through shallow water.  The first remains of the ancient boats were found in 1983 at a construction site in downtown Richmond.  From that discovery, the first reproduction was built.

Here’s a link to a great narrated photo essay about the trip.  James River Batteau Festival

The speakers for this event were Mike Santucci & Nelson Shaw, both with the Virginia Department of Forestry, Rex Linville of the Piedmont Environmental Council, and Adam Downing, a forester with Virginia Cooperative Extension.  The participants learned important information about the history of Virginia’s Forests, how they can get a Forest Stewardship Management Plan written for their property, how timber is sold, and also about conservation easements.

We would like to thank these folks for provided this informative workshop for the public.  Additional support for this event was provided by the Ballyshannon Fund.

BCPD-Symposium-Findings-120709

The Symposium's Plenary Session

First, there is a conviction among the developers that, if properly integrated (or insulated), farming in its various forms need not be extinguished when residential uses are introduced.

Second, and more important, the residents of these communities have made the determination that, in 2010, a working farm adjacent to their homes is an amenity, not a nuisance.   This is a remarkable shift from even ten years ago, when a residential amenity was fairly well understood to be a golf course or a pool.

At the Baldwin Center, we try to track and understand, at least in broad strokes, the many approaches currently underway (the article mentions a hundred projects) to pair residential uses with productive uses of rural lands.  It is clear, from this article and others, that we are in the midst of a moment of incredible innovation and change in two businesses: agriculture and land development.  How these many models succeed and fall short over the next decade will likely be a critical contribution to our discussion on the future of rural land.  Stay tuned.

The Edge, Hard at Work, but Thinking About Land

Reading the article, I recalled cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway, below the hills in question, with a friend of my wife, a recent arrival in Los Angeles.  ”Up there,” he gestured, “I just want to get a little piece of land up there and build a house, with a view and a breeze…”

“Great,” I replied.  ”You get a few million together, find the spot, and we’ll design the home.  Then get another million together.  When we’re through the public approvals process in twenty years, you’ll have an excellent spot to retire.”  He got a condo in Venice, I think.

In its stated aims, Edge’s proposed community follows principles of LID (low-impact development), though no mention is made of community legal structures and other complexities of a more typical Conservation Development, let alone the common-use and agricultural provisions of the Preservation Development model employed at Bundoran Farm.  Rather than challenge the plan, however, the debate has focused on the appropriateness of any development, however well-done, on this site.  That is clearly for regulatory agencies (and possibly courts) to decide, but this situation points up a very common problem in American land use.

The fundamental problem of our common tools for land conservation in the United States is that, in economic terms, they do not align incentives.  In this case, conservation of the hills in question no doubt confers a small benefit on everyone who drives the PCH (a few less houses in the view), but the cost of regulation is borne disproportionately by (an admittedly rich) guitarist-developer.  At the same time, the benefit of conserving this specific parcel accrues disproportionately to the (presumably slightly-less-rich) landowners in Malibu below.  In a free-market we’d expect that the Malibu folks would band together and lay out the cost of securing privately-owned land in their viewshed.  But we’d be wrong.  Our greatest successes in conservation, like the tax-credit driven development-right purchases which power open space protections in Virginia, are, despite their success on the ground, piling up an imbalance of costs and benefits.  As we get more and more serious about protecting land, at greater scales, some of these imbalances will need to be addressed.  At the Baldwin Center, we investigate models that, among other things, do that.

We often talk about Bundoran Farm, and other Preservation Development projects, primarily in terms of their day-to-day qualities: a walk in the woods, a protected view, a preserved agricultural heritage.  Just as important is an underlying economic concept which is disarmingly simple: “Like that view?  Buy it.”  Each owner of a homesite here becomes a steward of a slice of common-use land, of viewshed or natural resources, of productive agricultural land or forest.  In this way, conservation advances with development, and without subsidy or externalized costs.  The sum of many individuals making this commitment in one spot is, I’ll claim, remarkable.

As we found at our fall symposium, the model employed here is by no means the only solution, and it cannot address every landscape type or market.  But the search for more sustainable models for preserving (and funding) farmland is an important area of research and debate that we hope to foster in our little barn.  Next time they’re at JPJ arena, we’ll definitely invite the lads from U2 to come out for a visit.

“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.

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 their 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?

Our new contact information is:

Bundoran Farm
5005 Edge Valley Road
North Garden, VA  22959
434-295-3700
info@bundoranfarm.com

Since its completion late last year, there has been a flurry of activity at what will be the social and informational hub for Bundoran Farm.

In addition to hosting the Inaugural Baldwin Center Symposium, “Residential Development and the Working Landscape” (attended by over fifty participants from across the country), a number of groups with missions and goals consistent with the Baldwin Center’s have enjoyed gathering here.

Equally important is how this new facility along Edge Valley Road has become the place to find all there is to know about Bundoran Farm and how you may become part of it all.  In addition to being the headquarters for the Baldwin Center for Preservation Development, a non-profit foundation with the mission to showcase innovative practices in agricultural preservation, environmental stewardship and sustainable ground, the Baldwin Center houses members of the Bundoran Farm development, management and real estate sales team. Learn more about The Baldwin Center for Preservation Development online.

Meet The Bundoran Farm Development & Sales Team

Leif Riddervold has been Bundoran Farm’s natural resources manager since its inception.  Leif is responsible for the development and implementation of the natural resources management plan for Bundoran Farm.

He is a key liaison between those who live on the property and those who work the land promoting careful stewardship and use of the land and its resources.

Growing up on his family farm, Leif has been actively involved in viticulture, cattle operations and other aspects of agriculture for most of his life.

Mr. Riddervold holds degrees in environmental science and geology from James Madison and the University of Virginia.

Chad Rowe, a recent addition to the team, serves as Bundoran Farm’s primary real estate advisor. 

A licensed Virginia realtor, Chad not only works with our customers and property owners, but also our cooperative broker partners as well as all referring brokers to ensure a comfortable sales process for those looking to make Bundoran Farm their home in the countryside. 

A Virginia native and avid outdoorsman, Chad has extensive experience in working with both resort and primary residential communities. 

Chad holds an English degree from Randolph-Macon College and currently sits on his alma mater’s Board of Associates.

Whether you have questions about available homesites at Bundoran Farm, are interested in learning more about our Preservation Development concept, or just want to enjoy the pastoral views from the front porch of the Baldwin Center, we invite you to drop by our new home at 5005 Edge Valley Road.  See you soon.

If you would like to stay up to date with the progress and experiences on Bundoran Farm we encourage you to check out our here on our blog, Bundoran Farm Field Notes, and become a fan of Bundoran Farm on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/bundoranfarm

Where do we go with this?  Posited the fleece clad Bob Baldwin as he stood next to a blank whiteboard facing the fifty or so participants in the inaugural conference of the Baldwin Center for Preservation Development.  The empty whiteboard served literally and figuratively as the blank slate that Baldwin hoped to fill up in the next ninety minutes with concepts, conclusions and concrete next steps as he played the role of facilitator at the closing plenary session of the Center’s two day Inaugural Symposium—Residential Development and the Working landscape: Collide, Contain, Coexist, or Coalesce.

Robert H. Baldwin, Jr., “Bob”, has an open demeanor and a self-deprecating sense of humor that puts the participants gathered in the second floor meeting room of the newly constructed Baldwin Center at ease. Baldwin succeeded his late father as the President of New Hampshire-based Qroe Development, who, with Charles Adams and Celebration Associates, is the Co-General Manager of Bundoran Farm, the 2,300 “Preservation Development” project located in southern Albemarle County about fifteen minutes from Charlottesville.

 Bundoran Farm is now, and will continue upon completion of the development project, a working farm. In fact, 90% of the Farm’s acreage will remain as open space. On this unseasonably bone chillingly cold and damp two day stretch in late October, a thick fog of low lying clouds mask the Blue Ridge just to its west and Bundoran’s Angus dotted fields of fescue and orchard grass and the large orderly rows of apple trees climbing the rolling hills of its working orchard operation.

Located at Bundoran, the Baldwin Center for Preservation Development houses a non-profit foundation with the mission to showcase innovative practices in rural land use planning and development, agricultural preservation, and environmental stewardship.  Named in honor of Robert H. Baldwin, Sr., a pioneer in the use of development to preserve New England farmland and the early visionary for Bundoran Farm, the Center, designed and built by GeoBarns of Vermont, is a modern riff on the traditional barns found on the property.  The structure features a full length front porch and offices on the first floor and an open meeting room on the second, the venue for the conference, which highlights an expansive light filled ceiling of arched trusses and a windowed pergola.

 Despite his welcomed lack of the usual facilitatorspeak of “share withs”, “new paradigms” and “perhaps we should continue this line of conversation off-lines”, Bob Baldwin’s prodding and open ended questions does engender the dialogue and suggestions that he aims for. His white board starts to fill up. The Symposium’s invited participants came from all over the country with a variety of backgrounds, including: farmers, developers, non-profit land conservation organizations, government officials, and leading academics, in order to gather at the Center and share their experiences, perspectives and expertise related to the preservation of working agrarian landscapes.  The combination of disciplines and perspectives provided for in depth discussion of how the private sector can foster rural land preservation with market driven solutions and limited residential development.  In addition, the group explored how these solutions compare with, compliment and/or conflict with other preservation tools.

Notable among the participants and speakers: Professor Elizabeth Brabec, Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts; Dr. Jill Clark, Director, Center for Farmland Policy Innovation at Ohio State University; Professor Bruce Dotson, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academics and Senior Associate, Institute for Environmental Negotiation at the University of Virginia School of Architecture; Mr. Bob Lee, Executive Director, The Virginia Outdoors Foundation; Mr. Rex Linville, Land Conservation Officer, Piedmont Environmental Council; Mr. Tayloe Murphy, former Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources and former Member of the Virginia House of Delegates; and Professor Richard B. Peiser, Michael D. Spear Professor of Real Estate Development at Harvard Graduate School of Design; and a very large elephant in the back of the room.

Nobody could accuse the Baldwin Center of including only cheerleaders and sycophants to the Symposium.  Rex Linville, whose employer, the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), has championed the use of conservation easements by encouraging the use of Virginia Land Preservation Act as a tool of preserving open space and farmland throughout the Piedmont, was a very visible and vocal opponent of the Bundoran project during its zoning and approval process with Albemarle County.  As noted in the Summer 2008 issue of this magazine, the PEC disagreed with what they viewed as the premise and the concept of “preservation development”—particularly the notion that the ultimate economic value of farmland rests with its development potential.  Rex Linville and the PEC argued that the proper land use for Bundoran and similarly situated farms lies with its continued purpose of agriculture and forestry, not housing.  Linville did ultimately concede that the Bundoran development team did “do a good job of siting houses and roads” and that the project scale of 108 new houses was certainly preferable to the 160 houses that would have been allowed under Albemarle County’s land-use regulations.  However, Linville and the PEC still disagreed with the use of Bundoran Farm as a place to accommodate the growth of the County and situate one hundred plus houses.

In his opening remarks on the previous afternoon, Bob Baldwin, Jr.   highlighted the challenge facing preservation development and the challenge that he wanted those gathered to explore in the coming day: “When it comes to the mixing of residential development and farms, historic exurban settlement patterns seem to have reflected either a collision of the two uses, resulting in an unhappy outcome, or containment of uses, a subtly hostile approach. We believe that if planned right, the uses could, at the least, peacefully coexist and very possibly coalesce into a mutually beneficial arrangement. The Symposium’s goal is to explore that hypothesis.”

Award winning author Witold Rybcyznski’s book, the Last Harvest documents the dilemma faced by farmers and large landowners in communities and counties such as those in the Virginia Piedmont.  Faced with development pressure and its economic rewards due to population growth and the desirability of living in Virginia and its proximity to the nation’s capital, many of these farmers and landowners “would prefer no development, but if is to happen, they want the option of selling their land”.  As Rybcyznski notes, this transaction is often referred to as the “last harvest”.

Bob Baldwin, with his concept of Preservation Development and Bundoran Farm, seeks a solution for landowners that lies somewhere in between the social, environmental and the more limited economic benefits of conservation easements, as promoted by groups such as the PEC, and the loss of the rural landscape as a result of the “last harvest”.  Baldwin is “betting the farm”—Baldwin’s hypothesis and business plan for the Bundoran Farm project depends on the predicate that home buyers will appreciate the beauty of the Farm, the guaranty and protection of its open space and the concept of a true working farm as a self sustaining “amenity” and, most importantly, will be willing to pay a 25 to 30% premium for it.

During stimulating and lively discussions over the previous day, the participants were challenged to interpret the value of farmland in new ways and assess the critical components and issues that emerge when integrating rural land preservation and residential growth. While it was widely acknowledged that very significant gains in farmland protection have been achieved throughout Virginia and the country, all agreed that more needed to be done and could be done, particularly in light of the strengthening Local Food Movement.

Using the New Urbanist movement (Seaside in Florida and Kentlands in Marylands, as examples, and its evangelists in the architectual team of Duany and Plater-Zyberk) as inspiration, participants encouraged the Baldwin Center to take a leadership role in exploring and presenting rural development models that could benefit farmers, new residents, and rural communities as a whole.

Bob Baldwin fills up his whiteboard with these suggestions—many reflecting the theoretical and academic bent of the gathering—for the Center: additional symposiums with planners and developers; dissemination of best practice information;  hosting of charettes for planning and design students; and, more concretely, underwriting and producing a White Paper on Preservation Development.

At the conclusion, Bob Baldwin conceded and asserted that the most important task for the Baldwin Center for Preservation Development was the ability to demonstrate that, through the prospective success of Bundoran Farm and other projects, rural development can “deliver”.  This is where reality versus theory and the only uninvited guest at the Conference comes in—that large elephant in the back of the room: the worst real estate market in generations.

When asked after the Symposium, Bob Baldwin acknowledges this reality, but confidently dismisses any suggestion of alteration to the plans for Bundoran Farm.  Baldwin believes demographics and values are on his side. In the words of Robert H. Baldwin, Sr., who died in a plane accident in 2006, and for whom he and the Center were named—“given the current market sentiment toward green development and sustainable development, it’ll (preservation development) practically be mandatory in the future”.  When does that future occur? Only that large tusked participant has that answer.

About the Author - Raised in Richmond and a resident of Old Town Alexandria, Ned Carter is a Managing Director with BlueLine Conservation, a Virginia Land Preservation Tax Credit brokerage, conservation finance and eco-services  firm.  He spends many of his weekends on his family’s farm in southern Albemarle County, just over the Southwest Mountains, from Bundoran Farm and the Baldwin Center for Preservation Development)